Andy Says RTO Five Days a Week

In this episode of TalkingPointz Talking Headz, David Danto and Dave Michels, joined by Metrigy Research’s Irwin Lazar, dive into the hot topic of Amazon’s recent push to bring employees back to the office full-time. They unpack the real motivations behind the memo, revealing its connections to industry-wide layoffs and corporate real estate pressures and other explanations. This candid conversation offers a fresh perspective on what the return-to-office push from Amazon’s CEO is truly all about..

Transcript

David J. Danto: 1:05

greetings and welcome everybody to this episode of talking points. Chats. I'm here with my partner, Dave Michaels, and joining us, is Erwin Lazar from Metrog, Irwin? Say Hi! To everybody.

Irwin Lazar: 1:13

Hi Everybody.

David J. Danto: 1:15

Okay. And now this, the subject for this meeting and this conversation amongst us collaboration professionals is collaboration. And where do we collaborate? There was an announcement a few days ago that Amazon, CEO Andy Jassy has said that he's done with the hybrid working experiment, and he wants everybody back in the office full time, 5 days a week. And, as you can imagine, it's been a very hot topic being discussed online. Everybody's an expert. Most of the opinions that are put forward, in my opinion, are not about what it is. Most of the opinions that are put forward are about. Whether you believe in Ceos having a leadership role in making those decisions, or whether you believe that corporate real estate should be left empty or filled, or what's good for for organizations in general. And there've been a lot of people swirling, and we want to kind of break it down with a conversation today. So David, you and I started talking about this before. Why don't you chime in 1st and talk a little bit about what you think this really is? Because I don't think this is really a return to the office for the point of returning to the office.

Dave Michels: 2:23

Well, it definitely is that. But that may. That may be the second, the second priority. I think I think a lot of Ceos want to get everyone back in the office, and that may be at odds with the employee base. But but I think this is 1st and foremost, as what I indicated, and I think what you're referring to on the on the Linkedin. 1st and foremost a layoff. And we've it's a brutal, brutal year 2024 is a brutal year for tech. I mean, we're seeing massive layoffs. A lot of different companies are doing big layoffs and and you know, we just last week we had a pretty big one at Cisco, and I think there was a second one last this year, and so Amazon hasn't had one in a while. So I think this is a creative way to do a layoff. and it will definitely result with a layoff. These are these kinds of layoffs are tricky because they are better for the company, because if people resign there's they get less benefits, etc, less transition assistance. But, on the other hand, the ones that resign tend to be the ones that are most hireable. And so you tend to lose your better talent. And so that's what I thought it was, and I think you had a similar. I think you agreed with that right.

David J. Danto: 3:34

Oh, absolutely! And you know I find I would consider this, and I'm not mincing my words here. I would consider this a cowardly layoff. because, you know, if a company really wanted to cut heads, whether I agree or disagree with that, and in most cases I disagree with it. But you know, if a very profitable company wanted to cut heads, they should come right out and say, we are restructuring, we're cutting 3%, 5%, 10%, whatever it is. These are the benefits. This is what we're going to be providing to say. Oh, by the way, everybody come back to the office and we realize that's going to be a struggle. So we're giving you 60 or 90 days to get with the program. It's the worst of all cases. I called it culture busting, you know. They're saying they're bringing people back to the office to improve culture. And we're going to talk about that one in detail. But the the people that will leave are the ones that you point out that can that can get better jobs somewhere else. And the people that won't leave because they can't find a better job, or they can't do without the income are going to be more resentful of the company every day that it exists. I remember working for multiple companies in my history, where every year they would have an annual blood drive, and my immediate response to the annual blood drive. Was you suck enough of my blood out already? So so if they want to really develop a culture of people that are going to resent their management way to go here. So so I mean, let's get into some of the details around that later. But, Irwin, I want to give you a shot. How are you? Perceiving this.

