I know someone who fled Seattle and moved totally out of state for another job because he lived in the city and had to commute by bus to avoid high parking fees.
The problem with the city buses—homeless people doing their business on the bus.
He just had enough—and bailed.
Once folks have had a taste of working at home they may commute for a while but they will have those resumes out there—and the good ones will get snatched away.
It will be a slow bleed for Amazon.
By the time they figure out what happened it will be too late.
Remote can work for some people, and some companies, but it’s got plenty of challenges. Not the least of which being the cultural and legal structures that come along with “W2” employment.
One system that seems to work well is those workers and businesses who approach the problem from a more entrepreneurial perspective. Remote work can be just fine if it’s understood more as an independent contract, the terms of which can be negotiated by both parties and renewed, or not, by either party at the end of the term of the agreement. But that has problems of its own, not the least of which being the massive friction created by managing a bunch of 1099 contracts, and the efforts in many blue states to effectively ban a lot of the simplest 1099 agreements (eg California AB5 testing).
It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out in Amazon’s case, for sure.
Or, the Amazon employees could stop voting Democrat and see the city go back to what they moved there for.
And a few million eager, brilliant folks will be there to take their place.
I work from home but have to go in a few days now and soon 3 days.
Actually being wide awake when working is something I forgot :)
And I enjoy getting out 3 days a week.
A compromise would be nice on amazon’s part...3 days in...2 days home