15 ms·

Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

226 points by mmurph211 4y ago

xt00 4y ago
If people being in the office is somehow more valuable, then pay them more than remote workers and see what fraction want to be remote vs non remote. Capitalist solution to the problem for all the hardcore “let the market find the solution”.
x86x87 4y ago
this RTO mandates are getting old. Do people, in general, believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started?
- morelinks 4y ago
  Yes. The biggest companies, with the most political power, believe just that. I pray smaller companies make themselves more competitive by offering WFH but that’s yet to be seen.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    hah. i have some bad news for them. the cat is out of the bag. they may be able to force people to do things in the short term but long term they are going to become obsolete.
- patrick451 4y ago
  It's sort of ironic for Amazon to push for a returning to pre-pandemic norms, given that the pandemic was such a boon to their retail business and stock price.
  - exhibitapp 4y ago
    this was due to low interest rates and savings/stimmies not anything about remote work
    - whoisthemachine 4y ago
      Really, it had nothing to do with people ordering even more online for home delivery than prior to the pandemic? You don't think that folks might continue ordering more home delivery if they aren't out driving every day? References for the other reasons for their growth can be found with even the slightest effort. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=amazon+pandemic+growth+cause&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=amazon+pandemic+growth+cause&... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/technology/amazons-profits-triple.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/technology/amazons-profit... [2] https://fortune.com/2021/10/18/amazon-massive-growth-covid-pandemic-8-charts/ https://fortune.com/2021/10/18/amazon-massive-growth-covid-p... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/how-amazon-managed-the-coronavirus-crisis-and-came-out-stronger.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/how-amazon-managed-the-coron... (non-paywall, yay!)
      - ghaff 4y ago
        For some things like delivered food, delivery is a luxury. However, I fully expect that during the pandemic people discovered a lot of things that they could have picked up in the next couple of days in "only" 25 minutes or so can actually be ordered from Amazon at competitive prices. I ordered from Amazon a lot pre-pandemic but added various random stuff instead of going to, say, Home Depot.
- turtlebits 4y ago
  The complaints are also getting old. If you were hired with the expectation that you go in the office, RTO is an eventual expected outcome. I do see the psychology of taking away what many see as a "benefit", but it's really just going back to the norm.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    Hmm... the complaints are getting old? I guess the beatings need to continue until morale improves. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/traditiondemotivator_grande.jpeg https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/traditi... Hard disagree with "If you were hired with the expectation that you go in the office, RTO is an eventual expected outcome." Ask yourself why do we need to RTO? Who needs the RTO?
    - eurticket 4y ago
      we should all read between the lines, this big push is from those that invest in the office buildings and surrounding businesses chains, and are hurting from lower proximity of consumers. Stop making your own meals, start consuming from their fast food chain down the block from the building theyre leasing to your company. Stop for gas and buy from their other investments close by. Need people to stop being so self sufficient at home, and suck the rich tit. We are so desperate for the help :( /$
      - x86x87 4y ago
        i agree that things are shifting. forcing everyone to the old routine that is worse for them, worse for the environment and worse for the tech corporations that are peddling this is insane. Gas? If we consume less gas that's good right? Less wear an tear on the cars? Good Not wasting 1-2 hours commuting? Great Having a quiet place where you can gather your thoughts and do knowledge work? Amazing But what about the hard working real estate companies that are going to be impacted by this? What about the small businesses? What about them? Close shop and/or figure out something else that works. Why does everyone have to have a crappier life for you to continue with your crap practices?
- ye-olde-sysrq 4y ago
  I think the biggest wins from covid will just be that we did a massive 3-year WFH experiment and overall it went just fine. Great, even, if you account for the fact that it wasn't just a WFH test in isolation, it was accompanied by a generation-defining negative psychological and virulogical event. We all went fully remote for three years during a terrible humanitarian crisis and nothing exploded (except inflation but that's not our fault)
  - piva00 4y ago
    Nothing exploded while most companies had no idea whatsoever on how to implement it properly. Things worked mostly fine even though it was through a panic emergency plan that was completely winged due to sheer necessity. Imagine if it was a plan properly designed and implemented? All this bullshit of RTO is getting old for me exactly because of this point, nothing was done in what would be even close to the optimal way for working remotely and things are still going ok...
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Some parts of it were coupled with parents trying to homeschool their kids (for younger kids, at least, the parental attention required for remote school was high enough it wasn't too far off from simply home-schooling) while "working". Plus the extra stress of, you know, the whole being-in-a-pandemic thing. I recall some grumbling in those days about remote worker productivity and it's like, yeah, no shit, daycares and schools are all closed and households are all dual-income because game theory and zero-sum competition for housing/schools, so.... Those parts ought to be disregarded for any kind of lessons-learned from this, as far as the broader viability of WFH. 2020 through early 2021, at the very least, had some strong confounding factors going on which, one hopes, will not be common in the future.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    I don't think it went "just fine". It looked like companies were doing well because we were in a bubble market. I definitely feel, and observe, a noticeable decrease in productivity and speed of execution compared to where my org was a few years ago. I know others have noticed it too, including management. On top of all that, companies are expected to run leaner than before because now that the bubble is over, apparently everyone remembered that having a sane balance sheet and making a profit are things that matter. So now we want per-worker productivity to increase because we can't hire as many people. The basic social contract of work has not changed. Tech workers have better pay and benefits than almost anyone else, and we should not be whiny about this. Most workers in other fields had to return to the office too.
- whoisthemachine 4y ago
  I'm not certain about that, but I do think companies believe this is a simple way to kill two birds with one stone: 1. Trim headcount. 2. Keep the most "loyal" employees (or those who need the job the most and will say yes to anything, which is a double-sided sword).
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    3. Separate the wheat from the chaff. The chaff come to the office.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    haha. Because loyal == high performing. That is how it works. There is absolutely no way that high performing employees that can get a job by crossing the street will ever think about jumping ship because of the shitty manner they are treated.
    - Someone1234 4y ago
      These companies have no accurate way of measuring performance anyway.
      - VBprogrammer 4y ago
        I don't know of you are making a judgement there but I think it's important to point out that there is practically no useful way of measuring performance in our industry; it's not a company problem. Some of the most useful employees I've met probably produced less than the most junior developer in tangible assets.
