Banning remote work (or even just signaling the intent) is an excellent solution to ‘we effed up by hiring too many people in ZIRP/AI expectations era and now we need to get rid of them without paying severance’.
My impression as a longtime user of AWS is that they don't care to retain competent people. They seem to have a "throw more bodies at it" attitude toward work.
unless you know you don't actually need those higher performers (presumably an assumption the bean counters have). People who have fewer options then would necessarily not going to ask for pay rises too. Therefore, you double whammy get both cheaper workers, as well as more obedient ones.
This. The number of otherwise useless overlays upon overlays at AWS is staggering. And quite a number of these L7 (non-sales/customer facing) overlays can be pruned without much impact to overall team/BU output/Rev. Jassy seems to be correcting some of the excess from the Bezos era.