With Amazon's return to office (RTO) mandate in the news, Bryan and Adam revisit the topic (it's been 2.5 years since last time!). Are in-office epiphanies real or is RTO fueled by nostalgia, fear... and finance? Stay tuned / we apologize for the exposition on in-office games.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included friend of the pod, Matt Amdur, and Chris.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Message from CEO Andy Jassy: Strengthening our culture and teamsOxF: The Future of WorkAmazon leadership principlesNathanael's blog: Building Big Systems with Remote Hardware TeamsIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!
Anyone can get it. Just put your kid in school and see if he brings one home.
I don't know how to tell you, but whatever illness has afflicted you has given you enormous profit. I just think you sound both, I mean, obviously serious, but also like mellow and chill. That's the whiskey. That part's the whiskey.
I feel like I...
I, I will do whatever you tell me to do. Basically. I feel that you could. Yeah, no, really.
This is your opportunity.
I will, whatever it is about this voice is just going, this is good. I mean, you said really good. You know what I want? Let's end on time.
There are things I cannot do for you. Do you know how long our last episode on this topic was?
I do know because I listened to it over the weekend and I was also shocked. It was an hour and 57 minutes or whatever it was. And I had the same reaction. I was like, Jesus. Did you really listen to this? So this is the future of work that we did like two and a half years ago.
Yeah, and it should be said, we're talking about remote work. So at the time, we are now in the future. Oh, you've given it away now. I mean, this feels like at the top already? I mean, are we going to just write into it? A lot of context.
Like, look, I feel also having re-listened to that, anyone that complains about our audio or the fact that we don't actually explain what we're talking about should go listen to Oxide and Friends from years past. Where the audio was worse, and I don't feel we got to the topic any sooner.
Yeah, I mean, or even better, don't, I wouldn't do that. Don't do that. You don't need to do that. I thought it was good, actually. I thought it was a good discussion. I liked it. It was good. Our audio was atrocious. It was Twitter spaces. It was Twitter spaces, and it would have been about half an hour shorter if we weren't discussing the various audio problems we were also experiencing.
We were discussing a lot of audio problems.
Yeah, that was coming up a lot. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was good. I, you know, there was something I was wondering if you heard as well. So, uh, Lucas known, your friend, Lucas, exactly. Um, Lucas described being at Apple and using, I believe, WebEx for all communications. It's either WebEx or a meeting. Whatever it was, those are kind of in the same bucket in my brain. I believe it was WebEx.
And he described a feature in WebEx where one of these new AI features where it would identify a hand gesture and then emit an emoji. And I'm like, is this where Apple got this, I think, regrettable idea? Yeah. Is the origin of this feature in some other species in WebEx?
Does this cross the species boundary into your MacBook? Maybe. I mean, I think we all went through this experience, and maybe we still are, of our coworkers doing some upgrade and then making some hand gesture and be like, what is going on? Where is that coming from? Yeah.
I don't know, anyone who is regretting the fact that we gave the topic at the top is now feeling much more comfortable that we're so far into the ditch on something completely unrelated.
But the problem with that feature, and so the feature, for those who are unaware, the feature is that if you hold a gesture, the Mac will, at seemingly a very deep level, seemingly like in the firmware for the camera, it is not happening at the level of the Google Meet that you're in. you, if you hold the gesture, you will, an emoji will explode. And this makes sense.
I think for thumbs up, um, like thumbs up, it makes sense. And they just needed to stop at thumbs up. Then you'd be like, you know what? Thumbs up is the one that people want. That's the one that people make sense. People hold the thumbs up when they hold the thumbs up next to their face. They mean thumbs up.
It's kind of a dumb feature, but the one that, that we, they, they wanted to go further and they did other things, um, And this is where they just the mistakes compounded because they got something that is that will emit. I believe if you hold your fingers up like jazz hands, it will do balloons.
yeah there's a there's a whole litany of them double thumbs up like gives you some uh some like light show or no pardon me that's if you do like double um i tell my son it's double quiet coyote because like that's the hand signal he knows but like double kind of like rock on double quiet coyote crisscross applesauce yeah exactly yeah
It does. And I would love to see, remember when Game of Thrones had that, the Red Wedding episode of Game of Thrones, and there was a bit of a meme where people would video other people watching this particular episode that had this huge twist in it.
And wouldn't you watch a collection of people, of organizations trying to figure out what the fuck just happened with the balloons that just went off on someone's camera?
I could watch hours of that. The reaction of someone accidentally responding with balloons and then... I mean, it's kind of mortifying, right? Like in a business setting. It's also like, Steve, what did you just do?
It's like, I didn't do anything. It's like, that's not true. We all saw it. Balloons just exploded on you. So it's like you definitely did something. There's victim blaming, gaslighting. I mean, it's the works. Yeah. It was... Uh, so I wondered if anyway, they may have gotten that from fried. So they, they could have gotten that from WebEx is what I'm trying to say.
Where that oxide and friends, there's a clue in an early oxide episode about the Wuhan bat for this feature being actually being, uh, from WebEx. So that's the first thing I got to say. The second thing I got to say is I just want to go back as long as we are, as long as we are, where the hell are we? Our episode from last week. First of all, have there been any repercussions for you?
Have there been any legal repercussions?
Has anyone reached out to you? Have you gotten any? That's a great question. I was like, wait, hold on. It wasn't the RFD one. Oh, it's like, no, the one where I confessed about my
uh half truth during a deposition that's right uh no what i also love about that episode that i i that i would like someone to play for me on my deathbed is when you're like we're we're not going to talk about we're not we don't feel comfortable this is what i feel comfortable talking about and i'm like i think we feel a lot more comfortable than that you're like i don't think we do i don't know no don't we do not feel comfortable like yes yes now is the time
Yeah, you just closed your eyes, put my hand on the wheel, and stepped on the accelerator, and off the cliff we went. I did. I did.
I did. And then I really, I feel like I did not adequately, I mean, I really was a co-conspirator in this.
I just want to make that clear. No, for sure. You're like, wow, Adam, I loved reading the thing you wrote. The thing I wrote. The thing I wrote.
Listen, pal, as I recall, you redlined all over the thing I wrote. We had to workshop it for three and a half hours.
Yeah. Three and a half hours, I'll never get back, right?
Exactly. Blog entry of Theseus pranking a CTO for his... self-praising autobiography. But so I did feel like there was one detail that I, that just was kind of occurring to me later as I was reading the blog entries that I just, I think it is worth. So just to catch people from last week, there was a Dave hits wrote this self-praising autobiography. We created, and we, there we are.
We created, we created a, a, a fake fan blog. Wondering if it would thinking that this might get his attention and he, boy, he just chomped down on it. The one thing I did really love is when you got the kind of the letter from the email from him, right? Telling you like, look, the lawyers have some issues with this. Yeah. And you kept going.
making the change that he requested and then making some other change as well that would be in the opposite direction. But you kept not following his directions precisely and forcing him to come back and be like, okay, thank you for taking down the NetApp logo there, but you've put the NetApp logo now. Now you're using it in three other places that you're not allowed to use it.
It was really great is what I got to say. It was delightful. It was a masterstroke. Nonstop Lawyers is the blog entry that describes your ultimate exasperation because it feels like whatever you do, the lawyers are telling you to do something different when in reality, your alter ego was deliberately doing things incorrectly. It was really, anyway, chef's kiss. Good stuff.
That's not why we're here. So we are here, and so people complain, people who do complain about us giving insufficient context may complain this time that we give too much context. I'm just going to warn you in advance, because this is a note that Andy Jassy sent last week on a return to the office mandate for Amazon.
So Amazon, and I think this happened actually maybe just before we did our episode last time, two and a half years ago, or around the same time, had a hybrid return to the office mandate. You'd return to the office for three days a week. Which, I mean, feels, I don't know. I mean, what was your take on that at the time?
I think it's you are someone who, I mean, this is probably true for me as well, like really missed that in-person collaboration that we had in an office.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think in part this podcast was like an accidental consequence of that missing socialization. I think you are absolutely right.
I think that the path that this podcast took is very much a consequence of that. And we talked about that earlier, that the thing that when people talk about what you have in the office that's so special, one of the things is junior engineers being able to get lunch with senior engineers. And for us, that was getting dinner on Monday nights.
And we've talked about this, that this podcast kind of serves that purpose, we think, or gets to some of that, of tapping into wisdom and letting people kind of... gathering at the metaphorical bar, if you will, where the bar only serves Diet Cokes, as it turns out. So no, I think it's a very good point that this podcast is very much a consequence of that.
So yes, so we, so mixed feelings maybe two and a half years ago. And I think it was interesting to re-listen to that conversation where, because Lucas in particular was like, all right, hey, we seem to be kind of in praise of remote work. Can we kind of talk about some of the things we have lost here? Some of the things that we only get from in-person collaboration.
I actually want to come back to that because I think there's a lot of things we can talk about there. But this note, so Amazon had this kind of hybrid model three days a week. You had to be in an office, which is where this thing begins to kind of teeter a little bit. It's not like the office because Amazon's not in one office anymore. I mean, do you know folks at Amazon currently?
Or I should say operating under symbol or return to the office mandates. I'll tell you that you and I know someone in common, a technologist in common who is at Amazon currently. And his frustration with this is my team is not co-located with me at all. So I've got to drive for an hour and a half in pretty thick traffic to get into an office in which my team is not located. And I got to spend...
And then I'm like just doing the thing I would be doing at home.