Irwin Lazar: 4:58

Yeah, you know, it's obviously speculation. I don't haven't talked to Andy directly. But you know, I think yeah, there, there's certain you can make the argument. That part of the discussion is around. Can we reduce staff? And is this a backdoor layoff? I've heard that that argument made. It doesn't seem like. That's a wise decision, you know. If you're going to drive out people who are able to work effectively, remotely, I think the bigger issue that you know, kind of befuddles me is the cost, you know. If I'm thinking of of being a CEO, I see a lot of benefit in remote work. I can hire people outside of my home market. I can reduce footprint of real estate, and this seems to go against everything that we've seen from successful organizations. You look at companies like Nvidia as an example. I think one of the largest companies now in the world by market capitalization is very much committed to work from home. So it just seems to be. You know, this doesn't make sense, I guess, is what I'm trying to say on the surface. You know, if if you're saying you want to bring people back because it's gonna improve workplace culture and people will be able to work more collaboratively together, I think we've shown that remote work collaboratively works fine. And then, again, that issue of how do you ensure that people are together in the same team teams, even in companies where people are brought back to the office are often greatly distributed. I've talked to hundreds of people who tell me, yeah. You know, I got ordered to come back in the office, and I spent my day on video calls because my team was in New York or split between New York, San Francisco, London, and Bangalore. And so again, I'm just really struggling with what is the justification? The stated one is collaboration, and I just don't see that as being a a real strong driver to bring everybody back.

Dave Michels: 6:41

Well, they stated you said collaboration. But I think you 1st you said culture. And they definitely said culture. And they also said, Innovation and You know there was some sort of line in there about. I can't remember what it said, but some some sort of line in there that this is how we're gonna you know, the most innovative company. And and I have to say, I don't associate Amazon with innovation. I they're basically, you know, they're a huge company. They have a lot of people, a lot of budgets. but a lot of their products, whether it be their Ccat solution or their AI solution suite or chime in our space. even their shopping experience. I wouldn't consider them particularly innovative. You still cannot. And people have been complaining about this for years. You still cannot organize the shopping experience by price. There's a price category, but it's the total price. It's not, you know. So if they have 3 items in there. It doesn't give you the price per unit. And it's just amazing to me that they would cite those 2 things because culture is really hard when you have such a big company. and and innovation is not something that I don't think most people associate Amazon with.

Irwin Lazar: 7:57

I mean, I guess you could raise the point that they recognize that they're not innovative. And that's 1 of the reasons, you know, why they think.

Dave Michels: 8:03

Yeah, but they haven't been innovated for 20 years.

David J. Danto: 8:07

So. So let's let's parse this out because one of the things that I think we can all agree on, at least the 3 of us can agree on is that we're not talking about what we're talking about here, and we need to kind of parse this piece out. The the 1st one to look at is this idea of distributed work? Okay, when when people say, I want to bring you back to the office because I want to have those those water, cooler moments, those innovative bouncing off of each other and ideas. You know, I've worked in corporate America now for 46 years. That doesn't exist anymore. We don't all work in the same corner hardware store where we're all employees are in the same place, and we're all bouncing off of each other and eating lunch in one big lunchroom. When I worked in financial services, when I worked as a consultant, when I worked for larger companies, I was always working with distributed teams in different cities in different buildings, using the collaboration tools of the day. So this, this rose colored glasses. Fantasy of I'm going to bring everybody back because of these spontaneous collisions is really a fallacy, because most people in a knowledge work environment obviously not on their warehouses or not, you know, when they're producing things. But as far as knowledge workers are concerned, most people are working with distributed teams 24, 7, anyway, so it can never really be about everybody being in the same building. Can we at least agree on that.

Dave Michels: 9:23

I would I would go. I would go even worse than that, David. I I would go worse than that, because managing knowledge workers is really hard, and it's no easier in the office. And so I think there's this assumption that if I can see you typing in a keyboard that I'm somehow managing you. But it's not really true. There's I remember, you know, in high school algebra there was the simultaneous equation type of thing where? Where one guy mows a lawn slower, but he's cheaper and the other guy mows the lawn faster, and he's more expensive. And the question is, you know, if you have 3 lawns, which one do you hire? We don't know how to solve that with knowledge workers. And and so we just want people to look busy and act busy. And and some people are really very natural and adept at that. But that doesn't. It's not really an effective way of of managing and and so remote makes it a different problem, not necessarily a harder or easier problem. You can't see them. And we weren't trained. Necessarily, we don't have experience in how to be remote. We don't. We don't know how to manage remote people. We don't know how to be remote, being remote, and you're spending a lot of time on video that, David you've been. You've been coaching me, you know. You've got to look at the camera more. You have to nod more. You have to do all these things more. And so there's more effort that we that isn't maybe necessarily natural, or that we nobody got a manual on. So it's kind of relearning. But this idea that I could manage a knowledge worker better in an office because I can see them is is, you know, laughable. It doesn't. It just doesn't make any sense.