      - tkiolp4 4y ago
        It’s not about being mathematically perfect about performance. In any given team, area, organization one can easily point out who are the good ones.
    - whoisthemachine 4y ago
      They may not be after high performing right now, they may just want the ones who won't or can't cross the street.
- geodel 4y ago
  I mean unless proven otherwise most companies do believe that. What happened to that Vote with your feet / vote with your wallet thing?
  - c4nc3ld 4y ago
    It was rebranded as cancel culture and demonized Until management can prove being in office drives productivity and all that energy was not merely fueled by lots of people around each other being just as useless, it’s a bias to maintain power and privilege The economic philosophy of our society is no more a sacrosanct truth than religion Office life is a social prison that enables their expropriation of agency and outputs
- CodeWriter23 4y ago
  Anecdata: been doing it since 5/15/2020. With best effort “social distancing” up until a few months back. As a layman, in my unprofessional opinion, people in generally good health should not perceive the office as a death trap.
- throwaway345908 4y ago
  >Do people, in general, believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started? Why not?
- akira2501 4y ago
  > believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started? Yes. We built it that way for a specific reason.
  - paxys 4y ago
    What did we build exactly? The current model of tech open offices originated in the early 2000s. Before that we had cubicles, starting around the 60s and 70s. And something else before that. Office buildings themselves don't go all that far back, maybe a couple hundred years. None of these is the "right" model. We will continue to evolve to what suits the present work culture and requirements, and WFH is where we have reached for now.
    - akira2501 4y ago
      > What did we build exactly? A shared workspace with centrally located and maintained resources. This allows for greater overall efficiency but allows the organization as a whole to quickly dedicate resources to new and emergent problems. In theory this should save money and allow the company to successfully capture and serve more business. > None of these is the "right" model. There is no "right" model. Everything is a question of compromises. Work from home has some employee benefits, but has higher direct and abstract costs for the employer. > And WFH is where we have reached for now. This is understandable, companies have not been particularly cognizant of sharing the rewards of the above configuration with their employees. To me, though, this seems like an opportunity wasted to correct this.
      - VBprogrammer 4y ago
        > Work from home has some employee benefits, but has higher direct and abstract costs for the employer. Ah come on now. Instead of my employer paying for a space for me to sit in central London, the electricity and internet connection, I pay for those things myself. Instead of wasting time on a train I get a bit of work done before most people are online. The only costs are in the crocodile tears of middle management who cannot advance themselves simply by growing their headcount.
- goostavos 4y ago
  All you need are enough people to fall in line. Amazon is filled with workers on visas. At least from the subset I've talked to, this isn't the hill they plan to die on. "Come in or fuck off back to {home country}" is a pretty strong bargaining chip. For me, getting fired would mean taking a few months off to leisurely reset, then slowly getting back on the leetcode grind, and then trying to find a new remote job. Drawing lines in the sand is much easier when "uproot your entire life" isn't on the table.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    I agree. This is where the people that can draw lines in the sand are even more important.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      I will cancel prime and hit them where it hurts. Who will join me?
      - x86x87 4y ago
        Cancelled prime eons ago. What else?
        burna_aws_acct 4y ago
        Tracker and Ad-blockers, and SEO to discard Amazon results (e.g., tinyurl.com/brave-googles-amzn-free-search).
- spacemadness 4y ago
  Return to the status quo like the last three years didn’t happen.
wonderwonder 4y ago
Kind of think people not being able to return to the office is the goal. It lets them reduce head count without the need for severance. Kind of like in office space when they just stopped paying the guy. I did laugh at the part about being the world's best employer. Pretty hard to do with mandatory pips and firing warehouse employees via algorithms.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Constructive dismissal is still a layoff.
  - User23 4y ago
    I'm all for remote work in tech, but I also think it might be difficult to convince a court that "please come to work" is creating a hostile work environment.
    - adoxyz 4y ago
      I guess it depends on the circumstances. Like if they were told they could go full remote, and the employee moved out of state and settled down somewhere where there is no office, now to be told j/k get back in here, seems like a case could be made.
      - elil17 4y ago
        There is no case to be made in the US unless the constructive dismissal was discriminatory in nature. It is legal to get people to quit by making working conditions worse, as long as you don't break any employment laws by doing so. Say that I want you some of my employees to quit. I say you are only allowed to have meetings while doing handstands, but I provide reasonable accommodation for disabled people who can't do handstands. If I fire you for not doing a handstand or if you quit because you don't want to do handstands, I have done nothing illegal under US law. Doesn't mean it's a good system. But that is the system we have.
SilverBirch 4y ago
Remote work definitely comes down to a company culture issue. For most engineering jobs I would say flexibility is a massive competitive advantage. There are so many great engineers out there who prefer not to be in the office it's a great talent pool, but needs to be actively managed in order to get the best out of it. Having said that, Amazon comes across as exactly the company that would require you to be in the office, I'd be kind of surprised if many people joined Amazon not expecting an extremely high pressure, highly demanding, strong cultured work enviornment.
- x86x87 4y ago
  imho Amazon has a big problem with its image and hiring. It is literally impossible to find good developers that want to work for Amazon. Taking advantage of the current market conditions to do this is going to spectacularly backfire once the market recovers.
  - bitL 4y ago
    Given Meta and Google are slowly turning into another Amazon (e.g. by an influx of Amazon managers bringing their "culture" with them) and Amazon is now paying competitive, I don't think that would be a big medium-term problem for them.
    - generalpf 4y ago
      I worked for a mid-cap tech company that brought in Amazon and Salesforce senior leadership in 2021. The culture immediately eroded as these guys’ penchant for finger-pointing and hustling beyond a reasonable human’s capacity became clear.
      - bitL 4y ago
        TeamBlind today: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Ex-Amazon-managers-are-horrible-and-destroy-every-company-they-touch-KX3sYbLq https://www.teamblind.com/post/Ex-Amazon-managers-are-horrib...
eloop 4y ago
It's a great opportunity for employers to pick off Amazon's best developers. Start making them offers!
shmatt 4y ago
The thing is, this becomes theater of working. Imagine commuting to the office 60-90 minutes each direction just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if a company bans zoom for office days (but none will) And im not even going to start on the complete waste of time of people in an open space talking non stop about their fantasy football draft. I haven't heard those words in 3 years, it was nice that way
- posguy 4y ago
  *Amazon Chime, not Zoom :D
  - nixass 4y ago
    Press pound key
    - ed_elliott_asc 4y ago
      £?
      - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
        #
- EarthIsHome 4y ago
  > Imagine commuting to the office 60-90 minutes each direction Assuming 240 work days per year. A one-hour roundtrip commute means you're spending 10 *WHOLE* days in your commute per year. Two-hour roundtrip? That's 20 whole days. Three-hour roundtrip? One whole month.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - 4y ago
betaby 4y ago
I mean, according levels.fyi AMZ pays 400K+ total compensation. I don't think that would be too hard to fill up the office with the willing office.
- slenk 4y ago
  But your cost of living goes up if you have to commute and/or live close enough to use public transportation to get to the offices. The cities FAANG companies are located in don't seem to be exactly cheap.
  - betaby 4y ago
    I think median salary for full time employment in Seattle is surely below 100k and yet people live there somehow. 4x of median should be great, no?
    - slenk 4y ago
      A quick google search shows that median income seems well above 100k https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-median-household-income-hits-110000-census-data-shows/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-media... https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Housing/PropertyManagers/IncomeRentLimits/Income-Rent-Limits.pdf https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Housing/Proper... https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/seattlecitywashington/EDU685221 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/seattlecitywash...
      - betaby 4y ago
        Household slightly above, however levels.fyi is about individual compensation.
        slenk 4y ago
        Not everyone is an individual. Does that take into account a family that they might be supporting? I am not the only one that thinks Seattle is expensive - not sure why you are so adamant it is not. https://www.quickenloans.com/learn/most-expensive-cities-in-the-us https://www.quickenloans.com/learn/most-expensive-cities-in-... https://www.kiplinger.com/real-estate/605051/most-expensive-cities-in-the-us https://www.kiplinger.com/real-estate/605051/most-expensive-... https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/10-most-expensive-cities-for-housing-in-the-us https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/10-most-expensive-cities-for...
xivzgrev 4y ago
"For instance, some employees who are part of global teams will come into the office only to continue taking virtual meetings, and they may not even have a coworker in their office, the petition states." My company is RTO, but with teams across offices, so I know this pain all too well. Our leadership has not addressed this disconnect either, so I wouldn't hold your breath.
- paxys 4y ago
  I'm in the exact same situation. My company issued a 3 day/week in the office mandate for anyone living within X miles of an office. Except that most of our hiring during the pandemic has been remote and in lower-cost regions (to cut costs no doubt), and so people who do end up going to the office will still not have any coworkers around them and will just be in meeting rooms doing zoom calls all day.
- plorkyeran 4y ago
  I guess the obvious question is that if no one on your team is in the same office as you, who will even notice if you don't show up to the office? As long as your direct manager is on board, it seems easy to just disregard the RTO requirement and keep working from home.
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    Clearly you don't have the kind of dystopian office which records to the second when you scan your office pass for the first and last times in a day.
  - bravetraveler 4y ago
    This is basically how I started WFH before the pandemic necessitated it The doors know I haven't been there in X months, but nobody in my distributed org cares to look
  - dvtrn 4y ago
    who will even notice if you don't show up to the office? They don’t have to “notice” it. They don’t even have to see it. Do you have an access badge to get into your company campus/building/suite? My last job started tracking access badge activity to monitor and enforce RTTO compliance. Found it funny to get nagged about not hitting the required minimum number by a boss who lived four states away. Laughed all the way out the door and into a new company whose policy is “if you wanna wfh, then wfh. If you want to come to the office, be our guest.”
brandon272 4y ago
No one knows what the future holds, but as the dust settles on WFH, I think that FAANG will double down on in-office and use their leverage as desirable large market cap companies with lucrative total comp packages to selectively seek out and retain those who are willing to agree to an in-office or hybrid work environment. They have identified in-person collaboration as a key competitive advantage going forward, want people who agree with that philosophy and don't see the need to budge despite threats from some of their workers that, without WFH, they will quit and the company will wither and die without them. WFH will continue to proliferate among lower tier companies who simply don't have the same levers around prestige and compensation to recruit and retain good talent and are more strongly incentivized to embrace remote work.
- weard_beard 4y ago
  Now replace WFH with 401K and see if it makes sense. Its a benefit. To be competitive you offer it. If you don't, bye bye talent.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    FAANG total comp is a lot higher than what most other companies will pay. I think the parent poster is right -- the smaller companies will pay lower salaries and offer remote work, and the larger companies will pay higher salaries and require at least 3 days per week in the office.
    - whateveracct 4y ago
      FAANG total comp is higher, but I think I've made way more money/hour off working remotely than I ever would have if I stayed at FAANG [1]. So while I have less total money, I have made the money I made way more efficiently. Which in some ways, makes me richer :) I sometimes have to remind myself that this level of leisure is basically what "traditional retirement" looks like (but with like a quarter-mil/year income + benefits) and that gives me get a sense of perspective when I'm feeling stressed. [1] A key thing that makes this true is that commute + forced office time is like 3-4x the active working time I average working from home. So it's not hard to beat the Amazon 400k total comp quote when weighted against hours - I honestly beat that at my first remote gig years ago as a relatively junior dev! And I have the same engineering output more or less.
ironfootnz 4y ago
Rumors are those are now under PIP
benjismith 4y ago
I must be one of the very very few software engineers that would prefer to RTO. (I'm not at Amazon, btw). I do enjoy the flexibility of being able to occasionally work from home. But I miss the bustling office culture, going out to lunch with coworkers, forming friendships with people from the office who don't necessarily work in the same department/team. Most days, I go into town and work from a WeWork (because it's nice to have a daily change of scenery), but 95% of the time, I'm the only person there (in an office with nine desks). Before the pandemic there were 80~100 people in our office. Sigh...
- clpm4j 4y ago
  Do you mind me asking if you're under 30yrs old?
  - dopeboy 4y ago
    Not OP - I'm in my mid 30s and do this for roughly the same reasons.
  - old_hat 4y ago
    I'm 40 and I work from the office 5 days a week for roughly the same reasons. General expectation from the company is around 2 days a week in the office, but I prefer it, so I come in every day.
  - mypalmike 4y ago
    I'm over 50 and I'm in the same boat. Hybrid is ideal for me for the same reasons. I find collaboration on work to be more difficult when I don't have an in-person connection with my teammates.
  - mikhael28 4y ago
    Do you mind me asking you if you are anti-social?
    - clpm4j 4y ago
      I don't mind, and the answer is 'no' - I am quite social on a regular basis. I was asking the OP out of genuine curiosity.
dhfbshfbu4u3 4y ago
It’s another layoff really. Just less expensive. Some people will leave for whatever reason. Then, when the cycle completes Amazon will go full RTO. I’m betting it will happen by the start of Q4.
