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So why isn't this an environmental/climate change issue. These corporations that want employees that can work from home to burn fuel and emit CO2 in order to t

So why isn't this an environmental/climate change issue. These corporations that want employees that can work from home to burn fuel and emit CO2 in order to travel to the office unnecessarily should be shamed for their lack of compassion and vision. These same corporations claim to be driving toward carbon neutral while simultaneously pushing for CO2 increase via their employees travel.

cozzyd 3y ago
Amazon offices are typically located in transit-accessible places, aren't they? People choosing to live in places where they need a car to do anything are the "problem" here...
- MissTake 3y ago
  This sounds like “victim” blaming. Amazon, like other big companies, hired people during Covid telling them it was a fully remote job. Now these companies are telling the same employees to now come into the office. Why blame employees here?
  - cozzyd 3y ago
    Did they tell them it was fully remote indefinitely? Sure, I guess if people believed that then that can be unfortunate for them, but if they lived out in the boonies,they most likely they have a huge CO2 footprint anyway unless they never leave their home, making the climate change argument seem slightly disingenuous to me...
    - jedberg 3y ago
      > Did they tell them it was fully remote indefinitely? Yes. I was hired during COVID and the recruiters kept telling me that the job will be remote forever. They also told current employees that they can feel free to move and work remotely and to let them know if they change states for tax reasons. I asked for that in writing and they gave it to me in writing.
      - cozzyd 3y ago
        Well, that's pretty messed up then!
- snarfy 3y ago
  Have you actually taken a bus into Seattle? It's not much of a choice between the $1.5M house near the office and the $350k house twice the size 40 minutes away.
  - TurkishPoptart 3y ago
    There are no houses that cheap 40 minutes from Seattle...
    - zeusk 3y ago
      Port Orchard has some in the 400-500 range, but the ferry commute isn't ideal.
  - cozzyd 3y ago
    I've only been to Seattle a few times (though I did ride the bus downtown from the airport before the airport Link was built). My understanding is that Seattle has a robust suburban commuter bus and ferry network (though admittedly, a lacking commuter rail network...). Here in Chicago, I believe Amazon has offices at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Center_(Chicago) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Center_(Chicago) which is a place where driving makes very little sense.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zeusk 3y ago
  Have you seen a transit map of Seattle? I'm guessing not by that comment.
fullshark 3y ago
Because the Democrats are the party of climate change mitigation and their fantasy is everyone being forced to live in an urban shoebox, renting everything, utterly dependent on the state until they die.
softwaredoug 3y ago
It’s an issue about this for sure. But also affordability, time to commute, rearrange lives, etc and other burdens to go into an office that the C-suite doesn’t contend with. RTO/WFH becomes kind of obvious given a certain distance to the office. If I live 10-20 mins from office, I probably go all the time. If I live 90+ minutes a visit to the office upends my life. Only a small subset of people live close to offices. In part because cities have been poorly designed and housing costs are insane right now.
- 303uru 3y ago
  My company is forcing a one day a week RTO (badge scan requirement). I have been firm with them. My day will not be any longer and travel time is coming out of it. At home I get on at 8am and sign off at 5pm. So on my RTO day I leave home at 8am, travel to the office, scan and take a meeting or two, then head home. I still sign off at 5pm. All told, they lost an hour plus of productivity from me. All around it's so obnoxious. Ya, my CEO doesn't mind RTO because he has grown kids, has a driver, has a home chef, etc...
  - ath3nd 3y ago
    I always find it fascinating the amount of large scale time waste corps are willing to commit themselves to just to prove to themselves that they are the ones running the show. Ammoral out of touch douches like this deserve all their workers to quit and show them they are nothing without us making them all their money.
vitaflo 3y ago
This is really what people should be hammering home. These companies are so worried about not appearing carbon neutral or sustainable that they will go to great lengths to prove they are whenever they can. Hitting them over the head with this is the only way you’ll be able to embarrass them enough to affect change.
lnxg33k1 3y ago
Its not a climate change issue, I have no data to back it up but I know its not (cit)
denimnerd42 3y ago
My team is fully distributed across the globe yet they are tracking my badge swipes to an office an hour away where no one else works. The environmental impact of this just drives me nuts. Not to mention the danger to my personal well being and the cost. They don't know how to track performance here either so I know they aren't making data based decisions.
