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"We don't have a plan to require people to come back... But we're going to proceed adaptively as we learn." No plan to come back != a promise to never force em

"We don't have a plan to require people to come back... But we're going to proceed adaptively as we learn." No plan to come back != a promise to never force employees back to the office. Paired with Amazon's continued commercial real estate investments (discussed in the article), that's a massive competitive disadvantage in the remote work space. As a remote worker who plans on buying a home and putting down roots in the small, middle-of-nowhere town I live in, no way in hell that I'd accept a job offer from a company that dangles RTO over my head like this. Of course, Amazon is toxic enough to avoid anyway. But I hope other employers don't embrace this nonsense.

Closi 4y ago
Not exactly nonsense, of course employers should be able to ask people to work in an office if they think that's the best place for them and it's clear that working in an office might be part of the job during hiring.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  The version of "ask" in that sentence actually means "tell". Not setting clear boundaries about what you expect from employees is unfair, have some kind of agreement on number of days in the office, SLA for how long in advance a meeting needs to be booked for you to make it in office or whatever suits the companies needs. Failing to make a clear decision on this is unfairly punitive for people expecting to live their life in a way which they chose. Those people who are brave enough can interpret it as it's fine to buy a house far from the office. More conservative people will have to stay within the commuter belt. At least in the UK/Europe I imagine that it's not going to be long before someone ends up in court claiming constructive dismissal because an employer suddenly decided they had to work in a particular office.
  - Closi 4y ago
    Their position is pretty clear - we expect to be able to tell you to return to the office at some point in the future if we want you to work from the office. IMO it's not really unfair or ambiguous - if you want to guarantee you can always do your job remotely then don't take the job.
    - VBprogrammer 4y ago
      I disagree. Permanently reserving the right to significantly and materially change your working conditions isn't clear or fair. Perhaps for people who are still young, free and single it makes little difference but for people like me it changes everything from where we could buy a house, where our children will can go to pre-school / school and what our childcare arrangements with the grandparents look like. It's not something we can change just because some exec misses being able to rule over thier kingdom in person.
      - Closi 4y ago
        IMO it is clear (i.e. you understand what it means), but it wouldn't fit you personally because of all your other commitments and life position, and everything you listed. Which is totally fine, and means this working arrangement isn't for you, but it doesn't mean it is fundamentally unfair or that it wouldn't work for someone else (like you say - it could suit someone who isn't you). To me though, you seem to say "this is unfair because it wouldn't work for me".
        VBprogrammer 4y ago
        There is probably no point in arguing this further, though I appreciate your input and the manor in which you have given it. The thing for me is no one benefits from the lack of commitment to some way of working (and I mean a company commitment to something isn't a cast iron guarantee either). It's not like saying we're an in office company we expect you here 5 days a week; for me that would be a massive disadvantage. However, I can see that for other people that would suit them perfectly and might well have lots of advantages in terms of social life and opportunity to learn from those you work with. If a companies stance was that we are working from the office but reserve the right to work fully remote at some unidentifiable point in the future that would similarly disadvantage those people who seek out in office jobs.
        Closi 4y ago
        I think it's just an example of "different strokes for different folks". > The thing for me is no one benefits from the lack of commitment to some way of working Amazon would be the one benefiting, because it means they can bring in office working in the future without contractual changes.
bluedino 4y ago
There's been a spike in cases recently, and even my non-Amazon employer has encouraged people to stay home the last two weeks.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  On again / off again in office work is way more disruptive than an employer firmly deciding they are fully remote and furnishing people with good hardware for home offices and workspaces.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Honestly, equipment is cheap (relatively speaking). It's whether you have a good home office environment and your employer has very little control over that.
skeeter2020 4y ago
how is his statement worse than a company that says "we will never force people back to the office" then flip-flops two years from now? If you plan to physically locate in a place that requires you to work remote you're accepting risk regardless of who you work for; a CEO's comments at some conference shouldn't influence your risk mitigation.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Exactly. If your company tells you to RTO, it’s not like “yeah, but the guy was CEO at the time said in an interview N years ago that XYZ, so ‘haha, nope!’” is going to get you an exception.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - chii 4y ago