David J. Danto: 10:55

Well, it, Erwin. I would ask you, you know, if we stay on the subject just for a second, that that you know we haven't come up with a better measure of productivity, have we? That's 1 of the things, you know. We we can count keystrokes, and we can make sure people's mouse are moving unless they buy mechanical mouse movers like I did at my last job. And and you know the the there are ways, you know, to to force, to know if somebody's there. But there's no real way to manage measure productivity objectively.

Irwin Lazar: 11:21

Yeah, it really depends on the role, you know. Obviously, if you're a salesperson, you can manage based on on revenue number of meetings, you schedule that kind of thing. If you're a software developer, maybe you can manage based on how quickly you generate updates. Typically, you know, you're gonna see that people are are focusing on managing the task. You know. What are you completing the task in a reasonable amount of time? But it's always that challenge of what defines the gain in productivity. I talked to one of our clients who said, You know what we're looking at, AI. We're looking at Microsoft copilot as an example. And we think, Okay, what if this saves us 10 HA week? What do? What do people do with that? 10 h? Do they take that 10 h now, and they, you know, they go surf the web. They go shop on Amazon or whatever. So if you're assuming okay, I'm gonna bring people back in the office, and they're going to somehow be more productive. How do you? You know? How do you ensure that? How do you measure it. You're losing that couple hours of productivity that people have, because now they have to commute each day spending time in a car or train, whatever you're losing time that they may need to go. Step out for a minute for personal appointments. Talk to their kids, family, whatever. I don't think you can. You can argue that having people in that same facility is necessarily more productive. And it also depends on the nature of the work. Like, so, yeah, maybe if I'm in a brainstorming session, maybe we are more effective if we if we meet in person. But how often do we do that? Maybe we do it once a month, and that's the only time we need to bring people back.

Dave Michels: 12:45

And they already have. They're not going from 0. They're going from 3 days a week to 5 days a week. So they already had that if you need to do the brainstorming session. And of course it's up to the groups. But we're learning actually. And we're seeing this in in all the video companies we cover, that brainstorming might be more equitable. It might be better in in online, where everybody has volume control, everybody has a clean, clean view of the of the board, or the or the even the virtual whiteboard. all that stuff, and so, and and be able to record it, and be able to use these AI enhancements. So there's a lot going on there. But I wanted to touch on something you just reminded me of to us just a a few weeks ago. A woman named Denise Prudeholm, a 60 year old, employee of Wells. Fargo died at her desk on a Friday. and wasn't. Her body wasn't discovered until Tuesday at the office, you know, and so we always think about. You know, older people dying at home. They don't go. They live alone. They don't get discovered for a few days. This is somebody at a Wells Fargo office that took 4 days to to find that she was dead at the office, and this terrible story. But my point is is being in the office that much more collaborative, apparently not for her, I mean. So it's we have to. We have to look at this on a parole and a per individual basis. And in fact, I think before we start recording. You had a comment about that. You knew somebody that may not be more effective in a in an office as you were sharing Norman.

Irwin Lazar: 14:20

Yeah, no, I think that's fair. Like, yeah, we were talking about a specific example. But yeah, I think again, it depends on. you know, optimize the work location for the work and not just say, Well, we want everyone in. For some vague reason of, we think there's going to be more productivity. We think people are going to be brainstorming. We think it'll improve company culture. I think we've shown over the last 5 years that the companies can work effectively, remotely. I think you know all of us work remote. I've been a remote worker now since 2,004 and you know it's and I would also say that it's not a hundred percent remote, is, is the answer. I think there, there are times when you do need to get together. You do need to work in person. As a company. We bring people together, usually 2 to 3 times a year, maybe more often, if we need to. But I think if you look at some of the research that's been done by groups like the future foundation or future Forum, excuse me. A really interesting book by Brian Elliott and a couple of Co. Authors that that looked at the best way to to manage remote teams. It found that, you know there is that element of bringing people back in, but just forcing everyone to be in 5 days a week, whether they need to or not, whether their work supports it or not, whether they can afford it or not. It's a lot more expensive to commute to the office when you think about wear and tear in cars and meals, and so on.