I feel like that is the story. Like I think my greatest point of like socialization with other adults is like kids' birthday parties. Okay, that's just the phase of life I'm in. But like that is like a story at everybody's like, you know, everyone has that story, right? Everyone has the story of like, yeah, I have to go to work.
And it's kind of dumb because when I'm home, I'm on Zoom calls with these folks. And when I'm at work, I'm on noisier Zoom calls with these folks in much less convenient conditions and so forth. And I've wasted or spent, depending, the time to get there. So I think everyone's, whether it's Amazon or kind of you name it,
Everyone feels that kind of like Sisyphean, like I've got this, I'm in the office, the boulders at the top of the hill. Now I'm on a Zoom call with a person who's at a different office. Thanks very much.
and I had to endure a long commute and like, I'm not going to be able to be there in time for my kid's soccer game this afternoon or this evening as a result. I mean, it just feels like it. And I think people are willing to accept certainly. I mean, I think you and I are both willing to accept it. Yes. There's a, a chemistry, something you can have.
happen when you are in person that you don't necessarily get otherwise. I've been trying to replay my own career, though, about the times when there's truly been that spark in a conference room at a whiteboard with dry erase markers. That's not the marker game. Perhaps a subject of its own.
The market game was great. Did you play the market game much? Oh, of course. Like, over the light. I mean, we should do an episode on, like, in-office games. I want a call-in show where people do their best to describe their in-office games.
And people don't realize that we... Because we are such over-sharers. People think there is nothing about... us or Oxide ourselves that we haven't shared. But in fact, perhaps our greatest innovation has been Unshared, an office game that is, well, some of us acknowledge.
I mean, Unshared insofar as like, what, there's only one long wiki in the public? Oh, you mean on this podcast? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure we'll have a fishpong. At this point, fish pong will be an Olympic sport.
I may not live to see it.
There we go. I look forward to talking about Z-ball. I'm just going to leave that as a teaser.
I'm so glad you said that. I really want to talk about Z-ball right now. I know it's off-topic, but we can get in and out of Z-ball pretty quickly, I feel. Sure. I don't know. Go for it. Get us in there. Okay, so this is like, okay, this is an actual concrete in-office innovation. You're only going to get this one in the office because it requires everyone to physically be in the same room.
So I, and actually, you know, I think, I believe that this glass is still in my house. I became very concerned. No, I became very concerned because I'm like, this is a historical artifact. And like one of the kids is going to like break it. I have a Solaris Zones glass. I don't know how many there are.
And I, and this glass was just drifting around the conference room in which we would have the Detroit meeting.
We had a weekly Detroit meeting. I want to say. That's right. That's right. That conference room is now like a graffitied wall in Facebook. I just want to tell you what happened to Nana's estate. Yeah. It got, it got turned into a big mansion. Sorry. Oh,
Oh, my God. Yeah, I know. That cemetery is now a Chili's. It just feels like it's such a sad end for – no, that – you could actually find that spot a little more easily because it's close to a stairway. Yeah. Because it's – only the stairways remained. Oh, I've been there.
I visited that hallowed ground, and it like –
I tried to take a photo of where my office was, and I was ushered out for taking a photo of this confidential... I'm in a Facebook office. There's nothing... Can we just have some respect for this ancient burial ground that I then... I put a spell on that spot, and I'm convinced that... You're haunting it to this day. I am haunting it to this day.
So we had this Solaris zones glass that had drifted ashore in this conference room. And then somehow a ping pong ball enters.
No, not a ping pong ball. It was a foam ball. This is really dating it. Do you remember cars used to have antennas? It's really true. Go on. It was a foam ball. Would you put your phone on top of the antenna? Or is this to get Wi-Fi in the car? Oh, God. Where do I start? Yeah. Let's just say yes.
So your car had an antenna, and it was like one of these little foam balls that you would stick at the end. God, I feel like I'm telling a story about the Kairos.
This doesn't sound, this is a dream. This is an example. It sounds ridiculous. There were wires that you would stick out of your car and there were, there's a foam ball you'd stick on the wire. You're like, God, how long did you wake up? Yeah. This dream has gone on forever. And we had a, cause this was also a giveaway, right?
It was a, it was an open, it was an open Solaris.
It was open Solaris antenna foam ball. Yeah. This sounds like a group hallucination. This just sounds nuts. So that is also in the conference room somehow. This really does sound dreamlike. I don't know what either of these things, but my recollection is that both those things are just kind of like there. And at some point, someone like a Paleolithic people discovering fire.
Someone stared at the ball in their hand, stared at the glass on the table, and attempted to throw the ball in the glass. And Z-Ball was born. Thus, yes. Not to be confused with any other... any other game that is throwing a ball into a hoop. This is Z ball. And okay. So it was what it was one point.
If you were sitting in your chair and you could throw it into the glass in the middle of the table, it was like a rectangle effectively, like a kind of oval, like a shaped table. If you were the short side, that was one point. If you were on the longer side, If you're farther away, then that was two points. And if you were in the corner of the conference room, that was like a four-pointer.
There were a bunch of rules about like suddenly it was like deuces wild.
If your chair was touching the back of the wall, it was worth three points is what I want to say.
There was like some doubling thing, like suddenly the stakes were higher if certain things happened. And the ball would frequently bounce out of this thing. It should be said. That's right.
And Mary was our program manager.
That's right.
Assigned to DTrace for a hot second.
Yeah.
And the only thing I can remember about Mary is her one act as far as I think we're both concerned with respect to DTrace. is she came in, saw us playing Z-ball, with all of us struggling to get the ball into the glass, took the ball, standing up to the furthest corner of the conference room, sank it, and walked out. Drained it. Unbelievable. Yeah. became a legend.
Larry, you are wherever you are, wherever you are, your legend lives on. It was okay. And like, that's the stuff you're not, you, that is an only in the office moment. That is an important, I know it's like, look, that's important. That's part of our, that's part of our fabric. That's part of our, our, our, our oral history that, that, you know, that is, I sort of actually don't want to dismiss it.
Like that stuff is like important, you know?
So, I mean, the length of the walk we took you all on aside, I do feel like there's something deep in human DNA that causes office games to spawn from nothing, right? Everyone has their in-office game that was conjured from the tchotchkes that happened to be left in a conference room.
The tchotchkes from having to throw away the trash from ordering the ping pong table and not having it show up and having to like invent something. It's like there is all of these things have these kind of these origin stories that are that where these quotidian accoutrements of the office become the stuff of legend. I mean, surely every office has this, right? This is not just us.
No, for sure. 100% every office has it.
Meanwhile, every Oxide employee is like, is this their very long walk up to the Oxide return to the office mandate? So... But these are the kinds of things you only get in an office. I do think, and when I kind of replay the history, I've got those moments in the office. I've got the chariot race in the office. Do you remember that each floor had the emergency chariot to evacuate someone?
It was like a stretcher. It was a stretcher with wheels. With one set of wheels. I don't know if it was called a chariot, but please continue. But it's like, obviously, we're going to race these. Like, why would you? Who in their right mind would put this in the hand? It's a total apple of discord. I mean, just right to the fastest. The absolute apple of discord.
The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until you're in your late 20s, folks. And we were at 22, 23, 24. Like, sorry, these things are getting raced 100%. So it's like, okay, yeah, you only get chariot races. You only get Z ball. You only get the market game. You only get fish pong, all these things that require the office for sure.
And the, and you, and then, I mean, the things we talked about, about, you know, a slightly more serious note about the lunchtime conversation and so on. Okay. You get that, those things from the office. But I was trying to remember, like, when have I had like the work product, uh, has like that flash of work product has happened in the office at a whiteboard. And it's not like that.
It hasn't happened. And I could remember a couple of times in my career, but not very many. I mean, there are, it's a small handful and honestly, like they kind of predate chat and they predate the things where those things happen today. Yeah.
So I'm not sure. Like alternative forms where they could have potentially happened.
That's right. I remember you coming up with the simplifying assumption, for example, in Detroit, which I think we talked about in the Detroit episode. That was at a whiteboard. That was the three of us at a whiteboard really struggling. But on other breakthroughs, I remember working with other people, but the breakthrough itself often happened In the shower. It often happened alone in my office.
It happened driving to work. It happened somewhere else, you know?
Yeah. I like that you specified that you were alone in your office, but you didn't specify that for the shower. I just, I'm just going to make note of that. Yeah, listen, I, you know. Listen, I said what I said.
God, you know, we had an apartment once with two shower heads. And fortunately, my wife and I have a shared disposition on this one, which is like, uh-uh, no, no, no, no. Shower, solo activity.
Sorry.
There we go. Sorry, you took us there. So I think that the idea that something special happens that is technical, that creates artifact, I don't know. I really struggle. I feel like for every example I can come up with where that's happened, I feel I can come up with dozens where that's not the way it happened.
And it didn't require in-person collaboration. I think there's this romantic idea we have of cross-pollination, too, where it's maybe not you struggling to solve a problem at a whiteboard that couldn't have been solved elsewhere, but rather it's the lunchtime conversation or
You walk and get in coffee, or you're doing a drive-by and you overhear something, and that's what spawns this moment of inspiration. I even struggle more to come up with those kinds of examples where
Yeah, I feel it's like most of those examples are like Z-ball and like chariot racing. Like, you know what? We should race these chariots. These things have wheels and we should race them. Like, I feel like that is like, that's the conversation that happened coming back from coffee. Like, why haven't we thought of this before? Like, absolutely.
Let's wait until this place clears out and it's on. We're racing these things. I do like this idea of like, instead of fighting return to office mandates, people should instead say, we should return to office and get back to the days of Z-ball and chariot racing. as sort of like a way to undermine the return to office mandate. Like, no, we're on the same page.
