Return to office: The writing is on the wall of your cubicle

LATE last year, an editor at The Economist wrote these famous last words in a column: “No one is expecting, or even looking for, a return to five days a week.” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy probably read that and thought, “Challenge accepted!”

From January 2025, Amazon’s corporate employees are to return to a five-day workweek in the office – up from three days a week. The atmosphere has been mutinous ever since the move was announced and last week, things came to a head.

Some 523 Amazon Web Services (AWS) employees issued an open letter decrying the policy, after their division CEO Matt Garman claimed that nine out of 10 employees he had spoken to were “actually quite excited by this change”.

Garman didn’t ask me, but I’ll tell you anyway that it’ll be a cold day in Hades before I return to any sort of full-time-in-office toil. But even I can see the return-to-office (RTO) writing on the wall, all the way from my living room where I lounge in feckless repose.

In this particular struggle, open letters might as well be creative-writing exercises for all the effect they are having. Ask the folks at Starbucks. Workers there protested an RTO move with their own open letter in 2023. But more than a year later, Starbucks’ position has only hardened. Last week, it told workers to comply with the RTO mandate or get the sack.

Amazon is similarly unmoved, despite some surveys showing that almost three-quarters of Amazonians are looking to move elsewhere thanks to the impending five-day week in the office. AWS’ Garman has said that for anyone unwilling to comply, “there are other companies around”.

Unfortunately for proponents of remote work, what Amazon does matters because it signs some 1.5 million full- and part-time pay cheques globally, making it the second-largest private employer in the world.

Even beyond Amazon, companies everywhere have been increasingly pressing for backsides in seats. Goldman Sachs, PwC and Stellantis have prodded their workers back to the office for increasing chunks of the week. The numbers also show that employers are winning this tug of war. By October last year, the number of households in the US with someone working remotely had fallen to 26 per cent from 37 per cent in early-2021.

Advocates on both sides have produced cherry-picked research that supports their case – but it is frankly irrelevant whose data is more robust or convincing. In the microcosm of every individual company, some people can be left alone to produce good work while others have all the self-governance of a toddler. Some jobs can be done solo, others need intense in-person collaboration.

But what matters universally is which side has more leverage. And in an economy where firms are looking to shed people instead of attract them, and artificial intelligence closes in on human functions, it’s cubicle-loving bosses who will call the shots.

In any case, water seeks its own level – let hybrid or remote workers flock to companies that will accommodate them, while office-bound employees bend to the will of firms that will not yield. It will be interesting to compare how these two kinds of companies fare over time – but that’s if you can find enough of the former in existence. My guess is that you won’t.