Dave Michels: 15:32

And climate.

David J. Danto: 15:33

About remote work or return to the office. It's really about this concept of trust and autonomy, and Gary Sorrentino from Zoom likes to tell the story that when he's in front of Ceos he asks them, oftentimes, would you hire somebody that you don't trust. and the answer that they give 100% of the time is no, of course not. We would vet them. We would get references. We make sure the people we're hiring, we trust. And then he asked them, well, then, how come you stop trusting them as soon as you hire them? Why do we need to have key loggers and keystrokes and badge in, and things like that. Why are we telling people they need to be back in the office because we don't trust they're having a sense of autonomy that look. If my colleagues are in town today and they're not usually there, I want to be with them. I want to celebrate. I want to break bread. I want to be in the office, but that's my call. Am I working on a spreadsheet at my desk at home? So I'm avoiding 2 h of commuting? Or am I going into an office, or am I in front of a client? I have that autonomy, and we should be measured as we've talked about multiple times by outcome is the outcome of my work. What I'm supposed to be doing is the level right is is the sales. Right? You know, that's what we should be measuring. So so go ahead.

Irwin Lazar: 16:42

I was. Gonna say, I wonder if you can make a deal where it says, Okay, if I'm gonna bring people back in, you know, 5 days a week that work ends. The second. You walk out of the office like it used to.

Dave Michels: 16:50

Yeah. No.

Irwin Lazar: 16:51

We all used to go to an office. There were no iphones or blackberry.

Dave Michels: 16:54

Well, that that is, that's a good point, because a lot of people don't do well with remote work, because there's no boundaries. And so again it goes back to this training issue. And so there's pros and cons to both. Now. David, just mentioned. Zoom, I I would I would say that as an industry, you know, cause we, the industry, our industry, unified communications and and meetings they've been talking about remote work, for I don't know. Would you say? Or when you go back to 2,004 as far as being a remote worker. So so we've been talking about this for a while basically, since VoIP was just vented, I guess. And and and during the pandemic we really got what we've been preaching for a long time, and it mostly worked. There were some issues. And the 2 biggest issues really were around. Well, I said, the biggest issue was really around team building and culture propagation, cultural propagation. And that was okay. Wake up, call we. We never expected everyone to go 100% remote work, you know over a few over a week or so, and so so now we've kind of tested the system. and we know where the weaknesses are. What is the Ucas industry doing to fix that. And I think zoom gets some extra credit here because they've they've they've come out with they acquired work vivo which is specifically addressed to address culture. So, okay, bring on another pandemic. We're ready. We can now address culture. We can now celebrate anniversaries or employment anniversaries. We can now celebrate milestones and that kind of stuff, and they also came out with Workspace reservations, a way of managing space better in the office for a hybrid office. Now they're not alone with that, I mean, Cisco has Cisco spaces, and I guess, Microsoft, David, you've been talking about Microsoft places. So so we're seeing some progress there. But but that's where we need innovation is my point. That's where the industry should be focusing. How do we address these challenges? How do we address cultural propagation? Not how do we get rid of it? How do we make it better? That's that's the that's what I'm looking to companies like Amazon and Google, and and any of the companies really to be inventing.

Irwin Lazar: 19:03

Because remote return to the office won't solve that culture problem. When a company is split among multiple locations.

Dave Michels: 19:09

Or or departments, and you know Amazon in particular, their retail division, which is a big part of their company, and most of the company. I'm not sure if it's most anymore. Is very, very different culture warehouse workers, etc. Since then their aws services, which are all it type of workers. And and there's also, you know, David, in a Linkedin post mentioned all the different Amazon offices. Those are the public ones. They have lots of confidential and private offices I've been to some of them. They do not say Amazon on the building. The employees there are not allowed to wear Amazon Logos. And so they have all these small little locations. I'm not even sure how you how you propagate a culture to an office like that to a warehouse facility. I mean, it doesn't seem like that's even possible.