    if you care enough about WFH, you would negotiate, or quit. Probably quit, if the company is actively making this policy.
- oweiler 4y ago
  At least in Germany, 100% remote can be guaranteed via employment contract. So there is quite a difference.
colmmacc 4y ago
I'm proud to have worked at Amazon over 14 years so I guess I don't agree about the toxic part. At this point I'd be pretty surprised if we ever forced employees back to the office. Amazon has always had very autonomous culture where teams and orgs have a lot of latitude in how they work. We value results above doctrine. Andy is also a very pragmatic leader who thinks very deeply about these kinds of decisions. I think offices are more and more going to become an out of home workspace for people who prefer them (and I think we should give everyone who can commit to coming in enough an actual office) ... and an occasional collaboration hub for everyone.
- dominotw 4y ago
  > I don't agree about the toxic part. I recently rejected an offer from AWS that paid significantly more that what i currently make because of this. I have family that work there ( on visa) that were adamant that i keep looking and not accept the offer. I am wondering if i made the right decision, haha. Does aws have a higher churn rate than a typical tech company?
  - cmeacham98 4y ago
    I know several people that work (or have worked) at Amazon, and am currently going through their interview process (among other companies, but I would likely accept a good offer from Amazon). My conclusions: 1. Amazon's internal beurocracy enables good teams to be very good, and bad teams to be very bad 2. However, there is significant internal mobility, so you can move if you get stuck on a bad team 3. WFH policy is effectively left up to each individual team, so that is something to probe about during the interview 4. Everybody at Amazon is in the on-call rotation, but on-call load varies significantly by team (I know someone working on an internal tool that has literally never gotten paged) 5. Churn is roughly 6%, as that is what the infamous URA target is set to; however, you'd be surprised how many incompetent people make it past even FAANG interviews, so I wouldn't particularly worry if you're good at your job and your boss isn't an asshole Overall, I would describe Amazon as a relatively good place to work on average, but the people that have it bad have it really really bad, and hopefully they can switch to a good team.
deleted 4y ago
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iLoveOncall 4y ago
It takes my manager 2 hours and $50 of transportation cost to reach the office (one way!), and his manager is in another country where he is the only team member. My team's never going back to the office. Amazon has already made it clear it will leave the decision to individual teams, and it has been the case so far.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Until your manager changes which happens often at Amazon.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    "Until your manager changes which happens often at" many/most companies. As I wrote elsewhere, there are no guarantees in life. Maybe you're at a large stable company that pays well enough and that has a pre-COVID history of being remote friendly. In that case, you're probably in reasonable shape at least until you want to change jobs for some reason. But anything that's team dependent could change in a heartbeat. You may be able to drag your feet for a while but eventually you may have to choose between going back into an office at least part-time or finding something else.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      The odds of the same manager after a year and a half are very small
    - dickersnoodle 4y ago
      > eventually you may have to choose between going back into an office at least part-time or finding something else. Resume/LinkedIn, savings and mindset are important here. If you want the freedom to say "That's gonna be a 'no' for me, dawg." when your company decides they want everyone to RTO, you need to be mentally prepared for it as well has having a good profile/resume and enough money to tide you over. That takes planning.
onion2k 4y ago
As a remote worker who plans on buying a home and putting down roots in the small, middle-of-nowhere town I live in, no way in hell that I'd accept a job offer from a company that dangles RTO over my head like this. Amazon refusing to make a firm commitment doesn't mean you shouldn't work for them if you want a remote role. It means you should see that role as just one job in a long career that will contain many jobs. If Amazon decide they want everyone back in the office and you want to carry on working remotely, then you quit and find a new remote role. Literally any company might decide that they'd like everyone back in the office, and make moves to make it happen, no matter what they might promise today. Your current employer could announce "Yeah, we know we promised, but things have changed so now we're unpromising." A promise from your employer means very little. My career advice to anyone looking for a job is to find what you need now and to be prepared to find a new role when your needs change. The same is true if your needs remain the same and the company changes around you.