- x86x87 4y ago
  or... the brain drain begins and is so serious that Amazon cancels this whole RTO charade. it could go either way. one thing is for sure: it's not going to be 3 days. that's just something that acts as a throttle so people that are on the edge stay hoping that it's only 3 days.
  - dhfbshfbu4u3 4y ago
    I think the brain drain scenario is highly unlikely. Maybe before the bottom fell out on the stock price and maybe before the latest industry layoffs. But now? Most people will go back to the office.
    - x86x87 4y ago
      Hah. People are not goldfish. They will remember and will jumo ship given a better opportunity. One does simply not forget the flexibility WFH brings.
      - dhfbshfbu4u3 4y ago
        I’m 52. I can assure you that most people are indeed goldfish. They may not forget the flexibility, but on a time series chart stability ranks much higher.
ptkanchi 4y ago
Let me preface this by saying I don't have much of an opinion for or against RTO, but I feel like there's too much emotion attached to companies mandating RTO by tech employees. I'm at a company that is mandating RTO and for the past couple months there has been tons of whining and moaning in public slack channels, team Q&As, company wide Q&As, HR Q&As, being passive aggressive etc. All this behavior has reeked of immense entitlement, leaving a bad taste in my mouth. The fact remains that a company exists to make money. When a company mandates RTO, generally it's doing so because it believes that's the best way to get the maximum output of it's resources against whatever metrics they are measuring against. Employees should feel like the relationship between them and their employer is mutually beneficial, if that's no longer the case, pursue external opportunities. We are incredibly lucky we are in a field that has a high demand for strong engineers, so you should be able to find what you are looking for.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
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- Brystephor 4y ago
  I understand what you're saying about entitlement. It can be tiresome to hear the same topics brought up repeatedly. With the constant negativity that surrounds it, it gets exhausting to listen to. At the same time, most of those complaints are coming from generally reasonable people. If a company promised no RTO and then went back on it, that'd be frustrating for them. If a company can't state why they want to go RTO, then I'd be frustrated with needing to change my life for the reason of "because I said so". If the company has grown a significant amount and been able to manage the growth and whatnot while working remotely, then it also brings up the question of "why is there a RTO mandate?" I think more people are frustrated with the lack of reasoning and justification beyond some hand-wavey "collaboration" answer that companies are giving.
  - my_usernam3 4y ago
    > beyond some hand-wavey "collaboration" answer that companies are giving I'm confused what the alternative is that you would like. I'm sure they can link a bunch of studies that show its more productive to work in office, and I'm guessing those that want to stay remote will show a bunch of other studies that say its not; which continues ad nauseam.
deleted 4y ago
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npalli 4y ago
Amazon has over 1.4 Million employees. Looking at this article, 14,000 joined a slack channel to complain. So only about 1% is pushing Andy Jassy about this. Should we assume the remainder (~99%) is OK? If so, this is yet another instance of a small group of people strategically using regular/social media to amplify a minority position which the majority doesn't support.
- amzn-throw 4y ago
  1.5, but probably over a million of those are FC workers who are not on slack cuz they're running around the warehouse. There are just over 400,000 office employees WW So it's closer to 3.5%, and the announcement was only posted Friday morning before a long weekend so that's likely to grow.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ben0x539 4y ago
  Why would you assume the remainder is OK with this? Joining a slack channel isn't a referendum.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  A collective 1% pushback is pretty big as far as activism goes. It's also way more than 1%, since no where near 1.4 Million of those employees have slack access.
- x86x87 4y ago
  from people that [still] work there it's 22k at the end of today
innocentoldguy 4y ago
I've already shared my negative Amazon experience on HN a couple of times, so I wasn't going to comment on this article, but this line caught my eye: "Amazon’s positions on diversity and inclusion..." As someone with ASD who worked at Amazon for over two years, I can say that Amazon's stated positions on diversity and inclusion are absolute bullshit. My last manager violated my reasonable accommodations in every conceivable way for over a year and HR did NOTHING about it. In fact, they somehow warped the universe by doing less than nothing. I now work at another FAANG company and the difference is night and day. My current manager is actually a manager with real management skills and the company treats me exceptionally well. If I were an engineer looking for a big-tech job, I'd skip that second A in FAANG and save myself a whole lot of misery and frustration.
gavin_gee 4y ago
Andy likes people in the office. For team based creation its critical for productivity - sorry but its true. But Alas I fear that this is also an HR tactic to lay off people without paying severance. Whats missing from the current media narrative is the deals done per manager. Nothing is really ever "company wide". people worked from home before covid. based on manager discretion
brianjking 4y ago
Good, anyone that requires me to go to an office for something that I can do as effectively or more effectively from home should not be able to have a job.
tracer4201 4y ago
[dead]
mv4 4y ago
I work at Amazon. Every single person I regularly collaborate with is in a different time zone.
- eestrada 4y ago
  Also at Amazon currently. Similar situation; I have coworkers across all timezones in the contiguous US.
deschutes 4y ago
Many made expensive decisions assuming remote work would become the norm. My guess is there is a large overlap between the bristling crowd and expensive decisions crowd. Sure remote work is good for many experienced individual tech workers but bad for basically everyone else including the company and the communities remote workers have moved to. The pro remote arguments reek of motivated reasoning. It is especially hard to escape noticing that remote work is financially beneficial for tech workers. Particularly as it relates to housing.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >bad for basically everyone else including the company and the communities remote workers have moved to. Why? Is it better for places with more jobs and money to stay that way instead of spreading the wealth around?
  - deschutes 4y ago
    I was thinking of upwards price pressure on housing stock in those communities as the main negative effect. Rationale being that tech salaries are going to be significantly above incomes the local economy supports and thus tech workers are going to be relatively price insensitive. That said, remote work is hardly the only thing contributing to this problem. And I agree with the idea that changing housing policy is the best way to address it. I don't dispute that there will be positive effects as well. They seem less significant to me.
- x86x87 4y ago
  yeah. fuck those entitled prick for expecting work to be financially beneficial for them /s they should be glad to have a job and stop complaining.
didip 4y ago
Isn't Return to Office just a front to have engineers quitting by themselves instead of layoffs?
squalo 4y ago
No way in hell that Amazon is going to risk losing its tax kickbacks by not meeting their location numbers.
victor9000 4y ago
You can RTO all you want, your top talent will just find the benefits they value with a different employer.
sidcool 4y ago
Please Andy. Listen to your Devs. Make it 1 day mandatory at worst.
nickd2001 4y ago
Hello Peter... what's happening? Yeah.. I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and RTO on Sunday, too, m'kay? If you could go ahead and do that from now on, that'd be great..