Let's get in the office and get racing.
I too believe we should be playing the marker game with my brothers and sisters. We should be playing marriage should return as... the return of the Z ball queen. Uh, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And like, I think that, but that's part of the problem with these RTO mandates is that's not, does not seem to be the angle like at all. And, uh,
the i mean i think you could make i think you could make a plausible case for that being the angle but did you read this thing from jazzy that i you know i only read reactions i didn't read his his whatever he had written all right good we're really going to read the tweet We're going to read the tweet.
And we're like, of course, anyone listening to this in the distant future is like looking at their watch being like 25 minutes in like slow clap. And I'm finally getting context. It's like you literally talked about a two headed shower and chariot racing before you got to the top. Well, yes, here we are. You're welcome.
Well, so first of all, it's like the subject is strengthening our culture and teams. And, man, if that doesn't get every – I mean, that's got to get you on high alert when you get a CEO message about strengthening our culture and teams. And so I'm not going to read the whole thing. Although, actually, it is kind of –
worthwhile so it's like hey team maybe we'll revolve hey team i wanted to send a note on a couple of changes we're making to further strengthen our culture and teams immediately anyone is like who are we laying off like can we just like get like can we please get to it like i like there's clearly something radical that is going to be in this email and it's like okay so how am i going to find first for perspective i feel good about the progress we're making together all right a bunch of like blather about progress you're like okay next paragraph that's not it
Next paragraph. When I think about my time at Amazon, I never imagined I'd be at the company for 27 years. My plan, which my wife and I agreed to on a bar napkin in 1997, was to be here for a few years and move back to New York City. Strike. Do not need that. Why is this here? Redline. I mean, I just feel like... So save it for the podcast.
You want to talk about your two-headed shower, do it in the podcast. Don't do it here. Also, you're talking about having been in the company for 27 years. That is a really, really, really long time. I think it's like... I was trying to think to myself, it's like, wow, that is like someone... I showed up at Sun in 1996.
This is like getting a message from an executive talking about how they've been at the company since 1969. And that is, I mean, the company didn't exist in 19, there were very few Silicon Valley companies that existed in 1969. Like at that time, it would be like,
intel yeah that's kind of it you know and to think like that is a very very long time and like maybe you maybe that's something that you should maybe you should look inward on this one that's an extremely long time and like do you want and so okay so you know
bar napkin also like the agreement on the bar napkin isn't that weird why do you think that's true first of all did you really write that down like show me the bar napkin you wrote down an agreement on a bar napkin right have you ever written an agreement on a bar napkin like that seems that's a very transactional relationship to have with your spouse it's weird that's right is the bartender also a notary like what what is this
It's like, hey, pal, I need you to witness this. Jesus, are you guys getting divorced? What's going on? No, no, no. It's a prenup? We don't do prenups on napkins anymore after the litigation. Oh, okay. All right. This is an agreement about you. A job? What is going on? I mean, are there clauses spelled out? Anyway, I've got a lot.
No, sure. Whatever. Get out your IDs. I need your thumbprint.
And, you know, I guess there's something wrong. He points out that he started as a level five, which I get it. It's like super meaningful for if you're at Amazon. To me, it sounds like you're talking about, I don't know, like a video game or something. It sounds like you're talking about...
are your brothers or something i don't know anyway started out as a level five right yeah exactly i started out as a mage um as um and uh okay fine so um our culture is unique and it's been one of the most critical parts of our success in the first 29 years okay jesus i get to it there's obviously a big announcement but keeping your culture strong is not a birthright you have to work at it all the time when you consider the breadth of your business their associated growth rates the
innovation required across each of them and the number of people we've hired in the last six to eight years to pursue these endeavors it's pretty unusual and will stretch even the strongest of cultures this is where you know this is not written by gpt because gpt would write up would not give you any of this blather this is just kind of like all right this is where are we going
Strengthening our culture remains a top priority for the S-team. Do you know what the S-team is? That's clearly like, I don't know, supervisor team, studly team. I don't know what the S-team is. Do you know what the S-team is? I don't know. I think about it all the time. I think about strengthening culture all the time. We want to operate like the world's largest startup.
That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, which they do. I mean, I think customer focus is great at Amazon. Strong urgency for big opportunities. It's a race. High ownership. Fast decision-making. Scrappiness and frugality. Deeply connected collaboration.
You need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems and a shared commitment to each other. And you're like, okay, where is this going? Two areas that I've been thinking about in the last several months are, one, do we have the right organizational structure to drive the level of ownership and speed we desire? You're like, okay, it's a reorg male. And two,
Are we set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other in our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers in the business that we can? We think we can do better on both. Okay. On the first topic, you're like, okay, the reorg. This is the reorg. We've always thought to hire very smart, high judgment, inventive, delivery focused, and missionary teammates.
What do you feel about that sentence? This is another one where it's like, he doesn't write this one. No, for sure. I just think like, it just high judgment as an adjective. I don't think that that's, I don't think you can just do that actually. And missionary as an adjective. I don't know. It's isn't missionary a noun.
I don't know. I think I'm, I'm, I'm already like, so skimming over the part of like, just what, what is happening? Where are we going?
Yeah. Do I work here or not? I need to go look for a job if I don't work here anymore. Can we just get here? We've always wanted the people doing the actual detailed work to have high ownership. I like that. As we have grown our teams as quickly and substantially as we have the last many years, we have understandably added a lot of managers.
In that process, we have also added more layers than we had before. It's created artifacts we'd like to change, e.g.
pre-meetings for the pre-meetings for the decision meetings, a longer line of managers feeling like they need to review a topic before it moves forward, owners of initiatives feeling less like they would make recommendations because the decision we made elsewhere, emails that go on and on and on and on and on. Okay, I may have added that last bit. I mean, it's like...
Okay, you realize, I mean, there's an irony here, right? I mean, there's an irony here. This is not. Most decisions we make are two-way doors, and such we want more of our teammates feeling like they can move fast without unnecessary processes, meetings, mechanisms, and layers that create overhead and waste valuable time.
You're like, meanwhile, I've got the stopwatch on how much of my own valuable time I've spent reading this, as do you, dear listener, have the stopwatch down and be like, you started reading this thing like seven minutes ago. Where are we going? I want a lot less context for all future episodes. Thank you very little.
So we're asking each S-team organization to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025. Adam, given our discussion last week, is that a founder mode sentence or a manager mode sentence?
Oh, clear founder mode, right? Getting rid of managers? Well, I guess there are two ways to improve any kind of ratio, right? Improve the numerator and improve the denominator.
Okay, so I feel we could have a great Lincoln-Douglas debate about whether this is founder mode or manager mode. Because you're right. I mean, eliminating the managers, I immediately think founder mode. But it's also, you're not actually eliminating the managers. You're only increasing the ratio of contributors to managers by at least 15%. By the way, I can hire more.
I can actually, if I go hire more contributors, I get more recs. And it's 50% by the end of Q1 2025. It's not exactly tomorrow.
Got it. You're creating potentially some perverse incentives in empire building to encourage the manager mode you've already embraced. Exactly.
I feel like we've got a founder mode, manager mode duality in this sentence. And I feel that it's kind of in the eye of the beholder. I think it's kind of intended as founder mode, but I think it'll be read as manager mode. I think managers will be like, got it. I get 15% more heads than I get to go higher against.
I mean, it would be like the most founder mode end to this email would be, I myself have terminated 15% of my reports.
But I'm not going to tell you which 15%. That's right. I will save that for a future email. Were you at Sun when McNeely did his Rule of 11?
That was already in place. Yeah. I mean, that was like a tenet of management by the time I got to Sun, I believe.
Yeah. So he decided that, I mean, again, this is like in an active founder mode, had realized that there were a lot, there were, and this was definitely true of the company where you'd have, you know, and this is true whenever you get,
You know, blossoming middle management, and then you get some reorgs, and then you end up with like, oh, wait a minute, this VP has got two directors reporting to them. Each director has got three managers reporting to them. Each of the managers only has one individual contributor. Like this is an entire organization with like 20 people.
With like one person doing the work.
With one person doing the work. And so McNeely instituted this rule, the rule of 11, that everybody had to have 11 reports. And I remember it was like, you know, you're an engineer. You're like, all right. So I'm like, yeah, for sure. Like, yeah.
yeah let's go take a machete to some of the the middle management undergrowth and yeah that makes sense it was never enforced and mcneely to his credit enforced it for himself but then didn't actually put the and then his you know the folks that worked for him didn't do it it just it just wasn't done and there were no so we ended up with the rule of 11 was not enforced but what you're describing is also a sun pathology which is like oh for sure very little was enforced right like uh
I think we're strong on leadership and a little bit light on follow-through. Very light on follow-through.
Yes, organizational mechanics, not strength. Absolutely not strength. And you had this kind of middle management class that was kind of looking after itself. So we have this sentence that has this duality to it. I mean, the next sentence maybe clarifies it a little bit. Having fewer managers remove layers and flatten organizations more than they are today
If we do this work well, it will increase our teammates' ability to move fast, clarify, and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers and the business, decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organization's ability to make customer lives better and easier every day. It's like, how about that sentence?
I have 15% fewer words in it, pal. It's a bit of a monster. we will do this thoughtfully and our PXT team will work closely with our leaders to evolve our organizations to accomplish these goals in the next few months. It's like, okay. I happen to be able to ask, how do I get on our PXT team? Oh, I've listened. If I told you that, then what would be the point of the PXT team?