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Good point. But I don't think it's a good idea to build a career on shifting sands -- if you know that you want to work remotely, it would be silly to accept a job at Amazon when you know they could force you back into the office at any time and you can't do that. If the job market significantly cools, or you like your current project and coworkers, it would be a shame to go through another hiring process because of an external decision like that. If they make a great offer, and you're really excited about the opportunity, though... could be worthwhile. Just another factor to consider in the process.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    And that all-remote startup could run into headwinds and run out of funding. There are larger companies that almost certainly have a longer history of being more remote-friendly than most, if not all, of the West Coast companies. But there are no guarantees anywhere.
    - jraph 4y ago
      I agree with both of you. One can always get a job from somewhere if there are interested and leave if the expectations are not there anymore. And on the other hand, better join somewhere you have more trust that the expectations will be met in the long term. I'm currently remotely working for a company where the remote part of my hire was a sine qua none condition. Everybody knows this. We are several people for whom coming to the "back" to office (to the extends that coming to the office always was exceptional) is not practical. During onboarding, we are told that the company will help you and find accommodations if you move to another country (though if we can choose a country where there already are people working for the company it would be better). The company has been already, de facto, split in two countries (in which there are offices). The company recently bought a smaller office because people didn't come as often / as many. The company actually could not handle everybody coming to the office at the same time anymore. At this point, a "everybody in the office from now one" would be highly unexpected. Someone mentioned contracts, indeed my home is one of the two places where I can work from. And actually they don't care, I could work from anywhere as long as I'm reachable and I can work in good conditions as long as they are concerned. Of course, if I hurt myself and I'm not at one of the two places, that would be on me, insurance-wise.
jkingsbery 4y ago
I've worked at Amazon a little over 6 years now. I have not found it toxic. I had the good fortune of joining Amazon working under a director who had been my manager at a previous company, so I knew what he was like going in, and when I decided to switch teams I worked for someone else I already knew from around Amazon. I think it's like joining any other company - as the team interviews you, you also want to be interviewing the people for the team you'll be joining to see if it's what you want. Different pockets of the company have different trade-offs and incentives. The on-call burden on some teams is higher. When I've seen this happen under good management, the managers work to do different things to relieve the burden (such as spending time working on tech debt, improving test automation, and so on). Some of the aspects of Amazon's culture that I hear criticized often come with unfair comparisons. No one likes getting paged at 1:00 AM, and that's a thing that can happen to you at Amazon. In my personal experience though, I got paged at weird hours much more often working at start-ups. Amazon at least (again, generally, in the parts of the company I've worked) has a healthy culture around continuing to improve operations, preparing people for on-call, and to address any page events so that particular reason for getting paged doesn't happen again. (I'm just offering my own opinion, I don't speak for Amazon in any official capacity.)
- ianai 4y ago
  I think it’s time to fight back against the anecdotes against whatever point. There’ve just been too much bad faith and misdeeds done in service of internet misinformation. As you said, your anecdote isn’t worth much. Much less since you’re posting semi-anonymously in an Internet forum. With how job descriptions can be unilaterally rewritten by corporations at will even having a stance of remote work in a job description shouldn’t be taken as solid, unshakable truth. Edit-trust that corporations will use you exactly as far as it benefits them and in the most exploitive nature they want.
  - jkingsbery 4y ago
    > Much less since you’re posting semi-anonymously in an Internet forum. I mean, I don't make it that hard for people to figure out who I am if that's a thing they care to do. But I think you're right about the larger part - it's hard to trust Corporations. As I said in my case, and what I advise others to do, is rather than trusting a company (big or small), try to find individuals there you can trust (either, early in your time there, or ideally find someone that you already trust that happens to be there).
LightG 4y ago
Could be worse. The whole conversation around WFH is what's becomme toxic. Screw any CEO's on here reading this who are forcing their workers to return without considering what is best (for the business and for the employee).