226 points by mmurph211 4y ago

xt00 4y ago

If people being in the office is somehow more valuable, then pay them more than remote workers and see what fraction want to be remote vs non remote. Capitalist solution to the problem for all the hardcore “let the market find the solution”.

x86x87 4y ago

this RTO mandates are getting old. Do people, in general, believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started?

morelinks 4y ago
Yes. The biggest companies, with the most political power, believe just that. I pray smaller companies make themselves more competitive by offering WFH but that’s yet to be seen.
- x86x87 4y ago
  hah. i have some bad news for them. the cat is out of the bag. they may be able to force people to do things in the short term but long term they are going to become obsolete.
patrick451 4y ago
It's sort of ironic for Amazon to push for a returning to pre-pandemic norms, given that the pandemic was such a boon to their retail business and stock price.
- exhibitapp 4y ago
  this was due to low interest rates and savings/stimmies not anything about remote work
  - whoisthemachine 4y ago
    Really, it had nothing to do with people ordering even more online for home delivery than prior to the pandemic? You don't think that folks might continue ordering more home delivery if they aren't out driving every day? References for the other reasons for their growth can be found with even the slightest effort. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=amazon+pandemic+growth+cause&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=amazon+pandemic+growth+cause&... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/technology/amazons-profits-triple.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/technology/amazons-profit... [2] https://fortune.com/2021/10/18/amazon-massive-growth-covid-pandemic-8-charts/ https://fortune.com/2021/10/18/amazon-massive-growth-covid-p... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/how-amazon-managed-the-coronavirus-crisis-and-came-out-stronger.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/how-amazon-managed-the-coron... (non-paywall, yay!)
    - ghaff 4y ago
      For some things like delivered food, delivery is a luxury. However, I fully expect that during the pandemic people discovered a lot of things that they could have picked up in the next couple of days in "only" 25 minutes or so can actually be ordered from Amazon at competitive prices. I ordered from Amazon a lot pre-pandemic but added various random stuff instead of going to, say, Home Depot.
turtlebits 4y ago
The complaints are also getting old. If you were hired with the expectation that you go in the office, RTO is an eventual expected outcome. I do see the psychology of taking away what many see as a "benefit", but it's really just going back to the norm.
- x86x87 4y ago
  Hmm... the complaints are getting old? I guess the beatings need to continue until morale improves. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/traditiondemotivator_grande.jpeg https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/traditi... Hard disagree with "If you were hired with the expectation that you go in the office, RTO is an eventual expected outcome." Ask yourself why do we need to RTO? Who needs the RTO?
  - eurticket 4y ago
    we should all read between the lines, this big push is from those that invest in the office buildings and surrounding businesses chains, and are hurting from lower proximity of consumers. Stop making your own meals, start consuming from their fast food chain down the block from the building theyre leasing to your company. Stop for gas and buy from their other investments close by. Need people to stop being so self sufficient at home, and suck the rich tit. We are so desperate for the help :( /$
    - x86x87 4y ago
      i agree that things are shifting. forcing everyone to the old routine that is worse for them, worse for the environment and worse for the tech corporations that are peddling this is insane. Gas? If we consume less gas that's good right? Less wear an tear on the cars? Good Not wasting 1-2 hours commuting? Great Having a quiet place where you can gather your thoughts and do knowledge work? Amazing But what about the hard working real estate companies that are going to be impacted by this? What about the small businesses? What about them? Close shop and/or figure out something else that works. Why does everyone have to have a crappier life for you to continue with your crap practices?
ye-olde-sysrq 4y ago
I think the biggest wins from covid will just be that we did a massive 3-year WFH experiment and overall it went just fine. Great, even, if you account for the fact that it wasn't just a WFH test in isolation, it was accompanied by a generation-defining negative psychological and virulogical event. We all went fully remote for three years during a terrible humanitarian crisis and nothing exploded (except inflation but that's not our fault)
- piva00 4y ago
  Nothing exploded while most companies had no idea whatsoever on how to implement it properly. Things worked mostly fine even though it was through a panic emergency plan that was completely winged due to sheer necessity. Imagine if it was a plan properly designed and implemented? All this bullshit of RTO is getting old for me exactly because of this point, nothing was done in what would be even close to the optimal way for working remotely and things are still going ok...
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Some parts of it were coupled with parents trying to homeschool their kids (for younger kids, at least, the parental attention required for remote school was high enough it wasn't too far off from simply home-schooling) while "working". Plus the extra stress of, you know, the whole being-in-a-pandemic thing. I recall some grumbling in those days about remote worker productivity and it's like, yeah, no shit, daycares and schools are all closed and households are all dual-income because game theory and zero-sum competition for housing/schools, so.... Those parts ought to be disregarded for any kind of lessons-learned from this, as far as the broader viability of WFH. 2020 through early 2021, at the very least, had some strong confounding factors going on which, one hopes, will not be common in the future.
- twblalock 4y ago
  I don't think it went "just fine". It looked like companies were doing well because we were in a bubble market. I definitely feel, and observe, a noticeable decrease in productivity and speed of execution compared to where my org was a few years ago. I know others have noticed it too, including management. On top of all that, companies are expected to run leaner than before because now that the bubble is over, apparently everyone remembered that having a sane balance sheet and making a profit are things that matter. So now we want per-worker productivity to increase because we can't hire as many people. The basic social contract of work has not changed. Tech workers have better pay and benefits than almost anyone else, and we should not be whiny about this. Most workers in other fields had to return to the office too.
whoisthemachine 4y ago
I'm not certain about that, but I do think companies believe this is a simple way to kill two birds with one stone: 1. Trim headcount. 2. Keep the most "loyal" employees (or those who need the job the most and will say yes to anything, which is a double-sided sword).
- hgsgm 4y ago
  3. Separate the wheat from the chaff. The chaff come to the office.
- x86x87 4y ago
  haha. Because loyal == high performing. That is how it works. There is absolutely no way that high performing employees that can get a job by crossing the street will ever think about jumping ship because of the shitty manner they are treated.
  - Someone1234 4y ago
    These companies have no accurate way of measuring performance anyway.
    - VBprogrammer 4y ago
      I don't know of you are making a judgement there but I think it's important to point out that there is practically no useful way of measuring performance in our industry; it's not a company problem. Some of the most useful employees I've met probably produced less than the most junior developer in tangible assets.
    - tkiolp4 4y ago
      It’s not about being mathematically perfect about performance. In any given team, area, organization one can easily point out who are the good ones.
  - whoisthemachine 4y ago
    They may not be after high performing right now, they may just want the ones who won't or can't cross the street.
geodel 4y ago
I mean unless proven otherwise most companies do believe that. What happened to that Vote with your feet / vote with your wallet thing?
- c4nc3ld 4y ago
  It was rebranded as cancel culture and demonized Until management can prove being in office drives productivity and all that energy was not merely fueled by lots of people around each other being just as useless, it’s a bias to maintain power and privilege The economic philosophy of our society is no more a sacrosanct truth than religion Office life is a social prison that enables their expropriation of agency and outputs
CodeWriter23 4y ago
Anecdata: been doing it since 5/15/2020. With best effort “social distancing” up until a few months back. As a layman, in my unprofessional opinion, people in generally good health should not perceive the office as a death trap.
throwaway345908 4y ago
>Do people, in general, believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started? Why not?
akira2501 4y ago
> believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started? Yes. We built it that way for a specific reason.
- paxys 4y ago
  What did we build exactly? The current model of tech open offices originated in the early 2000s. Before that we had cubicles, starting around the 60s and 70s. And something else before that. Office buildings themselves don't go all that far back, maybe a couple hundred years. None of these is the "right" model. We will continue to evolve to what suits the present work culture and requirements, and WFH is where we have reached for now.
  - akira2501 4y ago
    > What did we build exactly? A shared workspace with centrally located and maintained resources. This allows for greater overall efficiency but allows the organization as a whole to quickly dedicate resources to new and emergent problems. In theory this should save money and allow the company to successfully capture and serve more business. > None of these is the "right" model. There is no "right" model. Everything is a question of compromises. Work from home has some employee benefits, but has higher direct and abstract costs for the employer. > And WFH is where we have reached for now. This is understandable, companies have not been particularly cognizant of sharing the rewards of the above configuration with their employees. To me, though, this seems like an opportunity wasted to correct this.
    - VBprogrammer 4y ago
      > Work from home has some employee benefits, but has higher direct and abstract costs for the employer. Ah come on now. Instead of my employer paying for a space for me to sit in central London, the electricity and internet connection, I pay for those things myself. Instead of wasting time on a train I get a bit of work done before most people are online. The only costs are in the crocodile tears of middle management who cannot advance themselves simply by growing their headcount.
goostavos 4y ago
All you need are enough people to fall in line. Amazon is filled with workers on visas. At least from the subset I've talked to, this isn't the hill they plan to die on. "Come in or fuck off back to {home country}" is a pretty strong bargaining chip. For me, getting fired would mean taking a few months off to leisurely reset, then slowly getting back on the leetcode grind, and then trying to find a new remote job. Drawing lines in the sand is much easier when "uproot your entire life" isn't on the table.
- x86x87 4y ago
  I agree. This is where the people that can draw lines in the sand are even more important.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    I will cancel prime and hit them where it hurts. Who will join me?
    - x86x87 4y ago
      Cancelled prime eons ago. What else?
      - burna_aws_acct 4y ago
        Tracker and Ad-blockers, and SEO to discard Amazon results (e.g., tinyurl.com/brave-googles-amzn-free-search).
spacemadness 4y ago
Return to the status quo like the last three years didn’t happen.