If everyone could figure out how to get on the PXT team. Yeah, I've got no idea. Yeah, exactly. The PXT team is... Clearly, you've now... Any manager has now stopped reading the rest of this email and is now jockeying for the PXT team. That's right. Who do I know on the PXT team? What favors do they owe me? What favors do they owe me?
By the way, parenthetical, by the way, I've created a bureaucracy mailbox for any examples any of you see where we might have bureaucracy or unnecessary process that's crept in and we can root out. To be clear, companies need process to run effectively, and process does not equal bureaucracy, but unnecessary and excessive process or rules should be called out and extinguished.
I will read these emails and action them accordingly. Okay. A little bureaucracy suggestion box. I don't know what to think about that. I mean, it feels like that's whatever.
To address the second issue of being better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers in the business, we've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID. Hmm.
When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant. I've previously explained these benefits in this February 2023 post. I guess this was after we were recorded by quite some margin. But in summary, we've observed that it's easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture.
Collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective. Teaching and learning from one another are more seamless, and teams tend to be better connected to one another. Also, there's many more chariot races, Z-Ball, and marker game.
What I appreciate is he is putting his arm around us, walking us right up to the edge of the cliff. which we think he's going to push us off. And then he's like, actually, could you just come to the office more? Like, Oh, thank you. You're not pushing me off the cliff. It's like, no, I'm not pushing you off the cliff. No, it's not like that at all.
When you're done with this, you're going to want to jump off the cliff. That's the, that's the kind of, so if anything, the last 15 months we've been back at the office, at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits. And I feel that like, this is the bit that I feel the, I mean, this is kind of just like double talk about the benefit of being in an office.
And I, I feel that like for those people that have been commuting to be on zoom calls with people that are in other far flung offices, this is not going to resonate. This is going to feel like how, wait a minute. No, if anything, the last 15 months has shown how stupid this thing is. And that the, you know, the fact that they've been taking attendance and
Um, and in particular, so your manager will get a report of like when you badge in and there's something called coffee badging. I am led to understand where you, you go to badge in, you get a cup of coffee and then you split. Um, and they want to, they want to crack down on coffee badging. You're just like, oh man, this is not taking attendance.
This is not, that's not what things were prior to COVID. Prior to COVID, you were not taking attendance.
No, I mean, you figure like the folks for whom going to the office three days a week was great. They're maybe going four or five days a week. Like if you're actually seeing that benefit, you know, and so much of it comes down to trust.
Like if you trust your folks are doing the right thing for themselves and for the team and for the product and for their teammates and so forth, they're doing what they need to do. They're going in four or five days a week, whatever.
But for the folks who are going in three days a week to sit on Zoom calls, for the other folks who are in three days a week in some other location, it just sounds crazy.
Well, and this is, I think you've hit on something that's really big and important here, which is just the breakdown of trust here. And I mean, this is kind of telling people by fiat how they're effective and not actually letting them figure out how they're effective. I mean, because what you want to, you want a team to, A team ultimately needs to deliver an objective of the business, right?
And you want them to prioritize that with urgency, to have customer attention, and so on. But this is where you're like, you know what? And also, no more blue jeans in the office. It's like, okay, why? I actually don't see how this is that different from a dress code. And all the arguments you can make in favor of this, you can also make in favor of a dress code. What are we doing here with this?
Yeah. And, you know, if you, especially if you are feeling like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm commuting in to her zoom calls. Like you're not, no, this is, this just feels very, it feels distant. It feels, I think the art is going to feel disingenuous. Um, and, um, So yeah.
And I should actually also just say, and maybe this is a good time, a good juncture that, you know, one of the things that listening to that previous episode from two and a half years ago did remind me of, I did love the call in aspect of that. So I do want to get other people up here. I don't want to just merely.
Yeah. I mean, all about seaball and cherry races. I mean, or, or it could be, maybe we'll have a dedicated episode for that, but yeah. But now having read the full context, I'd love to hear what other people are seeing in other organizations and how things are changing if there's a return to office mandate or if there's something more progressive and what's motivating these things.
So I want you to know that I received the subtext that you would like me to not read the rest of this very lengthy email.
Oh, we're not even done? Holy smokes.
No, we're not done. No, we're not done. I mean, it's fine. But it goes on for another four paragraphs. And it doesn't really add much. Although it does say the next paragraph is... Well, no, no, no. It goes on for five more paragraphs. Let me get one more paragraph in because before the pandemic, not everyone was in the office five days a week every week.
If you or your child were sick or if you had some house emergency or if you were on the road seeing customers and partners or if you... If you needed a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment, people work remotely. I love that, like, of those examples, like, first of all, if your child is sick, like, aren't you taking a... Like, you allow employees to take a sick day, right?
You would allow employees to stay home.
Yes. There is sort of a Dickensian, like...
Before the pandemic, not everyone was in the office for five days a week. Some people were dead, and that was understandable. That was fine. We understood that tragedies happen. The death was an impediment to full productivity. That's right. Some sort of house emergency. Okay, that feels like it's also a sick day. If you're on the road seeing customers or partners,
you're like, you cannot be serious. It's like, oh, I don't have to go to work that day? Thanks, boss. Thanks, boss. Okay, thanks. By the way, I am at work, out on the road, seeing customers and partners. I'd forgotten that was part of my hobby project. Or if you needed a day or two to finish coding.
I don't have to take vacation to finish the project?
Oh, that's awesome.
We'll split the difference. Take half as vacation. Take them unpaid. That's fine. It's not vacation.
this was understood and will be moving forward as well. It's like, okay, great. But before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week. And that will also be true moving forward. Our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances, like the ones mentioned above, uh, at least two of them are work by the way.
So extenuating circumstances, including work, um, uh, or if you already have a remote work exception approved through your S team leader. And then I just, the final paragraph to read, we are also going to bring back assigned desk assigned arrangements. So I guess that was, so, you know, yeah, that going on. Hey, it looks like you've got your own desk here.
I'm not sure what you're complaining about. So, and then it goes on, but yeah, there we are. That's the context. And I think it's, I just think that even if you want people back in the office, I feel there's a much better way to position this. And so here's the question I've got just about this. Because many people are like, look, you are overthinking it.
I think we even had someone on the internet who was just like, yeah, it's a shadow layoff, like short episode. They don't want to get people to quit. They don't have to pay them severance. I think that is overly reductive because I feel, I mean, are they really so cowardly as a management class at that company that they can't just lay people off?
And if they don't pay people severance, don't pay people severance. Severance is not something that is, that's something that companies do because they feel a responsibility to their employees. But if you want to, you don't have to do that. Just do that. To me, that's actually not the answer.
Amazon is a lot of things, but I don't think they're stupid. And just letting some subset of your employees opt out is pretty stupid. It's an opportunity to make sure that the least productive employees stay and the most productive employees walk out. It is.
So the other thing is, like, I also agree, they're not stupid, but they surely must know that so much, yes, collaboration is an important part of work. So is that quiet time when you are working by yourself and you need that quiet focus time. And that often is really hard to get in an office, right?
And surely they know that the things that we actually build happen in that quiet time, that focus time, right? And this is where you get to like, so here's my theory on this, by the way. I think that this is not rational. I think this is emotional. So my theory is that you get people who have lost their own sense of what their contribution is to an organization. They don't write code.
They don't operate a service. Their job is to lead the organization. And so they go into an office that doesn't have any people in it. And I just don't know what I do. What value do I add? So is this like, not to go too Citizen Kane on you, but is this like Andy Jassy's search for meaning?
Hmm. I think there's something to that. I think there's something to that. I think you're right about the emotional aspect of it and that sort of shock of like, where is everyone? I think there's a lack of trust, which I would also chalk up into like sort of a paranoia. But I think there may also be like a financial aspect to it, like a sunk cost fallacy. Like we're paying for all this.
So why aren't people using it?
Yes. Yeah. I think that, right. I think so too. And, and then I think also just like, you know, there's something, you know, we, you're at a startup and it's like, it's 8 PM on a Thursday and everyone just ate pizza and they're going back and they're all working. And it just feels like, ah, we're so scrappy. Right. And, and, And it's like, is that the past that he's trying to get to?
That kind of nostalgia for a company that is... And does he feel like, no, this feels ossified, even though you're not actually looking at the work product. You're looking at this physical artifact that actually doesn't have necessarily that much to do with the work product. Yeah. I don't know. All right, so there we are.
I just want to get my crazy theory out there, that this is my rosebud theory.
Yeah, I don't think it's crazy at all. I think, yeah, I think there's something to it. I don't know how to sort of evaluate that. I wonder how we'll kind of shake that out over time, but I can definitely keep it in mind.
The other thing I wonder about, it's like, I just feel like if you wanted to give this message, right? So you, Andy Jassy, and by the way, I did the experiment of having ChatGPT write a message to the company about returning the office, wrote a much better, I mean, wrote like a much crisper email and a much more uplifting.
I just feel like you could do it in a way that would feel much more uplifting and much less punitive and much less like it's resorting to coercion. Yeah, I want to hear other people's experiences. So are people enduring office mandates now, return office mandates? How is it going?
And we've invited Matt, also known as my friend Matt.
You just claim everybody.
Yeah, exactly right. But Matt, I don't want to tee up too much. So just what's on your mind?
You know, thanks for having me. Long-time listener, second-time caller. Very proud of that. You know, I think, so I worked for Broadcom previously, VMware. We've just gone through the acquisition and, you know, we went from a company that said work from anywhere and encourage people to move out of the Bay Area. during COVID and, you know, live wherever you want.