David J. Danto: 19:57

Well, one of the things that that's key, and I want to talk about some other points on this as well. But I to sort of put a circle around this. The piece that's missing is that we have not done any work, to my knowledge, training managers how to manage a hybrid workforce. We we generally in this, you know, in the world. We'll take really good performers, and we will. We will promote them into a management role that may or may not have the same skills that they needed as performers. We don't teach empathy, and we don't teach staying connected. We don't teach using the tools we don't teach checking in, and we don't teach all these things that are known. There have been, you know. I've managed 24, 7 ships at a radio station. and I didn't sleep behind the racks. I had to manage a remote staff. I've managed a global staff before. There are tools that you use to keep everybody on the same page and grow the culture. And we're not doing any work at all that I can see in the large companies, training managers how to manage a remote workforce, and that kind of segues us to what's really going on here. Now, we talked about the what's really going on being, you know, the backdoor, cowardly layoff. Let's put that one aside for a second. But but is is there, you know, more of a cultural strata, a cultural hierarchy thing going on here.

Dave Michels: 21:11

I don't think it's a culture. We cover the cultural part, I think what's going on here is the shift in power, and and it's, you know, since the news has broken, there's been a lot of we've seen all these conversations on on social media, and a lot of people are pretty negative on it. But then we've also seen stories like in the Wall Street Journal that are pretty positive on what was that Wall Street Journal headline the free for all coming, coming to an end.

David J. Danto: 21:34

There was a Kpmg survey that's talking about 80 or so percent of Ceos believe that hybrid working will end in the next 3 to 5 years.

Dave Michels: 21:43

Which which may, which may be true. But if it's true, it's really sad, because because the employees like it is employee, benefit is flexibility. And and so it's really about this gap. But but this but this shift in power. when when everyone was, you know. afraid to do anything to their employees because they might quit and you can't replace them. The labor market was so tight seems to have shifted for it. Workers it hasn't shifted for manufacturing workers, but it has shifted for it. Workers. There's been a lot of layoffs, as I mentioned earlier. So this is this is what this is. This is the pendulum swinging back and forth around the power, the power scale. And all of a sudden Andy thinks he has a window to screw his employees because they're afraid to quit. We'll see how that plays out. And I think a lot of people are, gonna see? Want to see how that's gonna play out.

Irwin Lazar: 22:32

I would think there's a really good opportunity for companies to poach, you know, very talented people, because they can recruit them, based on the fact that yes, we'll continue to support remote work.

David J. Danto: 22:43

Yeah. And and again, I don't know if if there isn't some level of of class going along with the power in terms of a class structure or caste structure. Does a CEO who's making a lot more money than the typical employee in their company? And let's leave it at that without getting into too much of of gritty. Do they realize what it takes to pick up kids after school? Of course not. They have a nanny that can do it? Do they realize what it takes to be able to go to the supermarket and be available on your iphone and your blackberry to answer messages at night and work remotely as needed, and be on calls. I think there's a sense of saying I grew up in this world where where the serfs did what they needed to do. And I want to go back to that world. And I really think there's a different perception as to what life is like. And the hard part here is not that it's just a difference of opinion between people at a CEO level and people at an employee or knowledge worker level. The hard part is, we did this for 5 years successfully, so you can't tell the employees this didn't work with a straight face and expect them to believe it. They don't, we don't. And I think that that's going to be a big problem going forward, especially for the people that wind up, staying at Amazon, resenting what they're being put through.

Dave Michels: 24:00

Yeah, there's there's a lot of issues that remote work have made complicated. Right? Makes tech. It's made taxation complicated because taxation is based on where? Where you work. So you it, it makes salaries complicated, because maybe you were hired in San Francisco as a bay area tech worker. But then you move to, you know Salt Lake City. Because you want to work remote.

David J. Danto: 24:23

Bozeman Boseman.

Dave Michels: 24:24

Until this. Yeah. So both okay. But but the so so ha! You know, I I heard I heard an executive just the other day last week making a comment about. And I can't believe we're paying San Francisco salary to somebody who's in a cheaper, a cheaper locality. It's it's so. There's all these issues that we don't quite know how to work with, and they all magically go away. If we just tell everybody to come back in. But one thing that we figured out with remote work is what you just touched on is this concept of work, life balance that we've been talking about for a long time. and it doesn't have to be 8 to 5 Monday through Friday to do your 40 h. It could be any 40 h in the week, and and people have really done well and appreciated that. Now I'm in Europe right now. I'm in Portugal right now, and you know there's laws here. You people don't work on the weekend, it's not allowed, and I've tried it with just independent contractors and stuff reaching them on weekends. They don't respond. People take their work, life balance much more seriously in, I want to say in Europe in general, but particularly in Portugal. But when I read that memo from Andy get back in the office. I heard screw work, life, balance, give us all your energy, all your energy, and forget the 40 h too full dedication to work back in the office every day, and I think that was, you know, surprising.