wonderwonder 4y ago

Kind of think people not being able to return to the office is the goal. It lets them reduce head count without the need for severance. Kind of like in office space when they just stopped paying the guy. I did laugh at the part about being the world's best employer. Pretty hard to do with mandatory pips and firing warehouse employees via algorithms.

hgsgm 4y ago
Constructive dismissal is still a layoff.
- User23 4y ago
  I'm all for remote work in tech, but I also think it might be difficult to convince a court that "please come to work" is creating a hostile work environment.
  - adoxyz 4y ago
    I guess it depends on the circumstances. Like if they were told they could go full remote, and the employee moved out of state and settled down somewhere where there is no office, now to be told j/k get back in here, seems like a case could be made.
    - elil17 4y ago
      There is no case to be made in the US unless the constructive dismissal was discriminatory in nature. It is legal to get people to quit by making working conditions worse, as long as you don't break any employment laws by doing so. Say that I want you some of my employees to quit. I say you are only allowed to have meetings while doing handstands, but I provide reasonable accommodation for disabled people who can't do handstands. If I fire you for not doing a handstand or if you quit because you don't want to do handstands, I have done nothing illegal under US law. Doesn't mean it's a good system. But that is the system we have.

SilverBirch 4y ago

Remote work definitely comes down to a company culture issue. For most engineering jobs I would say flexibility is a massive competitive advantage. There are so many great engineers out there who prefer not to be in the office it's a great talent pool, but needs to be actively managed in order to get the best out of it. Having said that, Amazon comes across as exactly the company that would require you to be in the office, I'd be kind of surprised if many people joined Amazon not expecting an extremely high pressure, highly demanding, strong cultured work enviornment.

x86x87 4y ago
imho Amazon has a big problem with its image and hiring. It is literally impossible to find good developers that want to work for Amazon. Taking advantage of the current market conditions to do this is going to spectacularly backfire once the market recovers.
- bitL 4y ago
  Given Meta and Google are slowly turning into another Amazon (e.g. by an influx of Amazon managers bringing their "culture" with them) and Amazon is now paying competitive, I don't think that would be a big medium-term problem for them.
  - generalpf 4y ago
    I worked for a mid-cap tech company that brought in Amazon and Salesforce senior leadership in 2021. The culture immediately eroded as these guys’ penchant for finger-pointing and hustling beyond a reasonable human’s capacity became clear.
    - bitL 4y ago
      TeamBlind today: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Ex-Amazon-managers-are-horrible-and-destroy-every-company-they-touch-KX3sYbLq https://www.teamblind.com/post/Ex-Amazon-managers-are-horrib...

eloop 4y ago

It's a great opportunity for employers to pick off Amazon's best developers. Start making them offers!

shmatt 4y ago

The thing is, this becomes theater of working. Imagine commuting to the office 60-90 minutes each direction just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if a company bans zoom for office days (but none will) And im not even going to start on the complete waste of time of people in an open space talking non stop about their fantasy football draft. I haven't heard those words in 3 years, it was nice that way

posguy 4y ago
*Amazon Chime, not Zoom :D
- nixass 4y ago
  Press pound key
  - ed_elliott_asc 4y ago
    £?
    - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
      #
EarthIsHome 4y ago
> Imagine commuting to the office 60-90 minutes each direction Assuming 240 work days per year. A one-hour roundtrip commute means you're spending 10 *WHOLE* days in your commute per year. Two-hour roundtrip? That's 20 whole days. Three-hour roundtrip? One whole month.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - 4y ago

betaby 4y ago

I mean, according levels.fyi AMZ pays 400K+ total compensation. I don't think that would be too hard to fill up the office with the willing office.