- brandon272 4y ago
  > Screw any CEO’s on here reading this You’re right, the conversation has become toxic and your comment is a great example of that. It’s also not in the spirit of HN’s rules.
  - LightG 4y ago
    Do you get what you give? Or give what you get?
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
In my experience, an important chunk of the experience depends on who your boss is, another chunk depends on the company itself. I experienced both "toxic" and "fantastic" work environments at AWS, during my 6 years tenure. I'm not surprised other can find Amazon "toxic", but I know that there are good people there, and good teams, and good job opportunities. Also, I used to pretty much work ~90% remote, back in 2008-2014. My boss(es) never had anything against that. The "remote work" policy is influenced by the company, but it also depends on your boss and team. I think your assessment is way too polarized against working at Amazon. My 0.02.
itsoktocry 4y ago
>As a remote worker who plans on buying a home and putting down roots in the small, middle-of-nowhere town I live in, no way in hell that I'd accept a job offer from a company that dangles RTO over my head like this Well, they can be honest about it, "we have no plan...", or they could potentially lie or be ignorant about it, like your current employer might be, and change their mind down the road. I'm also a remote worker living in a small town. But I'm a realist as far as understanding that this might not last forever. Perhaps it turns out there's a competitive advantage to office work after all? If so, can't blame companies for wanting to return to those conditions.
masterof0 4y ago
That's exactly my position, in my case my team is fully remote (a niche little team in AWS), I am not sure if I want to buy a place where I live either, a team reorg, or leadership change can destroy my life plans in a minute. I think the solution is a) Start your own online business, or b) Find a fully remote job, which for what I have seen so far, smaller companies that offer remote opportunities , don pay as much as I make now. Does anyone knows any fully remote company that pay FANG salaries?
letsgo39 4y ago
that's absolutely your right. But don't try to force what works for on everyone, or confuse your desire for what the market overall will do. There will be plenty of remote work but the articles about death of in office are exaggerated. In a recent informal poll of a top VC startup CEOs (via a private mailing list) many were bragging about how they went back to the office and the benefits they are seeing as a result. However, this is an unpopular opinion you won't see on twitter. Finally, if someone can hire you in the middle of nowhere they can also hire folks in South America which is a huge engineering demographic and currently underpaid. Same timezone. They can also more easily hire people in different timezones like India or Eastern Europe. Because of that, I do expect over time salaries of in person to diverge from salaries of remote work. Remote work may still be a great value prop for people like you, but as I said don't pretend everyone is moving to remote work or expect the same benefits as those living in major urban hubs and showing up for work in person.
grimjack00 4y ago
> No plan to come back != a promise to never force employees back to the office That doesn't apply solely to Amazon, or even the rest of FAANG. _Any_ company, even those currently remote-first or remote-only, are just one CEO change away from an open-plan office.
scarface74 4y ago
Amazon has over 1 million people. Different departments are different. My department (Professional Services) is permanently remote, I’ve never consistently worked over 40 hours a week accept when all hell broke lose because of Covid. I manage customers expectations so I don’t overwork myself.
gfdsgfdsf 4y ago
cant you probably pay off that house with like 1 year of Amazon RSUs?
scarface74 4y ago
I’ve worked at 8 jobs in 25 years and 6 since 2008. Anytime that a job stopped meeting my needs and desires, I changed jobs. Any company is just a means for me to exchange labor for money. The last thing I stress out about is if a job isn’t going to meet my needs some day in the future. I wwas initially contacted by a recruiter at Amazon Retail about an SDE position in mid 2020. The recruiter said that the expectation was that I would relocate after “Covid was over”. I was about to say no thanks and keep working as your bog standard enterprise dev with my big house in the burbs in the southeast. We kept talking and she suggested with my background I apply for a fully remote position in AWS Professional Services and the rest is history. But in the grand scheme of things. It’s one of many jobs I’ve had.
steenreem 4y ago
I think that considering Amazon, a company with independent business units in completely different business (retail and cloud computing) as an entity with a single personality is about as accurate as thinking everyone from the same country has the same personality. It's not as if the small group of people at the top determine everything else about the company: they only hire the people directly below them, and their influence decreases the further down you go. I think the larger determinant of a company is the business it is in, since that determines at large what people the company is attractive to and which it tries to hire.

