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Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Agencies, Amazon, 'Ghost Town' Studios: How WFH is Killing Hollywood
theankler.com: When Amazon announced last month that employees will be required to return to the office five days a week starting in January, one Amazon Studios employee saw the news and quipped to a friend, “There goes my Friday golf game.”
My parents currently are facing this same problem at their 9-5 jobs as well. They’re realizing that the work day is more productive and decisions get made more when everyone is in the office. I don’t think, like the article suggests, that it’s too late to go back to the way it was back in 2019 before COVID. However, I do see why everyone is so afraid to go back to a full time workweek schedule. Nowadays people have considered themselves even better at multitasking because working from home doesn’t necessarily mean someone is sitting at their desk at home from 9-5 everyday. My internship this past summer was all remote, I had no office to go into and I really struggled to focus on work and keep myself motivated. I can see how for some people this may be beneficial to their working style, but when it comes to television and film, where fast paced decisions are made hourly, I think it’s important that the work schedule starts to get rid of working from home, for the sake of the productions.
I'm a little shocked that some companies are still using the work-from-home system, especially well-known companies like Amazon. Before the epidemic, there was a lot of educational talk, such as we let children learn from home. But I feel that such voices have collapsed without attacking. The experience of not being able to discipline themselves makes students want to go to school in person. Similar to the film and theater industries, the effectiveness of face-to-face work cannot be replaced by online work at all. As the article says, this art form requires a high level of collaboration. You never know how much time we waste on saying "my signal is bad" and "your voice is so intermittent." So my intention is to set the preference for face-to-face work to certain inevitable situations where we need some online work. On the other hand, how these companies can eliminate complaints may be another challenging issue. We should definitely give all employees some buffer time to get back to their old ways of working.
Having the debate on if working from home versus working in the office is better for all employees is an interesting one as when I think about it I can see many scenarios where all the various stages of being in person and remote would be beneficial to separate groups of people. Office culture is good for people and societies to have as there have been studies to show that a lack of that culture and relationship is a large reason why being unemployed is detrimental to an individual’s well being. On the other hand there are a lot of things that can go wrong with being in person, such as needing to move states to work and suddenly having a higher cost of living, commute times taking up a large amount of time, or being constantly watched and judged due to the amount of people all in a room at once. Overall I do think that working in person is more beneficial to the greater population but also that companies should still give consideration to those who want to work from home and still can get work on time while doing so, rather than having a stark stance on one way or another.
My mother was working from home before covid even hit so my household did not have to accommodate much once lockdown was in full effect. This has led me to understand that being online does not really change the amount of work employees are doing. They might be spending less time physically focusing on work but that equates to the time procrastinating in the office. Keeping some of your employees online also allows a company to work with people from all over the world rather than just one area. Amazon is a little different because they are such a large company capable of having offices all over but that also means each office needs a way to connect with each other. This connection is often seen through the same softwares that allows employees to work from home. So if this technology is going to be used no matter if employees are fully in person or online why not keep the online option open to employees.
4 comments:
My parents currently are facing this same problem at their 9-5 jobs as well. They’re realizing that the work day is more productive and decisions get made more when everyone is in the office. I don’t think, like the article suggests, that it’s too late to go back to the way it was back in 2019 before COVID. However, I do see why everyone is so afraid to go back to a full time workweek schedule. Nowadays people have considered themselves even better at multitasking because working from home doesn’t necessarily mean someone is sitting at their desk at home from 9-5 everyday. My internship this past summer was all remote, I had no office to go into and I really struggled to focus on work and keep myself motivated. I can see how for some people this may be beneficial to their working style, but when it comes to television and film, where fast paced decisions are made hourly, I think it’s important that the work schedule starts to get rid of working from home, for the sake of the productions.
I'm a little shocked that some companies are still using the work-from-home system, especially well-known companies like Amazon. Before the epidemic, there was a lot of educational talk, such as we let children learn from home. But I feel that such voices have collapsed without attacking. The experience of not being able to discipline themselves makes students want to go to school in person. Similar to the film and theater industries, the effectiveness of face-to-face work cannot be replaced by online work at all. As the article says, this art form requires a high level of collaboration. You never know how much time we waste on saying "my signal is bad" and "your voice is so intermittent." So my intention is to set the preference for face-to-face work to certain inevitable situations where we need some online work. On the other hand, how these companies can eliminate complaints may be another challenging issue. We should definitely give all employees some buffer time to get back to their old ways of working.
Having the debate on if working from home versus working in the office is better for all employees is an interesting one as when I think about it I can see many scenarios where all the various stages of being in person and remote would be beneficial to separate groups of people. Office culture is good for people and societies to have as there have been studies to show that a lack of that culture and relationship is a large reason why being unemployed is detrimental to an individual’s well being. On the other hand there are a lot of things that can go wrong with being in person, such as needing to move states to work and suddenly having a higher cost of living, commute times taking up a large amount of time, or being constantly watched and judged due to the amount of people all in a room at once. Overall I do think that working in person is more beneficial to the greater population but also that companies should still give consideration to those who want to work from home and still can get work on time while doing so, rather than having a stark stance on one way or another.
My mother was working from home before covid even hit so my household did not have to accommodate much once lockdown was in full effect. This has led me to understand that being online does not really change the amount of work employees are doing. They might be spending less time physically focusing on work but that equates to the time procrastinating in the office. Keeping some of your employees online also allows a company to work with people from all over the world rather than just one area. Amazon is a little different because they are such a large company capable of having offices all over but that also means each office needs a way to connect with each other. This connection is often seen through the same softwares that allows employees to work from home. So if this technology is going to be used no matter if employees are fully in person or online why not keep the online option open to employees.
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