slenk 4y ago
But your cost of living goes up if you have to commute and/or live close enough to use public transportation to get to the offices. The cities FAANG companies are located in don't seem to be exactly cheap.
- betaby 4y ago
  I think median salary for full time employment in Seattle is surely below 100k and yet people live there somehow. 4x of median should be great, no?
  - slenk 4y ago
    A quick google search shows that median income seems well above 100k https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-median-household-income-hits-110000-census-data-shows/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-media... https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Housing/PropertyManagers/IncomeRentLimits/Income-Rent-Limits.pdf https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Housing/Proper... https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/seattlecitywashington/EDU685221 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/seattlecitywash...
    - betaby 4y ago
      Household slightly above, however levels.fyi is about individual compensation.
      - slenk 4y ago
        Not everyone is an individual. Does that take into account a family that they might be supporting? I am not the only one that thinks Seattle is expensive - not sure why you are so adamant it is not. https://www.quickenloans.com/learn/most-expensive-cities-in-the-us https://www.quickenloans.com/learn/most-expensive-cities-in-... https://www.kiplinger.com/real-estate/605051/most-expensive-cities-in-the-us https://www.kiplinger.com/real-estate/605051/most-expensive-... https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/10-most-expensive-cities-for-housing-in-the-us https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/10-most-expensive-cities-for...

xivzgrev 4y ago

"For instance, some employees who are part of global teams will come into the office only to continue taking virtual meetings, and they may not even have a coworker in their office, the petition states." My company is RTO, but with teams across offices, so I know this pain all too well. Our leadership has not addressed this disconnect either, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

paxys 4y ago
I'm in the exact same situation. My company issued a 3 day/week in the office mandate for anyone living within X miles of an office. Except that most of our hiring during the pandemic has been remote and in lower-cost regions (to cut costs no doubt), and so people who do end up going to the office will still not have any coworkers around them and will just be in meeting rooms doing zoom calls all day.
plorkyeran 4y ago
I guess the obvious question is that if no one on your team is in the same office as you, who will even notice if you don't show up to the office? As long as your direct manager is on board, it seems easy to just disregard the RTO requirement and keep working from home.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  Clearly you don't have the kind of dystopian office which records to the second when you scan your office pass for the first and last times in a day.
- bravetraveler 4y ago
  This is basically how I started WFH before the pandemic necessitated it The doors know I haven't been there in X months, but nobody in my distributed org cares to look
- dvtrn 4y ago
  who will even notice if you don't show up to the office? They don’t have to “notice” it. They don’t even have to see it. Do you have an access badge to get into your company campus/building/suite? My last job started tracking access badge activity to monitor and enforce RTTO compliance. Found it funny to get nagged about not hitting the required minimum number by a boss who lived four states away. Laughed all the way out the door and into a new company whose policy is “if you wanna wfh, then wfh. If you want to come to the office, be our guest.”

brandon272 4y ago

No one knows what the future holds, but as the dust settles on WFH, I think that FAANG will double down on in-office and use their leverage as desirable large market cap companies with lucrative total comp packages to selectively seek out and retain those who are willing to agree to an in-office or hybrid work environment. They have identified in-person collaboration as a key competitive advantage going forward, want people who agree with that philosophy and don't see the need to budge despite threats from some of their workers that, without WFH, they will quit and the company will wither and die without them. WFH will continue to proliferate among lower tier companies who simply don't have the same levers around prestige and compensation to recruit and retain good talent and are more strongly incentivized to embrace remote work.

weard_beard 4y ago
Now replace WFH with 401K and see if it makes sense. Its a benefit. To be competitive you offer it. If you don't, bye bye talent.
- twblalock 4y ago
  FAANG total comp is a lot higher than what most other companies will pay. I think the parent poster is right -- the smaller companies will pay lower salaries and offer remote work, and the larger companies will pay higher salaries and require at least 3 days per week in the office.
  - whateveracct 4y ago
    FAANG total comp is higher, but I think I've made way more money/hour off working remotely than I ever would have if I stayed at FAANG [1]. So while I have less total money, I have made the money I made way more efficiently. Which in some ways, makes me richer :) I sometimes have to remind myself that this level of leisure is basically what "traditional retirement" looks like (but with like a quarter-mil/year income + benefits) and that gives me get a sense of perspective when I'm feeling stressed. [1] A key thing that makes this true is that commute + forced office time is like 3-4x the active working time I average working from home. So it's not hard to beat the Amazon 400k total comp quote when weighted against hours - I honestly beat that at my first remote gig years ago as a relatively junior dev! And I have the same engineering output more or less.

ironfootnz 4y ago

Rumors are those are now under PIP

benjismith 4y ago

I must be one of the very very few software engineers that would prefer to RTO. (I'm not at Amazon, btw). I do enjoy the flexibility of being able to occasionally work from home. But I miss the bustling office culture, going out to lunch with coworkers, forming friendships with people from the office who don't necessarily work in the same department/team. Most days, I go into town and work from a WeWork (because it's nice to have a daily change of scenery), but 95% of the time, I'm the only person there (in an office with nine desks). Before the pandemic there were 80~100 people in our office. Sigh...

clpm4j 4y ago
Do you mind me asking if you're under 30yrs old?
- dopeboy 4y ago
  Not OP - I'm in my mid 30s and do this for roughly the same reasons.
- old_hat 4y ago
  I'm 40 and I work from the office 5 days a week for roughly the same reasons. General expectation from the company is around 2 days a week in the office, but I prefer it, so I come in every day.
- mypalmike 4y ago
  I'm over 50 and I'm in the same boat. Hybrid is ideal for me for the same reasons. I find collaboration on work to be more difficult when I don't have an in-person connection with my teammates.
- mikhael28 4y ago
  Do you mind me asking you if you are anti-social?
  - clpm4j 4y ago
    I don't mind, and the answer is 'no' - I am quite social on a regular basis. I was asking the OP out of genuine curiosity.

dhfbshfbu4u3 4y ago

It’s another layoff really. Just less expensive. Some people will leave for whatever reason. Then, when the cycle completes Amazon will go full RTO. I’m betting it will happen by the start of Q4.