We understand remote work is very valuable. Transitioning to a culture that is 100% be in the office five days a week, not dissimilar to the Amazon mandate. I think the reasoning behind it was a little bit different where it wasn't we strengthen our culture. It was this is our culture. And if you don't like it, we understand you can find another opportunity.
And so, you know, I think we've been going through a lot of the same challenges of being told to come to the office, but, you know, Brian, you joke, like, people don't have assigned seats. There's not enough seats for people to come to the office. There's not conference rooms, so, you know, people come to the office and they need to have a meeting and can't do it.
And so I think a lot of the frustration, you know, people do see the frustration of why am I commuting and, you know, is there actual value in it? But I think kind of what you both alluded to is previously when people came to the office, they...
they saw a benefit in coming to the office, or at least they had some of the cultural things that they like, meeting people, talking about different things, working with different teams, all of that stuff. And the biggest thing that I've seen frustrating people is that
they're mandated to come back to the office, but then they're actively not doing anything to make it easy for people to come back to the office.
And so that's where people are sort of saying like, well, if this is so important and we're really trying to strengthen our culture and embrace it and make it stronger, why are you making it harder for everybody to do their job such that being in the office is a detriment as opposed to a benefit?
And so I think that's one of the things where it's really sort of made people question what's the underlying motivation. And You know, I don't want to call Brian a conspiracy theorist, but sort of leading them down that rabbit hole of, okay, what's the real meaning behind this and what are they trying to accomplish? And then the only other thing that I would... What is it?
What do you think they're trying to accomplish?
No, I think one of the things that is different about Broadcom that has been sort of a revelation for me is previously I've worked at largely software companies. Some companies, we also sold hardware, but I wouldn't call us hardware companies. Broadcom has a pretty big background in hardware where a lot of the people doing work literally have to be in the office to do that work.
And so when COVID shut down, labs and foundries and all of these places where people worked, it had sort of a very material impact on the business. And I think that sort of caused in leadership's mind, like that was something that was really scary to them and sort of an existential threat to the business.
And so, you know, them having that background where you had to be at work and you could no longer do it, I think, you know, caused more panic than I would expect to at a pure software place.
But that's, I mean, can we call bullshit on that, though? I mean, that's not, I mean, in so many different regards, right? I mean, in that it's, first of all, a lot of, I mean, so much of hardware is software, right? You're using EDA tooling to develop, whether you're developing an ASIC or you're doing a board or you're doing soft logic.
I mean, you're doing, and actually Nathaniel on our team has got a great blog entry on how you build a hardware team with a distributed workforce. I mean, not to, sorry, Matt, I'm sure that I'm telling you the things you already know, of course.
No, Brian, but again, I think you go back to it, right? And you say like, well, Andy Jassy sitting there being like, if there's nobody in the office, am I doing my job? If you grew up in a culture where the people working on hardware were sitting in a room working in a lab, right?
Like, again, I think it's the thing that you remember and the thing that you connect to and what was critical and what was successful. It doesn't mean it's rational, right? But like, I think those are the things that then feed into, okay, well, that's the culture that made me successful. It's worked. I don't want to move away from it. Therefore, it should work for everybody.
Let's make everybody go do it.
And this is in this regard though, Matt, I do think it does look like a dress code. You know what I mean? Where it's like, no, no, like engineers wear a tie in the office. Like why are, and you know, part of the reason that, you know, and Tom Lyon on here has talked about the kind of the West coast companies versus the East coast companies and how they, all the East coast companies got fired.
kind of disrupted by the West Coast companies in the 80s, in part because they're... I mean, McNeely's famous dress code for Sun was, you must. And that was kind of... There was a time in which, like, that was iconoclastic. And you're like, we are... the idea it's like, yeah, your idea of, of what an engineer is, is changing.
And then they have this engineer is in flip-flops and they're developing something that is a, you know, a chip and they're doing it in flip-flops. It's like, yes, these things can both be true.
It's like, I'm glad you raised that point, Brian, because we do have a dress code. Now, I have not been sent home from work yet for inappropriate or not meeting the dress code, which, you know, for folks who don't know me, that's pretty much every day. But yes, according to our handbook, we do also have a dress code. So I don't know if the two things go together.
I don't know where AWS stands on this one.
What's the dress code? Jesus. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Same question. Go ahead.
It's rather nebulous. It's sort of professional attire. Oh, yeah.
That's not you. No, 100%.
Yeah, no, and I'm still looking for a lawyer if there's anyone on the call who's willing to represent me when this comes to a head.
Anyone who wants to represent you, my co-host is a lawyer. Yeah, happy. Adam Leventhal, employment lawyer, would be happy to represent you in your dress code claim.
Yes.
I mean, Matt, that is great. I mean, that's terrible. I know this is what you're living, and I know that you're – this is not for our, your dress code is not our entertainment, but all of that said, and it's a bit shocking that they got a dress. I mean, it's like, you don't need to have a dress.
I mean, if you need to have a dress code, something is, because clearly like if you were with someone for which you need to dress professionally, you will need to dress professionally. And if you are going into the office to work on an ASIC, you can wear flip flops, but it just goes that same like undermining of, of trust.
And so Matt, what's the reaction been as this becomes more enforced? Like are, I mean, like are there some folks who are receptive to it and think it would be a positive change or are most folks, especially from the VMware culture, is it bugging them?
I mean, most folks have told me I do need to dress better.
Yeah, this is an intervention. Right. Oh, thank God there's a dress code. God, they did keep that.
Yeah, I think for the VMware folks, it's been, you know, I think sort of doubly challenging because as the pandemic hit, right? Like, I think one of the things that VMware did really well is sort of look at this and be like, hey, you know what? Like, being in the office isn't why we collaborate well together. It's not why we've been successful. We're going to embrace remote work.
And, you know, told people, yeah, it's okay. You can move away from an office. You can move somewhere else. You don't have to, like, this isn't a problem. Like, VMware is going to support remote work. And that was VMware's stance.
Obviously, you know, we didn't know, they didn't know what Broadcom was going to mandate or any of these other things, or even if the acquisition was happening at that point. But I think that for people coming through the acquisition, right, who had just moved away, I think the change was sort of doubly painful, right?
Where it's one thing to sort of say, hey, yeah, like I did it before, I have the option to do it again if I want to continue working here, versus, well, you told me that I could do this, I moved away, and now you're basically telling me I have to move back or, you know, I don't have a role as a company anymore.
And by the way, I mean, how many people that move away do so because, you know, my spouse has, you know, her residency is in a remote community or I need to be with my mother is ailing. I want to be close to her. I mean, it's like people move because of their own sense of duty to their broader families. I think so frequently.
And I think it was one of those things, again, where other companies are saying, hey, you have to work in the office. It was one of the things where we could say, well, we're different, right? And that attracted people who wanted to come work with us. And so I think that transition has been hard.
And then, you know, I think the second piece again is like it being, again, akin to a dress code or sort of, you know, a rule that the principal told you, as opposed to, you know, managers and leadership being accountable for making coming to the office a valuable, productive thing that, you know, adds value and actually benefits the culture.
And so I think there's been a fair amount of resistance and frustration. You know, the flip side is like the economy isn't necessarily where it was. And so, you know, for some folks, that's also a concern. So I think people are complying with it, but it's sort of like trying to figure out how to follow the rule, not trying to figure out
How do we get back to Z-ball or chariot races and the other things that sort of made the office what it was and how do we give people that experience? And so, again, I think because people don't see the or believe in the motivation behind it, the way that they're approaching it is sort of how do I toe the line as opposed to, hey, look, you know, Z-ball was really fun.
Well, and you got some folks in the chat who, some folks who are either in cultures that have an RTO or at Amazon specifically that are asking like some pretty good questions. Like, Hey, we're like, we quantify things at this company. Can you, can you quantify some of this for me? Can you quantify this? Like, great. I'm all for making us more productive.
And then being told by management, like, no, no, this isn't about quantification. Like this isn't about, you know, Emily in the chat saying, Hey, stop asking for the numbers. This isn't about the numbers. And it's like, you know, it seems to like it's been about the numbers for lots of other things around here.
And it's like that really, again, undermines the faith that I have that this is a decision that's actually rational, let alone one that is in my best interest. It's like this is not this is not I don't understand why we're doing this.
And there's just one thing that I want to say real quick. I do actually kind of want to give a shout out to Hawk Tan, where people ask this exact question to him, right? And his answer is like, I get it. He's like, I don't have data for this. He's like, this is what I believe. This is the culture that I want. And I understand if it doesn't work for you, but it works for me.
And it's not about these things like this is the belief and the thing that I want to go do. That's why I'm doing it. And so I at least give him credit for saying that's behind it and not sort of trying to come up with, oh, but, you know, innovation was better, these other things. Whereas other folks I feel like have said, hey, look, it was better, but I can't do anything.
So I give him credit for saying, this is how I think about it. If you don't like it, that's fine. But you're not going to change my mind.
Yeah, interesting. And then this is not a topic that's up for discussion, obviously. It's just like, take a hike if you don't like it, which I think is okay. And maybe there's some folks that really do. But it feels like you're going to get some regretted attrition this way. You're going to lose folks that you don't want to lose.
I agree. But again, where I give him credit is he says, yeah, people are going to leave. And if they're going to leave, that's the outcome. I'm fine with it. And so again, like at least to me, he's saying what he thinks will happen and understands the consequences of it and still wants to do it. He's not sort of making up reasons.
There's a real clarity, right? Like he's not talking out of both sides of his mouth. It's not a 18 paragraph email. It's like my way or the highway. Let's go.