- snarfy 3y ago
  I recall hearing 'your odds of dying in a car wreck are 1 in 18'. I'm not sure what the injured or disabled number is, but it can't be good.
- zamalek 3y ago
  And you're tolerating an employer who treats you like a child, why? There are so many other employers who will treat you like the adult that you are.
  - denimnerd42 3y ago
    They've just started this enforcement. Career change takes time :)
  - mdgrech23 3y ago
    the market is really tightening up. people love to say if you can't find a job it's b/c you're not skilled blah blah but if your making good money it may be hard to find another job at that income level.
    - zamalek 3y ago
      If you're reasonably polyglot then finding a well-paying job isn't too hard - the market is already swinging back towards favoring talent and open positions are climbing (at least according to an interview I listened to the other day [1]). Of course, if you're coming from the likes of Amazon then I'd be inclined to agree: 400k+ is a rarity - but you'd probably be able to pull it off by migrating to another MOFAANG. Edit: in addition, if you are 400k+ you'd probably enjoy the privilege of skipping the interview and even having a position opened for you. [1]: https://rustacean-station.org/episode/cedric-sellmann/ https://rustacean-station.org/episode/cedric-sellmann/
seiferteric 3y ago
Not to mention the lost time of everyone commuting. There is likely hundreds of human lives worth of time wasted every day due to commuting, then there are the actual lives lost in traffic accidents... driving is one of the most dangerous things we do.
Agent766 3y ago
Because they don't actually care. They just want butts in seats so they can get tax incentives. Attrition is a bonus to lower employee costs.
jedberg 3y ago
I asked this question. They told me RTO is carbon neutral. They had complicated models but the gist of it was that the efficiency of heating and cooling one office is less carbon than everyone at home doing it for themselves and that people at the office are forced to run errands more efficiently resulting in an equal number of car trips. They weren’t interested in counter arguments about how with the other people at home the house has to be heated/cooled anyway.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I wonder if their numbers factor in the hundreds of SUVs idling for hours as they creep through rush hour traffic…
  - josefritz 3y ago
    I think their carbon calculations also assume that nobody closes those now nearly empty offices. If they do... then there is no way for it to be carbon neutral. RTO is the clear winner.
ath3nd 3y ago
I hate to point out the obvious, but expecting vision and compassion from the guys who make their workers pee in a bottle and work their factory workers to death is like expecting COP28 being hosted by oil sultans to focus on actual climate change policies. They want you in the office, overworked, overcommuted, no time to think for yourself. They want you tired and in a constant loop. How dare we ask our corporate overlords for their reasons and for data? We are supposed to postpone having a life, free time, friends, family, and spend hours of our days traveling in air polluting metal containers to an office to do work that we can easily do from home. If that demoralizes you, you aren't hustling enough. Corporations brought to you the great Pacific Garbage Belt, global warming, alcohol and smoking marketing, the opioid crisis, the cost of living crisis, at least one or two wars, and possibly the end of mankind. We should not be astonished by these greedy amoral husks of humans' lack of vision and compassion. We should hold them accountable for their evil and bring them to down their knees and remind them that without workers, they are nothing.
Libcat99 3y ago
A tax credit based on work from home days per employee would do more for emissions reduction than many other more expensive options.
patrickk 3y ago
Because claiming to care about climate change is greenwashing bullshit that sounds good in PR statements and self important fart smelling events that CEOs attend, but in the end is a box-ticking exercise. No one measures the environmental impact of unnecessarily forcing office workers to the office, the press doesn’t ask corporate leaders about their hypocrisy, so leaders just force workers back the consequences be damned.
xnx 3y ago
Are employees who work remote taking more vacations and having a higher impact because of air travel? As long as everyone is getting paid just as much, it seems like the environmental impact would be the same.
RestlessMind 3y ago
Remote work necessitates bigger houses by needing a separate room for home office. People also tend to gravitate to suburbs, exurbs or rural areas and buy bigger homes. So I am not really sure how the equation works - you gain the carbon saved in commute, but you lose the carbon due to the higher footprint of larger homes. Would love to see a scientific study here.

cozzyd 3y ago

Amazon offices are typically located in transit-accessible places, aren't they? People choosing to live in places where they need a car to do anything are the "problem" here...

