From Amazon to Dell, Corporate America’s in-office crackdown is in full swing

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The big story

Punching the clock

At Amazon, coffee is for closers people who spend at least 2 hours in the office.

The tech giant has launched a new strategy in its ongoing fight to get employees to come to the office: tracking individual hours spent there.

Business Insider’s Eugene Kim has a report on Amazon monitoring the hours its corporate employees spend in the office. As frustrating as that sounds — one Amazon employee likened it to being treated like a high schooler — it’s not without reason.

Amazon is trying to crack down on “coffee badging,” or swiping into the office just to satisfy an in-office mandate without doing actual work there. Currently, most of Amazon’s corporate staffers must be in the office at least three times a week.

Amazon and its employees have been in an ongoing battle over its return-to-office mandate, which was first announced early last year. There were internal petitions, blocked promotions, and forced relocations as both sides have dug their heels in.

From Amazon’s perspective, the business operates better when people are in the office. A spokesperson told Eugene returning to the office meant “more energy, connection, and collaboration.”

For Amazon employees, the RTO mandates have been shrouded in mystery and confusion. And for some, the number of days they’re in the office doesn’t feel like a metric worth being judged on.

Either way, don’t expect the fight to stop anytime soon. At least one Amazon employee thinks they’ve figured out a workaround by swiping into their local Whole Foods, which is an Amazon subsidiary.

Amazon’s RTO battle isn’t the only one in Corporate America.

Computer giant Dell is butting heads with employees over its strict RTO mandate, which excludes fully remote workers from promotion.

Workers voiced their anger in Dell’s annual employee engagement survey. A key measure of the likelihood employees would recommend Dell as a great place to work dropped by double digits from last year, writes BI’s Polly Thompson.

But getting angry is really the only thing employees fighting RTO mandates can do. The white-collar job market is brutal these days. And you can forget about finding a fully remote job.

Maybe that’s why employees who still work from home have been willing to push the limit of what’s possible.

For some that means quietly taking a vacation while they are still on the clock. For others it’s outsourcing your entire job to a shadow stand-in.

3 things in markets

1. A Goldman partner details her climb to the top. Elizabeth Reed is a partner and leads a team that helps price IPOs at Goldman Sachs. In a Q&A, she reflected on the beginning of her 17-year career at the bank, where she started as an intern.
2. Take a look inside JD Vance’s investment portfolio. Former President Donald Trump’s running mate is pro-bitcoin and has stakes in more than 120 private companies. Walmart, gold, and Treasury bonds are some of his largest publicly traded investments.
3. Small caps, big returns. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee is bullish on the potential for smaller stocks as the Fed considers easing rates. The Russell 2000 Index, which tracks small-cap stocks, could rally 40% as the S&P 500 starts to slowdown, he said.

3 things in tech

1. A high-profile Utah VC has been accused of routinely making female employees feel uncomfortable. Half a dozen women told BI they faced unwanted touching from Greg Warnock, a titan of the mountain state’s tech scene, while working at the VC firm he cofounded. In June, Warnock told employees he was stepping back from day-to-day management of the company.
2. Netflix and Amazon enter a new stage of the streaming wars. The streamers are vying for brand partnerships with advertisers, which include everything from product placements to joint marketing campaigns. Though brands are eager to be featured in streaming content, not all of them are happy about the way Netflix and Amazon have courted them.
3. Musk dumps California and moves two more businesses to Texas. Elon Musk announced he’s officially moving SpaceX and X’s headquarters to Texas, citing laws in California “attacking both families and companies.” He moved Tesla to the Lone Star State in 2021.

3 things in business

1. Who gets the company in the divorce? Stephen Pasterino and Rachel Katzman’s personal breakup sparked a legal battle. But despite a saga involving a billionaire father-in-law, a 911 call, and a defamation lawsuit, the company that now calls Jennifer Aniston an advisor and owner is soaring to new heights.
2. Your friendly, neighborhood landlord is about to get a lot meaner. Mom-and-pop landlords are often held up as a contrast to the big private-equity firms that gobble up real estate. But these small, individual owners are increasingly copying the big corporations’ strategies to raise rents and profits, a foreboding sign for renters.
3. Pig roast prizes for the best AI rollouts. The private-equity firm THL uses friendly competitions and prizes to incentivize portfolio companies to implement generative AI. And the tech has helped its companies’ engineers increase productivity by up to 30%.

In other news

What’s happening today

• The Fed’s Beige Book is released.
• The mayor of Paris swims in the Seine, where Olympic swimmers are still expected to compete. Paris invested more than $1 billion to clean up the river, but rainfall keeps polluting it.
• United Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, and other companies are reporting.

The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Annie Smith, associate producer, in London. Amanda Yen, fellow, in New York.