Yeah, exactly. This is when management likes to use the leadership principles to be like, eh, disagree and commit on this one. The data-driven principle isn't really applicable here. It can be disheartening for employees.
Right. So on the leadership principles, because one thing I, you know, Amazon had 14 leadership principles for a long time and then kind of had this like late tack on of two additional leadership principles. One of which is yet bonus leadership principles. So those post date my, my talk on the, on them actually.
And one, I mean, they're both kind of like nonsense, but one of them is to strive to be earth's best employer. Um, and I, which I think was honestly a consequence of some of these New York times pieces that were some of these, these pieces that were revealing some of the, the, the really tough working conditions that people had, not just on the, on kind of the AWS side, but, but Amazon writ large.
And I think it was, uh, it was beginning to threaten their kind of pipeline of young folks has, uh,
chris do you know if if that's i mean that's a leadership principle right is like and has that leadership principle kind of have people been like hey is this part of striving to be earth's best employer because not really feeling that one here yeah that one doesn't come up as much in conversation uh almost ever i don't think in all my performance reviews i've ever ticked that box for for anybody just because i just don't it's kind of hard to apply um
Are you tempted to try? Because it'd be like, no, that's not a leadership. We put that there for the New York Times. That's not an actual leadership principle.
It doesn't come up so often. No, I think, I mean, that's kind of the frustrating thing. You know, our Slack is enormous at work. And like in our remote advocacy group, there's, you know, 35,000 people alone that are extremely upset about this.
And, you know, a lot of the sentiment is like, you have this leadership principle and, you know, you want us to be productive, like show us the data and be the best employer. And this is not feeling like that at all.
Okay, so another question on this. First of all, it's really interesting to hear kind of from the inside about how the – I mean, this is obviously not popular, and this is very uprooting to people's lives, I'm sure. One of the comments he said is that we want to be like a startup again. And speaking as a startup, I don't know.
The startups these days are kind of taking advantage of the fact that you larger companies have these dumbass RTO mandates. And I don't think Oxide is the only startup that is benefiting from some extraordinary people who are wondering what's next because they are leaving these established companies. Are the startups out there... I mean, it feels to me like startups are remote increasingly.
I mean, Adam, you were broadly pretty remote, right?
Actually, you know what? We weren't that remote. We were pretty in-person. And we got an expensive office space in downtown San Francisco, and people went to it. We had some remote time. People would work remotely on Wednesdays or whatever. But by and large, it was in-person. I think I said at the time...
I was looking at what you had done at Joyent, and I thought you had done a great job of having some folks in person and some folks remote. And I don't know. I wasn't sure how to operate in a team like that, especially very early on. Now, I think that's changed for me. That's changed, I think, for the industry broadly. But even in that 2016, eight years ago when I was starting the company...
I felt like that was a choice you could make between whether you were mostly in person or mostly remote and you'd hire different folks or whatever, but it was kind of a viable choice. I'm not so sure how viable this is a choice these days. To be remote or to be in person? Oh, pardon me, to be like, to say we're in person.
Obviously, I think being remote is like, I mean, it feels to me, I'm like very much biased on this one, but it feels like,
more the default answer whereas in person was the default answer previously yeah i think so too so and chris inside because i know that that historically when some of these mandates came down there were some exceptions that people were able to get and that the reality was the folks that needed the exceptions were always able to get them is that what's the thinking on whether that's going to continue or are they are they trying to crack down on some of those exceptions
Well, so you saw on that note, they mentioned people with exceptions. And that's good that that might stay. I mean, one of the big things, which is like a sad reality is in these channels for remote advocacy, it's like people sharing advice on like, hey, like, does this qualify as something I should go talk to HR about?
And there's actually people in there who's like, full time jobs, besides, of course, the normal job to like give advice on like, Hey, you need to go find these two forms and make sure you have a doctor approved thing and do this. Because otherwise, you just wouldn't know. So like, I, for example, had a medical exemption, because I've got this hand problem I've talked about before.
And then it was up for review after a year. I joined during COVID with being hired remote. And then I was told that I need to come into the office the other week. But then it took somebody on this thread to be like, oh, by the way, there's this hidden secret box you can check on the bottom of this form that will make the thing permanent.
And so I'm super lucky that I got to do that six months ago and then totally forgot about it. And now here we are. Thankfully, I get to hopefully it's uncertain right now. So it's like ongoing conversations. But it's really shitty for everybody involved. And, you know, I always point to like, you know, you can make remote happen. And Oxide's like one of those examples I point to.
It's like they do hardware and they're remote. Like we're doing purely software over here. Like what's the issue?
What's the answer to that out of curiosity? the answer to why can't we be remote? Yes. I mean, just like when you try to get it to ground, can we just talk about some of this, the magical collaboration that only happens in person? Can we just get to some concrete examples of that? Is that where, I mean, why are we even asking this? Of course, like,
I won't say anything too bad, but to your point, I assume it's management. When they came out with this announcement, I personally am very vocal and was like, this is what you guys have been doing for the last six months on the S team? We're solving problems over here and you're still thinking about this? We thought we were over this. I guess not.
The reason I raised my hand initially was I think one of the reasons they keep going back to this is they claim that it's a culture thing and they want to keep the culture of a startup I want to get your take on this, too, because I guess I just, you know, I grew up in an age of I'm born in the late 90s.
I grew up in the age of the Internet and playing online video games and having communities like I have culture with people that I've never seen in person. Like, is this just like an older CEO thing where they don't think you can have a vibrant culture online and they don't know how to do it? Because I certainly think you can.
Chris, I think you're really onto something. Yeah, I think it is. I think it's both a generational thing and kind of one's own experience. But I think it's also the tools that have become commonplace in the way that we work. And yet people sort of having this nostalgia for a time and forgetting the absence of these tools. Brian, you were talking about how...
you know uh talking in chat or on a google meet or uh in lots of these different kind of remote collaboration tools recall like we didn't really have that like when we would when we would work remotely at sun in the like early 2000s or whatever like you would get on a conference call but like there was no uh there was no like video chat or anything i think we did a little bit of like
I think we were on like AOL instant messenger and stuff like randomly.
Honestly, no, that would have been like, no, I was not on any, I was not on IRC jabber. I was on, Um, when we were working remote, it was email. I mean, it was just like, if you want to go like really get tears in your eyes and, and you know, uh, the, uh, it was email. Yeah. Um, what was the way we, and we used email differently than it's used now. Totally. Totally.
Uh, and you were much more current on email. There's a lot of email back and forth. So that, but it, but email was very important. And I think that, and obviously, someone in the chat is saying, like, email. Sorry, not the thing that I, the thing that I have to put a confirmation code into in order to log into the website.
I think, like, why would you use that for? That doesn't make any sense. I feel like people are going to, you know, If someone comes to my house and like rings the doorbell, like my older son who's now moved out, but like didn't know how to react, like total panic that like somebody would show up at your door. I feel like that's how people are going to regard email. Like I'm receiving an email.
This is like a highly aggressive like action.
Absolutely. No, I think, and I think, but to the question, but you're right, we didn't have any of those tools. So it looked very different. And I think that the, I think you're right that this is just a generational shift and people are, and this is why I think it's like, this is closer to a dress code than not that the, you know, they're absolutely, I mean, it's kind of amazing.
This is where I do feel like I'm a fossil that when I entered the workforce and it was a big deal that even in, by the mid nineties, when you went to an East coast tech company, there was like, people were in like business casual to do work.
I mean, it was not, I mean, you were only kind of just out of the era where engineers wore ties and the, I mean, obviously I'm like, no, you just wear like blue jeans and the, and why? And I remember thinking that, As a 22-year-old in 1996, why is this company acting like it's a big deal they don't have a dress code? Of course you don't. Of course you don't.
But that's one of those generational shifts. I definitely think, Chris, it absolutely is a generational shift. I do think that the other thing, and this is to get back to that emotional issue, I think, you know, is it Gloria Steinem? Is that Aging is Not for Wimps? Who is that? Is that Bette Davis? It's either Ben Franklin or Mark Twain or Eleanor Roosevelt. Anyway, Aging is Not for Wimps.
And I think that it is really hard to age as a technologist because – you do like especially and this is why it's so important to me personally to stay like on the details because once you have a couple of years where you're off the details and you're no longer making individual contributions it becomes really really daunting to to think about like going back and
you don't really know what your role is anymore. You know, in the office space, you know, I'm a people person. And like, what is my role? And I think that there's a great solace to know like, oh, my role is there are a bunch of people here in cubicles and I walk around from cubicle to cubicle. This is the HP, you know, famously. The management by walking around. Walking around. Yeah. And
you would you walk around you know hey how's it going um and that is how you managed and i think that you like that doesn't work in this world and i i think that that i think you've got an entire generation that's having a hard time coming to grips with it and that's why i really wonder about new company formation this idea like we want to act like a startup it's like well funny you should mention startups because startups are all going to work remotely
Or at least have a big remote component. I don't know how things are going to – I mean, obviously, our physical office is still important to us. I'm here now. It's a lab. I mean, it does – and it functions as a meeting space, right? We're going to have our meetup here in a couple of weeks, which everyone is really looking forward to. We have all that goodness that comes from being together.
I don't think anyone wants to say that there's no value in physically being together. It's just that That does not make sense for 100% of your at-work activities. I also think the other thing, by the way, and Chris, I'd love to get your take on this. Does this come up? Because the other thing that's changed is the expectation of what are the hours of work?