Closi 4y ago

Not exactly nonsense, of course employers should be able to ask people to work in an office if they think that's the best place for them and it's clear that working in an office might be part of the job during hiring.

VBprogrammer 4y ago
The version of "ask" in that sentence actually means "tell". Not setting clear boundaries about what you expect from employees is unfair, have some kind of agreement on number of days in the office, SLA for how long in advance a meeting needs to be booked for you to make it in office or whatever suits the companies needs. Failing to make a clear decision on this is unfairly punitive for people expecting to live their life in a way which they chose. Those people who are brave enough can interpret it as it's fine to buy a house far from the office. More conservative people will have to stay within the commuter belt. At least in the UK/Europe I imagine that it's not going to be long before someone ends up in court claiming constructive dismissal because an employer suddenly decided they had to work in a particular office.
- Closi 4y ago
  Their position is pretty clear - we expect to be able to tell you to return to the office at some point in the future if we want you to work from the office. IMO it's not really unfair or ambiguous - if you want to guarantee you can always do your job remotely then don't take the job.
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    I disagree. Permanently reserving the right to significantly and materially change your working conditions isn't clear or fair. Perhaps for people who are still young, free and single it makes little difference but for people like me it changes everything from where we could buy a house, where our children will can go to pre-school / school and what our childcare arrangements with the grandparents look like. It's not something we can change just because some exec misses being able to rule over thier kingdom in person.
    - Closi 4y ago
      IMO it is clear (i.e. you understand what it means), but it wouldn't fit you personally because of all your other commitments and life position, and everything you listed. Which is totally fine, and means this working arrangement isn't for you, but it doesn't mean it is fundamentally unfair or that it wouldn't work for someone else (like you say - it could suit someone who isn't you). To me though, you seem to say "this is unfair because it wouldn't work for me".
      - VBprogrammer 4y ago
        There is probably no point in arguing this further, though I appreciate your input and the manor in which you have given it. The thing for me is no one benefits from the lack of commitment to some way of working (and I mean a company commitment to something isn't a cast iron guarantee either). It's not like saying we're an in office company we expect you here 5 days a week; for me that would be a massive disadvantage. However, I can see that for other people that would suit them perfectly and might well have lots of advantages in terms of social life and opportunity to learn from those you work with. If a companies stance was that we are working from the office but reserve the right to work fully remote at some unidentifiable point in the future that would similarly disadvantage those people who seek out in office jobs.
        Closi 4y ago
        I think it's just an example of "different strokes for different folks". > The thing for me is no one benefits from the lack of commitment to some way of working Amazon would be the one benefiting, because it means they can bring in office working in the future without contractual changes.

bluedino 4y ago

There's been a spike in cases recently, and even my non-Amazon employer has encouraged people to stay home the last two weeks.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
On again / off again in office work is way more disruptive than an employer firmly deciding they are fully remote and furnishing people with good hardware for home offices and workspaces.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Honestly, equipment is cheap (relatively speaking). It's whether you have a good home office environment and your employer has very little control over that.

skeeter2020 4y ago

how is his statement worse than a company that says "we will never force people back to the office" then flip-flops two years from now? If you plan to physically locate in a place that requires you to work remote you're accepting risk regardless of who you work for; a CEO's comments at some conference shouldn't influence your risk mitigation.

sokoloff 4y ago
Exactly. If your company tells you to RTO, it’s not like “yeah, but the guy was CEO at the time said in an interview N years ago that XYZ, so ‘haha, nope!’” is going to get you an exception.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chii 4y ago
  if you care enough about WFH, you would negotiate, or quit. Probably quit, if the company is actively making this policy.
oweiler 4y ago
At least in Germany, 100% remote can be guaranteed via employment contract. So there is quite a difference.