MissTake 3y ago
This sounds like “victim” blaming. Amazon, like other big companies, hired people during Covid telling them it was a fully remote job. Now these companies are telling the same employees to now come into the office. Why blame employees here?
- cozzyd 3y ago
  Did they tell them it was fully remote indefinitely? Sure, I guess if people believed that then that can be unfortunate for them, but if they lived out in the boonies,they most likely they have a huge CO2 footprint anyway unless they never leave their home, making the climate change argument seem slightly disingenuous to me...
  - jedberg 3y ago
    > Did they tell them it was fully remote indefinitely? Yes. I was hired during COVID and the recruiters kept telling me that the job will be remote forever. They also told current employees that they can feel free to move and work remotely and to let them know if they change states for tax reasons. I asked for that in writing and they gave it to me in writing.
    - cozzyd 3y ago
      Well, that's pretty messed up then!
snarfy 3y ago
Have you actually taken a bus into Seattle? It's not much of a choice between the $1.5M house near the office and the $350k house twice the size 40 minutes away.
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  There are no houses that cheap 40 minutes from Seattle...
  - zeusk 3y ago
    Port Orchard has some in the 400-500 range, but the ferry commute isn't ideal.
- cozzyd 3y ago
  I've only been to Seattle a few times (though I did ride the bus downtown from the airport before the airport Link was built). My understanding is that Seattle has a robust suburban commuter bus and ferry network (though admittedly, a lacking commuter rail network...). Here in Chicago, I believe Amazon has offices at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Center_(Chicago) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Center_(Chicago) which is a place where driving makes very little sense.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zeusk 3y ago
Have you seen a transit map of Seattle? I'm guessing not by that comment.

fullshark 3y ago

Because the Democrats are the party of climate change mitigation and their fantasy is everyone being forced to live in an urban shoebox, renting everything, utterly dependent on the state until they die.

softwaredoug 3y ago

It’s an issue about this for sure. But also affordability, time to commute, rearrange lives, etc and other burdens to go into an office that the C-suite doesn’t contend with. RTO/WFH becomes kind of obvious given a certain distance to the office. If I live 10-20 mins from office, I probably go all the time. If I live 90+ minutes a visit to the office upends my life. Only a small subset of people live close to offices. In part because cities have been poorly designed and housing costs are insane right now.

303uru 3y ago
My company is forcing a one day a week RTO (badge scan requirement). I have been firm with them. My day will not be any longer and travel time is coming out of it. At home I get on at 8am and sign off at 5pm. So on my RTO day I leave home at 8am, travel to the office, scan and take a meeting or two, then head home. I still sign off at 5pm. All told, they lost an hour plus of productivity from me. All around it's so obnoxious. Ya, my CEO doesn't mind RTO because he has grown kids, has a driver, has a home chef, etc...
- ath3nd 3y ago
  I always find it fascinating the amount of large scale time waste corps are willing to commit themselves to just to prove to themselves that they are the ones running the show. Ammoral out of touch douches like this deserve all their workers to quit and show them they are nothing without us making them all their money.

vitaflo 3y ago

This is really what people should be hammering home. These companies are so worried about not appearing carbon neutral or sustainable that they will go to great lengths to prove they are whenever they can. Hitting them over the head with this is the only way you’ll be able to embarrass them enough to affect change.

lnxg33k1 3y ago

Its not a climate change issue, I have no data to back it up but I know its not (cit)

denimnerd42 3y ago

My team is fully distributed across the globe yet they are tracking my badge swipes to an office an hour away where no one else works. The environmental impact of this just drives me nuts. Not to mention the danger to my personal well being and the cost. They don't know how to track performance here either so I know they aren't making data based decisions.