And it used to be when you left work, because you did not actually have a computer in your pocket and because you did not have a computer at your home, you were actually unreachable. And you were actually off work. And that is not true for us now. Obviously, people are always connected all the time and they're expected to be.
And Chris, is there any kind of pushback internally being like, all right, hey, look, you want me to come to the office? Great. By the way, laptop closes at 6 p.m. So I'm sorry. This has got to cut both ways.
Um, so I definitely, I, there's two things. One of them, like I personally, so I work remote. I personally get annoyed when people have to go into the office because usually they'll sign on before they leave. And then we'll get into a conversation about something and they'll be like, Oh, Hey, by the way, I have to, I have to get in the car and drive 45 minutes. So can I call you back then?
And they're like, can I call you in the car? I'm like, Oh gosh, like we were just getting started on something interesting here. And now you have to commute for an hour. Like I'll talk to you later. Um, So I definitely think, I mean, from everybody I talked to on my team, it's on days when they go to the office, they're like, hey, I'm back at home now. So let's call it here.
Like I'm signing off more solidly. So that's a benefit. But then add in the commute. And I think almost everybody says, you know, I'd rather not commute.
right and there's like a fatigue thing i think like for for commuting too like i think it just grinds on you uh you know even if you're working you know less hands on keyboard or whatever i think when i personally like have to take public transportation in terms of commuting sorry man what were you saying no i was gonna say i think it's actually interesting where i don't know if it's changed like specifically oh well at this time i walk out but i think it has eroded goodwill
So, I mean, like any software organization, right, like shit hits the fan and people are working late into the night because, you know, like the main check-in pipeline is broken or there's a critical customer escalation or there's a deadline for a patch release that we need to hit.
And, you know, previously, I think people sort of were much more willing to sort of, you know, go the extra mile or say, oh, okay, yeah, like, you know, I'm going to work really hard this weekend because we really need to get this thing done. And then I'll just, you know, like I'll take a couple days off next week and, you know, it all evens out in the wash.
What I've seen is that that goodwill is just gone where it's like, well, no, like if I stay up working until two in the morning because I need to make sure that this customer is healthy, you're telling me I need to be in the office the next day.
Or I get an email that you were scanning my badges and everything and tracking me with a spreadsheet.
Exactly. And you get the phone call or the email saying, why weren't you here on Tuesday? You don't get it being like, hey, thanks for staying up Monday night to midnight to make sure that the upgrade for this critical customer went through and we met their timeline. And so, again, I think it gets to that notion where there's previously been trust. Right.
And that trust is sort of like the building block of everything. And this is like one of the sort of like silliest and fastest ways, it seems, to avoid that trust. And the result is people are now sort of like, OK, well, if you don't trust me to figure out where to be and when to work, why should I trust you that, you know, you're going to reward me or at least support me for doing the right thing?
Totally. And if you're the employer, I mean, maybe it's a hot take, but if I can't trust you to work when I'm not, you know, micromanaging you and monitoring you, why do I even hire you? Like you're supposedly a professional and you're supposed to get things done. Like if you can't evaluate me based on work, like I don't even know why we're in this relationship of employer employee.
Like this is a waste of time.
This example you're coming up with, I remember this moment in my career in particular where it was like Sunday night, I was working on getting something done and I got an email from my manager that said, hey, you took a day off on Tuesday and you didn't record it properly. And here's how you record it properly. And here I am Sunday night working my ass off.
And I just remember feeling like just so enraged by that moment. Right. Yeah, and that was at Sun. No, no, it actually was at Delphix. It was at Delphix. That makes a little more sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The folks at Sun wouldn't be paying attention. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly. It's like the manager themselves, like, it applies that they're working on a Sunday night, but they send you that email on a Sunday night. So it's like, yeah, I don't think they'd be doing that. That's right. Someone had asked in the chat about like, hey, what was remote work like at Sun? And so when I was there, like literally when I arrived there,
the engineers in kernel development had just gotten approval to have the ISDN lines so they could actually meaningfully work from home. So when I was there, the engineers had started to work from home, but I did not. And it's kind of amazing to think, Adam, how it feels like it was such a long period of time and it was such a kind of a blink of the eye that in 1996...
The engineers had just started work from home. Bonwick would, the engineer, Jeff Bonwick, who I'd come to work with, Jeff wouldn't get in at like 2 p.m. 2 to 3 p.m. He'd kind of like hang out in the evening and then he'd go home at like 7. And then he just to like wait out traffic. And then he'd be up until, you know, I would be working with him over email until, and also the phone.
Adam, that's the other thing. We did use the phone. people would, he would call me, uh, and we would talk on the phone at like, on your, on your landline, just to be on my landline in the office. And because I could not work from home because I just did not. So I was in the office more or less all the time. Um, and I would be in the office until, you know, four or five in the morning.
And I, so the first year that I was working, I was working Bonwick hours, which was really stupid because Bonwick standard time is not meant Standard time is not actually like it's not diurnal. It is not actually. So I would end up because I had a reverse commute. It would take me like six minutes to get into the office unless I was going into the office at 4 p.m. and it took me 45 minutes.
And I'm like, I have got to be like, I got to get off this and I got to get something that looks more like rational human kind of hours. But these people had started to work remotely. And then, Adam, by the time you came in 2001, and we had DSL. I remember when we got our new place in San Francisco in 2000, I got DSL. That was a big deal. And we were starting to work remotely a couple days a week.
And those remote access token cards, those one-time password cards, was somehow load-bearing for a long time for how some IT would let us get in remotely. Yes.
Yeah, I saw Dan McDonald was here. Well, that predated the punch-in stuff. It did predate punch-in. You're right. Yeah, you're right. We had some kind of VPN stuff. And then I definitely remember you were the messenger on Wi-Fi. You were describing Wi-Fi. And I'm like, this sound, you came from the future. It sounds like there are no wires plugged in your laptop at all.
Like I, that says no way that's not possible. And I realized wifi was just like, wow. And then, so by the time we, and then, so things were pretty hybrid from that point. You know, I remember a lot of detrace we did in our, like working at home for sure.
I think my critique of remote work at the time was that it was very haphazard. Because the benefit of going to the office was conversing with certain folks or collaborating with certain folks. But then if it turned out like, oh, they didn't go in that day. They didn't go in that day. That's right. Then you sort of feel like, why did I get on the train? What am I doing here?
Why did I work to get down here?
When we started Fishworks, I remember really being explicit about, like, we want the office to be that kind of gathering place. And yes, we're going to do work from home, but we're going to work from work. And it gave us Fishpond, just as the world, just as our working office gave us Seaball and the Mark Trucaine.
Yeah. Well, you know, we talk about Oxide. We got, you founded Oxide. as it turns out, sort of moments before the pandemic. Moments before the pandemic, yeah. And I do wonder, if we were starting Oxide today, what would the office situation look like? Or if you were starting it in March 2020 rather than late 2019, Like maybe would have got an office.
Maybe there would have been a place that we needed to like warehouse materials or do some of this bring up or whatever. But it would certainly have looked differently because when you got that office in 2019, sure, you thought we're going to have whatever it is, 50% remote, 20% remote. But you envisioned a building, a room with a bunch of people in it. Like that's what it was for.
we did. And we also, I remember thinking like, this will be good for the first like year or two, then we'll need to get a bigger space. Yeah. Much bigger space to accommodate the, to accommodate. And it's like, Nope, we're not going to do that. And I mean, I think the thing that gets really weird to think about is like, what if there's no pandemic at all?
And cause that is like, that takes us into bizarre land because we make a whole bunch of different decisions and And I mean, it's, it's actually horrifying. I actually, it is, it is actually too scary to contemplate if the pandemic, no, I'm serious. Cause like I, there were so many jobs that I had it in my head have to be local. Yeah. Um, operations had to be local.
That's right. Operations. A bunch of these double E's had to be. Yeah, totally. You're right. It looks very different and I'm not sure we are. Yeah.
No, it's scary. My breathing accelerates just kind of thinking about it because I don't know that we pull it off. Actually, I almost know that we don't. And the ability to get folks wherever they are is an absolute magic power that any startup is going to use.
I mean, so I think part of the reason that I think this is going to shift so radically is because startups, one, I mean, so Chris, just for the generational issues you're mentioning that like, hey, this is generationally, this is not a big deal to me. I'm born in the mid-90s. I play video games. I'm just used to like online communities. So, Like that is not a big deal for me.
And so I think that one, you kind of have that big adjustment. Then you also have like, Oh, wait a minute. The pool of talent that I want to hire from is they are making this incredibly bad decision that I can take advantage of and get people. I was like, Oh, okay. Wow. Great. Thanks. Amazon. I didn't think I was going to be able to hire any of your folks, but you know, thanks. Broadcom. Thanks.
Google. Thanks. And again, And because as a startup, you've got to find a way to differentiate yourself. And obviously, there's a degree of venture-funded startup, you're giving up a degree of job security, obviously. You've got to find a way to differentiate. And boy, being able to hire remote is a really, really, really key way to differentiate.
And this is the bit I think with Andy Jassy, I'm like, do you think if you were a startup today, do you understand that you'd be a remote company? Yeah.
And that I don't think he gets. So two and a half years ago when we were talking about this, Matt was on and he said that he hoped remote work wasn't just viewed as a cost savings. I think that at the time people were like shedding their offices and feeling like that was a huge benefit. Not just a cost savings, but instead a way to hire the best people, as you're saying, Brian.
And I think also in that episode, speaking to a question in chat about interns and something, Chris, you had mentioned about, I think, some of the generational differences. One of the questions we had was, what's it like for new employees? What's it like for new college grads coming in? And I think at the time, I was really worried about it.