colmmacc 4y ago

I'm proud to have worked at Amazon over 14 years so I guess I don't agree about the toxic part. At this point I'd be pretty surprised if we ever forced employees back to the office. Amazon has always had very autonomous culture where teams and orgs have a lot of latitude in how they work. We value results above doctrine. Andy is also a very pragmatic leader who thinks very deeply about these kinds of decisions. I think offices are more and more going to become an out of home workspace for people who prefer them (and I think we should give everyone who can commit to coming in enough an actual office) ... and an occasional collaboration hub for everyone.

dominotw 4y ago
> I don't agree about the toxic part. I recently rejected an offer from AWS that paid significantly more that what i currently make because of this. I have family that work there ( on visa) that were adamant that i keep looking and not accept the offer. I am wondering if i made the right decision, haha. Does aws have a higher churn rate than a typical tech company?
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  I know several people that work (or have worked) at Amazon, and am currently going through their interview process (among other companies, but I would likely accept a good offer from Amazon). My conclusions: 1. Amazon's internal beurocracy enables good teams to be very good, and bad teams to be very bad 2. However, there is significant internal mobility, so you can move if you get stuck on a bad team 3. WFH policy is effectively left up to each individual team, so that is something to probe about during the interview 4. Everybody at Amazon is in the on-call rotation, but on-call load varies significantly by team (I know someone working on an internal tool that has literally never gotten paged) 5. Churn is roughly 6%, as that is what the infamous URA target is set to; however, you'd be surprised how many incompetent people make it past even FAANG interviews, so I wouldn't particularly worry if you're good at your job and your boss isn't an asshole Overall, I would describe Amazon as a relatively good place to work on average, but the people that have it bad have it really really bad, and hopefully they can switch to a good team.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

iLoveOncall 4y ago

It takes my manager 2 hours and $50 of transportation cost to reach the office (one way!), and his manager is in another country where he is the only team member. My team's never going back to the office. Amazon has already made it clear it will leave the decision to individual teams, and it has been the case so far.

ipaddr 4y ago
Until your manager changes which happens often at Amazon.
- ghaff 4y ago
  "Until your manager changes which happens often at" many/most companies. As I wrote elsewhere, there are no guarantees in life. Maybe you're at a large stable company that pays well enough and that has a pre-COVID history of being remote friendly. In that case, you're probably in reasonable shape at least until you want to change jobs for some reason. But anything that's team dependent could change in a heartbeat. You may be able to drag your feet for a while but eventually you may have to choose between going back into an office at least part-time or finding something else.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    The odds of the same manager after a year and a half are very small
  - dickersnoodle 4y ago
    > eventually you may have to choose between going back into an office at least part-time or finding something else. Resume/LinkedIn, savings and mindset are important here. If you want the freedom to say "That's gonna be a 'no' for me, dawg." when your company decides they want everyone to RTO, you need to be mentally prepared for it as well has having a good profile/resume and enough money to tide you over. That takes planning.

onion2k 4y ago

As a remote worker who plans on buying a home and putting down roots in the small, middle-of-nowhere town I live in, no way in hell that I'd accept a job offer from a company that dangles RTO over my head like this. Amazon refusing to make a firm commitment doesn't mean you shouldn't work for them if you want a remote role. It means you should see that role as just one job in a long career that will contain many jobs. If Amazon decide they want everyone back in the office and you want to carry on working remotely, then you quit and find a new remote role. Literally any company might decide that they'd like everyone back in the office, and make moves to make it happen, no matter what they might promise today. Your current employer could announce "Yeah, we know we promised, but things have changed so now we're unpromising." A promise from your employer means very little. My career advice to anyone looking for a job is to find what you need now and to be prepared to find a new role when your needs change. The same is true if your needs remain the same and the company changes around you.