x86x87 4y ago
or... the brain drain begins and is so serious that Amazon cancels this whole RTO charade. it could go either way. one thing is for sure: it's not going to be 3 days. that's just something that acts as a throttle so people that are on the edge stay hoping that it's only 3 days.
- dhfbshfbu4u3 4y ago
  I think the brain drain scenario is highly unlikely. Maybe before the bottom fell out on the stock price and maybe before the latest industry layoffs. But now? Most people will go back to the office.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    Hah. People are not goldfish. They will remember and will jumo ship given a better opportunity. One does simply not forget the flexibility WFH brings.
    - dhfbshfbu4u3 4y ago
      I’m 52. I can assure you that most people are indeed goldfish. They may not forget the flexibility, but on a time series chart stability ranks much higher.

ptkanchi 4y ago

Let me preface this by saying I don't have much of an opinion for or against RTO, but I feel like there's too much emotion attached to companies mandating RTO by tech employees. I'm at a company that is mandating RTO and for the past couple months there has been tons of whining and moaning in public slack channels, team Q&As, company wide Q&As, HR Q&As, being passive aggressive etc. All this behavior has reeked of immense entitlement, leaving a bad taste in my mouth. The fact remains that a company exists to make money. When a company mandates RTO, generally it's doing so because it believes that's the best way to get the maximum output of it's resources against whatever metrics they are measuring against. Employees should feel like the relationship between them and their employer is mutually beneficial, if that's no longer the case, pursue external opportunities. We are incredibly lucky we are in a field that has a high demand for strong engineers, so you should be able to find what you are looking for.

newaccount2021 4y ago
[dead]
Brystephor 4y ago
I understand what you're saying about entitlement. It can be tiresome to hear the same topics brought up repeatedly. With the constant negativity that surrounds it, it gets exhausting to listen to. At the same time, most of those complaints are coming from generally reasonable people. If a company promised no RTO and then went back on it, that'd be frustrating for them. If a company can't state why they want to go RTO, then I'd be frustrated with needing to change my life for the reason of "because I said so". If the company has grown a significant amount and been able to manage the growth and whatnot while working remotely, then it also brings up the question of "why is there a RTO mandate?" I think more people are frustrated with the lack of reasoning and justification beyond some hand-wavey "collaboration" answer that companies are giving.
- my_usernam3 4y ago
  > beyond some hand-wavey "collaboration" answer that companies are giving I'm confused what the alternative is that you would like. I'm sure they can link a bunch of studies that show its more productive to work in office, and I'm guessing those that want to stay remote will show a bunch of other studies that say its not; which continues ad nauseam.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

npalli 4y ago

Amazon has over 1.4 Million employees. Looking at this article, 14,000 joined a slack channel to complain. So only about 1% is pushing Andy Jassy about this. Should we assume the remainder (~99%) is OK? If so, this is yet another instance of a small group of people strategically using regular/social media to amplify a minority position which the majority doesn't support.

amzn-throw 4y ago
1.5, but probably over a million of those are FC workers who are not on slack cuz they're running around the warehouse. There are just over 400,000 office employees WW So it's closer to 3.5%, and the announcement was only posted Friday morning before a long weekend so that's likely to grow.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ben0x539 4y ago
Why would you assume the remainder is OK with this? Joining a slack channel isn't a referendum.
xboxnolifes 4y ago
A collective 1% pushback is pretty big as far as activism goes. It's also way more than 1%, since no where near 1.4 Million of those employees have slack access.
x86x87 4y ago
from people that [still] work there it's 22k at the end of today

innocentoldguy 4y ago

I've already shared my negative Amazon experience on HN a couple of times, so I wasn't going to comment on this article, but this line caught my eye: "Amazon’s positions on diversity and inclusion..." As someone with ASD who worked at Amazon for over two years, I can say that Amazon's stated positions on diversity and inclusion are absolute bullshit. My last manager violated my reasonable accommodations in every conceivable way for over a year and HR did NOTHING about it. In fact, they somehow warped the universe by doing less than nothing. I now work at another FAANG company and the difference is night and day. My current manager is actually a manager with real management skills and the company treats me exceptionally well. If I were an engineer looking for a big-tech job, I'd skip that second A in FAANG and save myself a whole lot of misery and frustration.

gavin_gee 4y ago

Andy likes people in the office. For team based creation its critical for productivity - sorry but its true. But Alas I fear that this is also an HR tactic to lay off people without paying severance. Whats missing from the current media narrative is the deals done per manager. Nothing is really ever "company wide". people worked from home before covid. based on manager discretion

brianjking 4y ago

Good, anyone that requires me to go to an office for something that I can do as effectively or more effectively from home should not be able to have a job.

tracer4201 4y ago

[dead]

mv4 4y ago

I work at Amazon. Every single person I regularly collaborate with is in a different time zone.

eestrada 4y ago
Also at Amazon currently. Similar situation; I have coworkers across all timezones in the contiguous US.

deschutes 4y ago

Many made expensive decisions assuming remote work would become the norm. My guess is there is a large overlap between the bristling crowd and expensive decisions crowd. Sure remote work is good for many experienced individual tech workers but bad for basically everyone else including the company and the communities remote workers have moved to. The pro remote arguments reek of motivated reasoning. It is especially hard to escape noticing that remote work is financially beneficial for tech workers. Particularly as it relates to housing.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
>bad for basically everyone else including the company and the communities remote workers have moved to. Why? Is it better for places with more jobs and money to stay that way instead of spreading the wealth around?
- deschutes 4y ago
  I was thinking of upwards price pressure on housing stock in those communities as the main negative effect. Rationale being that tech salaries are going to be significantly above incomes the local economy supports and thus tech workers are going to be relatively price insensitive. That said, remote work is hardly the only thing contributing to this problem. And I agree with the idea that changing housing policy is the best way to address it. I don't dispute that there will be positive effects as well. They seem less significant to me.
x86x87 4y ago
yeah. fuck those entitled prick for expecting work to be financially beneficial for them /s they should be glad to have a job and stop complaining.

didip 4y ago

Isn't Return to Office just a front to have engineers quitting by themselves instead of layoffs?

squalo 4y ago

No way in hell that Amazon is going to risk losing its tax kickbacks by not meeting their location numbers.

victor9000 4y ago

You can RTO all you want, your top talent will just find the benefits they value with a different employer.

sidcool 4y ago

Please Andy. Listen to your Devs. Make it 1 day mandatory at worst.

nickd2001 4y ago

Hello Peter... what's happening? Yeah.. I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and RTO on Sunday, too, m'kay? If you could go ahead and do that from now on, that'd be great..