Irwin Lazar: 25:52

And you know we have seen examples of companies who have approached return to the office a little differently. More caring about that work life balance, which is, you know. Yeah, I'm going to provide you childcare. Maybe if it's even on site at the office, I'm going to provide you meals. I'm going to provide you other kinds of things that help with addressing some of those challenges you might have with with commuting in. And I think you know, one other area that we have seen that often is driving companies to to bring people back is that pressure from government? You know, cities have been devastated by the fact that people aren't coming in like they used to local businesses and so on. Here. I live in the Washington DC. Area, and there's been a lot of lobbying of the Federal Government to require that everybody come back to the office full time, specifically for that reason that it would help boost the economies within Washington, DC. And and other metropolitan areas.

David J. Danto: 26:40

Well, I think that's the next piece that we have to talk about with this, which is, are we really just talking about real estate. There was a corporate office building in New York City about a month ago that went on auction. You know, that sold for 3% of what its value was in the heyday. Most office buildings are empty. Companies are holding on to leases in mostly unused buildings, and different companies are handling it in different ways. I would definitely read between the lines from from Andy Jassy's memo, that Amazon wants to handle it by repopulating their offices so that they're not lost in value. Some companies are shedding leases. They're saying, we don't need this anymore. Why should we do this? But I think what we're talking about in a lot of these cases is the cost of the real estate.

Dave Michels: 27:23

Irwin brought that up 1st thing I mean he brought Irwin brought up 1st thing. The the cost savings, I mean commercial real estate is one of the most expensive line items in a in a corporate budget, and you know it's almost you. It's almost dereliction of duties not not to take advantage of that right.

David J. Danto: 27:43

That's.

Irwin Lazar: 27:43

I think so.

David J. Danto: 27:44

You know, I agree, I think, that that if if we've proved that remote working works and it's less expensive, and there have been studies, both before the pandemic, during the pandemic and after the pandemic, that productivity increases and employees are happier, and companies are doing better than the idea to go against all of the statistics because they feel like, you know. Look, I want to see all my employees because I want to build this culture, even though we've disproved culture, it can't. People can't be that stupid in CEO roles. It's got to be about something else and about you know whether they're not willing to give up the leases because they've got arrangements with cities. I remember when Amazon was putting together their proposal of their Hq. 2, you know, when they were negotiating with cities, and they were, you know, tax abatements. And what city will I be in? They can't turn around and say, Oh, by the way. You know that deal you made for us. We're not using that building anymore. They're worried about that. And I think that leads to some of these problems.

Dave Michels: 28:42

That's a great point. We haven't even really touched on climate, either, because all these companies, including Amazon, are committed to reducing their carbon footprint and reducing commutes is a big one of the biggest steps that they can take to do that, and it certainly seems like everywhere that in the us is getting warmer and having a lot more climate related calamities and just completely ignore that whole argument that yeah, we're committed to reducing our carbon footprint. But but get get to work that. That just seems a little con duplicitous.

David J. Danto: 29:22

And I think that that's a Pr failure. Honestly, at most of these companies, because it happens over and over again the fact that they're all saying that they're going to go for carbon 0. But then they don't care that they're increasing commutes, or the fact that the company is saying that they're bringing everybody back because culture is so important. This is not Amazon, but another company we know about. They're bringing everybody back because of culture, but then they don't hesitate to fire people at midnight via emails. you know, like they care about culture except when they decide they want to bust the culture. So I really think that that you have to look at this kind of an announcement as as a Pr cover for what's really going on. I believe that Amazon wants to cut costs with this backdoor, cowardly layoff. I believe that they want to make sure that they're filling their spaces, and I think that they're willing to take whatever the hit is in the short run. Because, Dave, I think you pointed out when we were talking the other day that the the Pr. Backlash of telling people to come back to the office is mitigated by all these Wall Street Journal and other reports of people saying, Cool, that's great where, as opposed to. If they did, layoffs like a lot of other companies are doing, they would be slammed for doing layoffs as a highly profitable company.