dont__panic 4y ago
Good point. But I don't think it's a good idea to build a career on shifting sands -- if you know that you want to work remotely, it would be silly to accept a job at Amazon when you know they could force you back into the office at any time and you can't do that. If the job market significantly cools, or you like your current project and coworkers, it would be a shame to go through another hiring process because of an external decision like that. If they make a great offer, and you're really excited about the opportunity, though... could be worthwhile. Just another factor to consider in the process.
- ghaff 4y ago
  And that all-remote startup could run into headwinds and run out of funding. There are larger companies that almost certainly have a longer history of being more remote-friendly than most, if not all, of the West Coast companies. But there are no guarantees anywhere.
  - jraph 4y ago
    I agree with both of you. One can always get a job from somewhere if there are interested and leave if the expectations are not there anymore. And on the other hand, better join somewhere you have more trust that the expectations will be met in the long term. I'm currently remotely working for a company where the remote part of my hire was a sine qua none condition. Everybody knows this. We are several people for whom coming to the "back" to office (to the extends that coming to the office always was exceptional) is not practical. During onboarding, we are told that the company will help you and find accommodations if you move to another country (though if we can choose a country where there already are people working for the company it would be better). The company has been already, de facto, split in two countries (in which there are offices). The company recently bought a smaller office because people didn't come as often / as many. The company actually could not handle everybody coming to the office at the same time anymore. At this point, a "everybody in the office from now one" would be highly unexpected. Someone mentioned contracts, indeed my home is one of the two places where I can work from. And actually they don't care, I could work from anywhere as long as I'm reachable and I can work in good conditions as long as they are concerned. Of course, if I hurt myself and I'm not at one of the two places, that would be on me, insurance-wise.

jkingsbery 4y ago

I've worked at Amazon a little over 6 years now. I have not found it toxic. I had the good fortune of joining Amazon working under a director who had been my manager at a previous company, so I knew what he was like going in, and when I decided to switch teams I worked for someone else I already knew from around Amazon. I think it's like joining any other company - as the team interviews you, you also want to be interviewing the people for the team you'll be joining to see if it's what you want. Different pockets of the company have different trade-offs and incentives. The on-call burden on some teams is higher. When I've seen this happen under good management, the managers work to do different things to relieve the burden (such as spending time working on tech debt, improving test automation, and so on). Some of the aspects of Amazon's culture that I hear criticized often come with unfair comparisons. No one likes getting paged at 1:00 AM, and that's a thing that can happen to you at Amazon. In my personal experience though, I got paged at weird hours much more often working at start-ups. Amazon at least (again, generally, in the parts of the company I've worked) has a healthy culture around continuing to improve operations, preparing people for on-call, and to address any page events so that particular reason for getting paged doesn't happen again. (I'm just offering my own opinion, I don't speak for Amazon in any official capacity.)

ianai 4y ago
I think it’s time to fight back against the anecdotes against whatever point. There’ve just been too much bad faith and misdeeds done in service of internet misinformation. As you said, your anecdote isn’t worth much. Much less since you’re posting semi-anonymously in an Internet forum. With how job descriptions can be unilaterally rewritten by corporations at will even having a stance of remote work in a job description shouldn’t be taken as solid, unshakable truth. Edit-trust that corporations will use you exactly as far as it benefits them and in the most exploitive nature they want.
- jkingsbery 4y ago
  > Much less since you’re posting semi-anonymously in an Internet forum. I mean, I don't make it that hard for people to figure out who I am if that's a thing they care to do. But I think you're right about the larger part - it's hard to trust Corporations. As I said in my case, and what I advise others to do, is rather than trusting a company (big or small), try to find individuals there you can trust (either, early in your time there, or ideally find someone that you already trust that happens to be there).

LightG 4y ago

Could be worse. The whole conversation around WFH is what's becomme toxic. Screw any CEO's on here reading this who are forcing their workers to return without considering what is best (for the business and for the employee).

brandon272 4y ago
> Screw any CEO’s on here reading this You’re right, the conversation has become toxic and your comment is a great example of that. It’s also not in the spirit of HN’s rules.
- LightG 4y ago
  Do you get what you give? Or give what you get?