And I feel like that is maybe my OK Boomer moment, because these folks... Especially if you're a student who's graduating from college and you spent a big chunk of your time remote during the pandemic, you know how to do this. You figured it out. This is how you operate. And so for the person in chat asking about the college intern starting, I think you meet them where they are.
You figure out how they want to work. Because they've already figured out how to do a bunch of this stuff. And yeah, for me coming out of school, it was so important to sit at the lunchroom table. It was so important to stumble into people's office and ask them questions or whatever.
But I think that different generations figure out their own ways that are going to be different than the ways that we were familiar with doing them.
I think so too. And I think that like you, you know, an evergreen for years and years and years and evergreen about like, Hey, I want to have a hacker news thread. That's going to have a thousand comments. Talk about office layout, right? We open plan offices, cubicles, like everyone's at war with everyone else. Right.
And the, you know, that's not something we need to, you know, we've got other challenges in our remote world.
but but office layout is not something and do you remember like i don't remember we were talking about like you know at joint we kind of had these cubicles that weren't cubicles they were dividers where it was like an open plan that where the dividers were of a very specified height so you could kind of like keep your head down and headphones on but you could also like look up i mean it was like all all this like nonsense that we don't need to do anymore yeah yeah for sure
And, you know, I think you guys mentioned it in your podcast a long time ago about the state of working remote, where now I just prefer people to be at home on calls because there's not background noise. And it turns out that conference room cameras are bad and you can't see facial expressions.
And I actually prefer screen share for looking at people's code and pair programming because, you know, they're not hovering over me or, God forbid, touching my keyboard. So there's just benefits that you don't see like that.
Totally. And then all these things that we kind of talked about that episode that I think people should go back and listen to because I do think it's all the stuff that's now really important to us, like the side chat and the side channel and the back channel, the ability to record meetings, all the stuff that I just can't live without.
The other thing is that also I was actually interacting with someone who was at a return to office company. And was having a conversation with him, was scheduled to have a conversation with him. And he was like four minutes late. And, you know, in the post-pandemic world, four minutes is like, okay, I like- Call the cops.
Where is this person?
Call the cops. National disaster. Check Twitter. There's been an earthquake. It's like, you know, this is cataclysmic. And he was very apologetic. He's like, God, I'm so sorry. I, I had to get a conference room and I was like, the, the, I had this conference room booked and these guys wouldn't leave because they went over.
It's like, God, the idea that like your, like that conversation, which is like, let's assume is a good conversation is grooving and has to stop now because somebody else needs to have a conversation because it's like, Oh my God, like, what are we doing? This just makes no sense in terms of, and I think this is what, um,
you know, what people are latching onto in terms of like, hey, this doesn't feel like it's making us more productive. Well, Adam, I'm not sure where, do we think there's going to be a trend? Actually, let's leave on this. Do we think, does this pretend a trend? Is this going to be an outlier? Are we, what is the future here for these RTO mandates?
Yeah, I do think it's a trend. I think that you're onto something with regard to this emotionality and justification of one's role. I think the finance folks who have invested in a bunch of real estate, I think it's the confluence of these things is going to keep pushing for these RTO mandates and then
whether it turns out to be like hocked hands my way or the highway or a softer mandate, but don't enforce like Scott McNeely would do if you were still in charge. I think that's a big question for me. What do you think?
I think we land pretty hybrid-y where I think that there's a lot of new company formation ends up being remote first for all the good reasons to be remote first. And I think that that alone will, and I think also you're going to have, I do think that companies are going to look different in the future. I don't know that we're going to have these massive hundred thousand person tech companies.
where I think you're going to have more smaller companies. I think that's what makes more kind of sense in the abstract anyway. And so I think it's going to be, I think, hybrid-y. I think you're going to have a lot more. I think some of the stuff is going to look really, really dated in hindsight. I also think that there are going to be companies that have no RTO mandate.
So I think that these RTO mandates are going to, at some level, backfire. I don't know if they're going to backfire quickly enough to kind of give feedback to the folks that institute them. You know, one company we have not talked about, do you know a company that does not have, that is truly hybrid and has not had any RTO mandate since the pandemic? NVIDIA. Hmm, interesting. Yeah.
NVIDIA is, it's like, I don't know. That's interesting. How are they doing? I haven't checked. Are they doing okay? I don't know. Are they having any success? And that's pretty interesting. I think that I do think we're going to have a qualitative shift. Not for the first time. I think we've had a lot of these qualitative shifts.
The internet was a qualitative shift where it's like you had companies that got it, succeeded, and companies that didn't, perished. And I think that, I don't know that these hyperscalers are, I mean, obviously Amazon's a wildly profitable company.
I don't know they're in danger of perishing, but I do think that this approach, this kind of coercion approach is going to undermine trust to the degree that I don't, I don't know that it's going to work. I think it's going to backfire.
Yeah, I think offices, much like cities, should be inhabited by people who want to be there.
That's a very concise way of putting it.
that offices, like cities, that are not, because there are, just like, Chris, it's an interesting analog, because the, you know, like cities, you know, everyone kind of spent a bunch of time trying to flee cities, but actually young people are attracted to cities for a lot of the reasons that you're attracted to something that's got, you know, hustle to it, and that's got verve to it, and Z-ball and chariot races.
Yeah.
I think, Brian, I think the RTO stuff, when you say it's going to backfire, I think you have to look at like, how is it going to backfire? Where I think there's some companies that previously have been more focused on innovation and change and driving new things.
And for larger companies that conceivably are transitioning away from that to a more stable business and, you know, slow growth and just keep the machine moving forward. I don't know how much it'll backfire. Where I think it's going to hurt people is all the things that Amazon said in their memo about we want to have a startup culture and work fast and be innovative and do those things.
That's where I think it's really going to hurt. There are a bunch of places where I don't think that's what they want. That's not important. For those companies, I think it may work well because it'll attract the set of people that they're looking for to go do the job that they want. And so I think the RTO stuff, I don't know. I think for some companies, it's not going to be a fad.
It's going to be something that exists until sort of this generation of people in C positions ages out and the next generation decides that this is a company that they want to work at or not.
Yeah, well put. And I think it is going to really depend on what you're doing. And there will be some companies that... There's some companies where dress codes make sense, right? I mean, it's like... I mean, for any company Matt's at.
Yeah, and thank you for the intervention. It's a long time coming, and I have to do some soul searching.
Yeah, if you wouldn't mind, if you would please reflect on that. I assume that we're going to have at least some future episode only on Dress Codes featuring Matt. I'm envisioning Fashion Plate Matt, where I can put different outfits on Matt.
I'm game, Brian. I have to figure out how to turn this corner. I think the only other thing here you guys talk about... Hearing you talk about Sun when you talk about remote work starting, I also seem to remember that was around the time when cars left outside of Building 17 had their catalytic converter stolen. So I wonder if there's a correlation.
No, that was because there were too few people in the office. It was like semi-abandoned.
Okay. Sorry. Here in the Bay Area, getting your catalytic converter stolen, it's like the sun rising. I had forgotten this. Was there a catalytic converter?
Yes. In fact, that was the place where I heard about catalytic converter thefts first. Yes.
Those thieves were innovators.
They were ahead of their time. It was in the building 17 parking lot. Now –
home to meta you're welcome uh i'm sure they don't have the same problems but like as people like stop you know the the remote work was sort of like self-perpetuating because once you go in a couple times and the people you wanted to see weren't there then you're like well i'm just gonna stay home too people didn't show up they started turning off the lights to save power and people's catalytic converters started getting stolen it was very it was very bleak it was very bleak
It was very bleak. Yes. Well, and I think that, I mean, I would like to say that those thieves really were innovators. And I would like to believe that somewhere there's another podcast going on with catalytic converter thieves reminiscing about Sun Microsystems back in the day.
It was just like this flightless bird where you could just go, you had all the time all day to just, you know, put it up on jacks, really do it right, you know. And back in the day, there was real attention to the craft.
Talk about a podcast I would listen to. That'd be great. Well, low bar.
Well, this has been, I don't know if this has been cathartic, uplifting. I don't know where we land on this. This has been, certainly I think, I would say that for those folks that are going through this, I definitely, heart goes out to folks who have really, for whom this is really a challenge for their lives. And I think that this too shall pass in that regard.
I think that remote work is here to stay at some level in our industry. Yeah.
um just uh don't let this get you too far down but um this is um it's it's it's a little bit of a little bit of a downer at the moment yeah but agree i think this too shall pass and i think that companies will distinguish themselves by being remote friendly even as in this trend then hey go work for nvidia Go work for NVIDIA.
And next podcast, we'll have Dave Hitz on here on RTO mandates. Dave Lightman. We'll bring back Dave Hitz. There we go. All righty. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, especially Chris and Matt. I really appreciate both of you. I mean, it takes real courage to kind of get up on stage here.
Although I feel that, Matt, I would like to, that your Broadcom overlords should note your praise for Hawk Tan's honesty and your respect for the Broadcom dress code. So I'd like to explain that to your overlords as they are pouring over this podcast, that you are actually an obedient servant. You are not a... A ne'er-do-well or a miscreant? A rebel rouser?
Just like that at the deposition, Brian. That was perfect. That's exactly what I'm looking for.
There you go. Okay, it's just like that. But with even more feeling? Okay, that sounds good. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to sign the affidavit that you are welcome, your Octan overlord. I'm excited about the dress code.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Chris. Really appreciate it. Thank you, everyone. And thanks for all the great comments in the chat. Thanks, everyone. See you next time.