snarfy 3y ago
I recall hearing 'your odds of dying in a car wreck are 1 in 18'. I'm not sure what the injured or disabled number is, but it can't be good.
zamalek 3y ago
And you're tolerating an employer who treats you like a child, why? There are so many other employers who will treat you like the adult that you are.
- denimnerd42 3y ago
  They've just started this enforcement. Career change takes time :)
- mdgrech23 3y ago
  the market is really tightening up. people love to say if you can't find a job it's b/c you're not skilled blah blah but if your making good money it may be hard to find another job at that income level.
  - zamalek 3y ago
    If you're reasonably polyglot then finding a well-paying job isn't too hard - the market is already swinging back towards favoring talent and open positions are climbing (at least according to an interview I listened to the other day [1]). Of course, if you're coming from the likes of Amazon then I'd be inclined to agree: 400k+ is a rarity - but you'd probably be able to pull it off by migrating to another MOFAANG. Edit: in addition, if you are 400k+ you'd probably enjoy the privilege of skipping the interview and even having a position opened for you. [1]: https://rustacean-station.org/episode/cedric-sellmann/ https://rustacean-station.org/episode/cedric-sellmann/

seiferteric 3y ago

Not to mention the lost time of everyone commuting. There is likely hundreds of human lives worth of time wasted every day due to commuting, then there are the actual lives lost in traffic accidents... driving is one of the most dangerous things we do.

Agent766 3y ago

Because they don't actually care. They just want butts in seats so they can get tax incentives. Attrition is a bonus to lower employee costs.

jedberg 3y ago

I asked this question. They told me RTO is carbon neutral. They had complicated models but the gist of it was that the efficiency of heating and cooling one office is less carbon than everyone at home doing it for themselves and that people at the office are forced to run errands more efficiently resulting in an equal number of car trips. They weren’t interested in counter arguments about how with the other people at home the house has to be heated/cooled anyway.

jwells89 3y ago
I wonder if their numbers factor in the hundreds of SUVs idling for hours as they creep through rush hour traffic…
- josefritz 3y ago
  I think their carbon calculations also assume that nobody closes those now nearly empty offices. If they do... then there is no way for it to be carbon neutral. RTO is the clear winner.

ath3nd 3y ago

I hate to point out the obvious, but expecting vision and compassion from the guys who make their workers pee in a bottle and work their factory workers to death is like expecting COP28 being hosted by oil sultans to focus on actual climate change policies. They want you in the office, overworked, overcommuted, no time to think for yourself. They want you tired and in a constant loop. How dare we ask our corporate overlords for their reasons and for data? We are supposed to postpone having a life, free time, friends, family, and spend hours of our days traveling in air polluting metal containers to an office to do work that we can easily do from home. If that demoralizes you, you aren't hustling enough. Corporations brought to you the great Pacific Garbage Belt, global warming, alcohol and smoking marketing, the opioid crisis, the cost of living crisis, at least one or two wars, and possibly the end of mankind. We should not be astonished by these greedy amoral husks of humans' lack of vision and compassion. We should hold them accountable for their evil and bring them to down their knees and remind them that without workers, they are nothing.

Libcat99 3y ago

A tax credit based on work from home days per employee would do more for emissions reduction than many other more expensive options.

patrickk 3y ago

Because claiming to care about climate change is greenwashing bullshit that sounds good in PR statements and self important fart smelling events that CEOs attend, but in the end is a box-ticking exercise. No one measures the environmental impact of unnecessarily forcing office workers to the office, the press doesn’t ask corporate leaders about their hypocrisy, so leaders just force workers back the consequences be damned.

xnx 3y ago

Are employees who work remote taking more vacations and having a higher impact because of air travel? As long as everyone is getting paid just as much, it seems like the environmental impact would be the same.

RestlessMind 3y ago

Remote work necessitates bigger houses by needing a separate room for home office. People also tend to gravitate to suburbs, exurbs or rural areas and buy bigger homes. So I am not really sure how the equation works - you gain the carbon saved in commute, but you lose the carbon due to the higher footprint of larger homes. Would love to see a scientific study here.