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

In my experience, an important chunk of the experience depends on who your boss is, another chunk depends on the company itself. I experienced both "toxic" and "fantastic" work environments at AWS, during my 6 years tenure. I'm not surprised other can find Amazon "toxic", but I know that there are good people there, and good teams, and good job opportunities. Also, I used to pretty much work ~90% remote, back in 2008-2014. My boss(es) never had anything against that. The "remote work" policy is influenced by the company, but it also depends on your boss and team. I think your assessment is way too polarized against working at Amazon. My 0.02.

itsoktocry 4y ago

>As a remote worker who plans on buying a home and putting down roots in the small, middle-of-nowhere town I live in, no way in hell that I'd accept a job offer from a company that dangles RTO over my head like this Well, they can be honest about it, "we have no plan...", or they could potentially lie or be ignorant about it, like your current employer might be, and change their mind down the road. I'm also a remote worker living in a small town. But I'm a realist as far as understanding that this might not last forever. Perhaps it turns out there's a competitive advantage to office work after all? If so, can't blame companies for wanting to return to those conditions.

masterof0 4y ago

That's exactly my position, in my case my team is fully remote (a niche little team in AWS), I am not sure if I want to buy a place where I live either, a team reorg, or leadership change can destroy my life plans in a minute. I think the solution is a) Start your own online business, or b) Find a fully remote job, which for what I have seen so far, smaller companies that offer remote opportunities , don pay as much as I make now. Does anyone knows any fully remote company that pay FANG salaries?

letsgo39 4y ago

that's absolutely your right. But don't try to force what works for on everyone, or confuse your desire for what the market overall will do. There will be plenty of remote work but the articles about death of in office are exaggerated. In a recent informal poll of a top VC startup CEOs (via a private mailing list) many were bragging about how they went back to the office and the benefits they are seeing as a result. However, this is an unpopular opinion you won't see on twitter. Finally, if someone can hire you in the middle of nowhere they can also hire folks in South America which is a huge engineering demographic and currently underpaid. Same timezone. They can also more easily hire people in different timezones like India or Eastern Europe. Because of that, I do expect over time salaries of in person to diverge from salaries of remote work. Remote work may still be a great value prop for people like you, but as I said don't pretend everyone is moving to remote work or expect the same benefits as those living in major urban hubs and showing up for work in person.

grimjack00 4y ago

> No plan to come back != a promise to never force employees back to the office That doesn't apply solely to Amazon, or even the rest of FAANG. _Any_ company, even those currently remote-first or remote-only, are just one CEO change away from an open-plan office.

scarface74 4y ago

Amazon has over 1 million people. Different departments are different. My department (Professional Services) is permanently remote, I’ve never consistently worked over 40 hours a week accept when all hell broke lose because of Covid. I manage customers expectations so I don’t overwork myself.

gfdsgfdsf 4y ago

cant you probably pay off that house with like 1 year of Amazon RSUs?

scarface74 4y ago

I’ve worked at 8 jobs in 25 years and 6 since 2008. Anytime that a job stopped meeting my needs and desires, I changed jobs. Any company is just a means for me to exchange labor for money. The last thing I stress out about is if a job isn’t going to meet my needs some day in the future. I wwas initially contacted by a recruiter at Amazon Retail about an SDE position in mid 2020. The recruiter said that the expectation was that I would relocate after “Covid was over”. I was about to say no thanks and keep working as your bog standard enterprise dev with my big house in the burbs in the southeast. We kept talking and she suggested with my background I apply for a fully remote position in AWS Professional Services and the rest is history. But in the grand scheme of things. It’s one of many jobs I’ve had.

steenreem 4y ago

I think that considering Amazon, a company with independent business units in completely different business (retail and cloud computing) as an entity with a single personality is about as accurate as thinking everyone from the same country has the same personality. It's not as if the small group of people at the top determine everything else about the company: they only hire the people directly below them, and their influence decreases the further down you go. I think the larger determinant of a company is the business it is in, since that determines at large what people the company is attractive to and which it tries to hire.