Irwin Lazar: 30:31

Yeah. But again, if you're thinking about layoffs, you're usually thinking about getting rid of folks who are either underperforming or business units that that are underperforming versus this teams to target the the people that are the best performers. Right? And I think you know, in that Wall Street Journal article you mentioned that you you shared, David, that they did talk about that briefly. I mean, I could say, you know, the only other area where we see that bringing people back to the office really does make a lot of sense is for younger workers. you know. Somebody coming out of college. We we've had. Fortunately, metrics is about 3 and a half years old. We've we've had one employee resign, and he was right out of college, spent about 8 months with us and decided, you know, I really don't want to work at home anymore. You know, I want to find a job where I can go meet people. I can build those mentor relationships have that social experience that you have. You know, in the office. And and so I think that's maybe the one area where you could make an argument that yes, it does help with culture. It does help with with mentor relationships. But it's a tough transition of push everybody, you know and say, well, because of that, we want everyone back in the office now, because, like, we said, you're gonna lose a lot of people who are some of those best, most skilled, most valuable, most sought after employees that you have.

Dave Michels: 31:40

You know, that's a really interesting point, Erwin. I want to. I want to remind our audience that age discrimination is legal. Lots of forms of discrimination is not legal, but age discrimination is legal. That's why seniors can pay less at restaurants and things like that, or movie theaters, because age discrimination is legal. So I would. I would have thought, here's an innovative idea for Andy. You know anyone less than 25 whatever has to work in the office, or anyone less than 30 has to work in the office. That would have been a great little baby step, and and probably wouldn't have been nearly as confrontation.

David J. Danto: 32:12

Well as we wrap up this conversation, I would definitely want to point out that over the last 5 years that everybody has lived through, especially the 3 of us monitoring this space. This is not the 1st everybody come back to the office announcement that we've dealt with, and it's probably not going to be the last we can talk about a huge series of repeated this time. You have to come back all right. Well, never mind. Well, this time you have to come back. Oh, never mind, we don't do that. You know. We had a situation recently with Dell, where Dell said, if you don't come back to the office. You're going to be skipped over for raises and promotions, and people didn't care. They said, I like my life. Now I don't need raising a promotion. I want to have work the way I've experienced that I can be successful working and have a better family life, so we'll have to go back and visit this category again, you know, in a few months and see what happened to Amazon. My guess is, people will have left. Good people will have left. Culture will be destroyed because the people that are staying that, as I said, are going to resent the company every day that they're there every moment of the commute, every time they have to do something, every blood drive like I mentioned, and and and we don't know if this is the end all be. All this may just be the latest, you know. Line in the sand.

Dave Michels: 33:23

You, you know, I just you. You raise a good point. I just want to touch on. We have seen this a lot over the years and including pre pandemic. And I mean, this happened multiple times, pre pandemic where where they put an end to remote work. Some of those I've actually been supportive of. I was actually supportive of it with Yahoo, because there you had a new CEO that was working really hard to change the culture of the company, and and probably do a layoff at the same time, and, you know, really try to change the direction of the company, and Ibm did it a few years before that. And again, Ibm's been going through a lot of so there are times where I think, ending remote work and getting everyone back in could be beneficial. I didn't detect those circumstances at Amazon based on this number. It seemed a little unexpected, seemed a little surprise. And a lot of resentment. And it's and I think the reasons are more like what we discussed. So I don't want to go through it again. But but the the main point is, I I think there are times where something like this is legitimate and appropriate.

David J. Danto: 34:29

I'll be on record as saying with Yahoo, with with Ibm Google. For a while, Patrick Bichette, when he was with Google, a few others that have said, you know, come back to the office. I think in most cases that can be described as scapegoating, that the company has made bad decisions that they're not doing very well, that the leadership has let them down. And it's very easy for people on the C-suite to say, you know what all this failure is happening because of those terrible people that won't come back into the office and and support our culture. I think in many cases it's a false flag, and and that scapegoating is something that I've lived with. But you know, as we were all pointing out here. we're gonna have to see.

Irwin Lazar: 35:10

Yeah, we saw the State was an Elon musk about a year ago that said, you know, people who work from home aren't really working. So there is still that bias. And and, like you said that tendency to scapegoat people.

David J. Danto: 35:20

Well, Dave Irwin, thank you very much for having this conversation with us. We're obviously going to continue talking about this subject as things go forward. But for today, for talking points. Thanks very much for joining us, and we'll see you on the next one.