13 ms·

Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

230 points by runarberg 3y ago

tjr225 3y ago
If these workers could get remote jobs, they would- but they can’t. Amazon knows this, and probably can’t wait for them to quit. For now all they can do is complain about having to go to an office to be a spoiled, overpaid tech worker. If I had that job I would be keeping my mouth shut and enjoying the paycheck, but to each their own I suppose.
- x86x87 3y ago
  Amazon has a small window to force the drones back to the office. Once people start having options we're done. WFH will be here to stay.
  - worrycue 3y ago
    After they force people back to office then what? It’s not like they won’t leave if they manage to get remote job elsewhere. Frankly, I don’t get this drive to RTO. The only gain is face to face meetings might improve productivity (in some people). The downside is increased pollution due to commuting - even with EVs you are wearing out tires increase the amount of micro plastics in the environment, wearing out their batteries, and wasting electricity.
    - hw 3y ago
      > It’s not like they won’t leave if they manage to get remote job elsewhere. Even without RTO, people will still leave for other jobs if the grass is greener on the other side. If anything, WFH makes it easier for someone to go job hunting and do interviews. If the environment is your downside to RTO - you’re reaching. The loss in productivity when someone does 2 hours in traffic a day is probably a more compelling argument. Companies also have to stock their pantry, hire more office management, renew their office space leases.
      - worrycue 3y ago
        For most people the waste of time, energy, and money commuting is what they will care about but you can’t deny the environmental impact of millions of people commuting.
        x86x87 3y ago
        Climate Pledge, amiright? /s
      - zamalek 3y ago
        It's not only the environment, RTO also clogs the road for those who are causally tied to a job location (doctors, nurses, baristas, chefs, waste management, etc.). > 2 hours in traffic a day I'm starting to wonder if demanding that commute being paid work time would be a reasonable tradeoff (that I wouldn't take myself). If being at the office is part of the job description, then commuting logically follows as a job function. At the moment, employers are ripping into employees time at the monetary expense of employees. Should we just live closer? Sure! Let's talk about compensating employees for property prices and home security.
    - tjr225 3y ago
      [dead]
  - benjaminwootton 3y ago
    Objectively, people are seemingly being forced back to the office at least part time, and there are less WFH opportunities. Those in favour of WFH are losing the standoff.
- crop_rotation 3y ago
  Most of them sadly can not get even a non remote job easily. Most of big tech, and Amazon specially, massively lowered their hiring floor to hire more over the years, and are full of extremely incompetent people who will find it hard to survive elsewhere. Orgs are more like fiefdoms and full of incompetent people. A lot of such incompetent people know they are incompetent and go to massive lengths to survive (getting credit for everything they can, acting as information gatekeepers whenever they can).
  - x86x87 3y ago
    Who can get a remote job easily? The top performers. Incoming dead sea effect.
    - crop_rotation 3y ago
      Yes, so return to office will cause top performers to leave. The incompetent people are not going anywhere due to such policies.
      - hw 3y ago
        I know lots of top performers who enjoy being back in the office, and low performers who would prefer WFH so they can coast under the radar
        x86x87 3y ago
        Lol. Lots! All of the top performers. Because sitting in traffic pissing your life and time away is #worthit. Because being able to eat a healthy lunch you make youself is lame. Because going to the office to attend virtual meetings on Chime is the best.
  - DenisM 3y ago
    Astute observation. I imagine this effect will eventually consume any company. Or will it? Do we know of a way to stave it off?
- mbgerring 3y ago
  Instead of begging to be exploited by billionaires, yob could band together with your fellow tech workers and win better treatment for all of us.
  - tjr225 3y ago
    What? These people have lives better than 99% of the population.
    - clipsy 3y ago
      So do medical doctors; and they've preserved that status by unionizing to protect it.
      - hw 3y ago
        Medical doctors spend a lot of time and money in med school and residency. They have malpractice risk, and perform more essential work like saving lives and improving people’s health, your health. Working a hospital especially in the ED is stressful. No stock options, rsu grants. Tech workers on the other hand, say engineers, can easily get a high paying FAANG job without a 4yr degree - just spending time grinding leetcode or a coding bootcamp. Not to mention the RSUs, office perks like free lunches, WFH, on site laundry and daycare, flexible time off, no set work hours… come on
        clipsy 3y ago
        > Tech workers on the other hand, say engineers, can easily get a high paying FAANG job without a 4yr degree It is prima facie absurd to say that tech workers can "easily" get a job at FAANG; if it were that easy to work at FAANG surely the 50%[0] of Software Engineers who make less than $121k or 75%[0] of Software Engineers who make less than $152k would simply do so. [0]: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...
        o1y32 3y ago
        Did you just make things up? There are people who work at FAANG without a degree, but that's the absolute minority. Most people have spent years on a formal education, many of which have a master's or even PhDs.
- cvoss 3y ago
  Believe it or not, there are other motivating factors for doing good work than money. Just because I'm fairly compensated doesn't mean I'm going to tolerate major inconveniences that impede my ability to work efficiently, productively, and with a positive attitude. Part of why I want to do my job well is because I find the work itself gratifying. Once that motivating factor vanishes, I'm going to complain or look elsewhere for work. It's in both parties' best interest for complaints to happen, to be heard, and to be addressed, so that workers can get back to being both content for themselves and productive for the company.
  - tjr225 3y ago
    [dead]
neilv 3y ago
> “There’s a feeling of the culture and the values that are being told are important for us to bring to the table are not being mirrored by the top executives,” the worker said. “They do not model with their behavior what we are told to do with our roles.” Are they referring to Amazon's Leadership Principles, or something else? https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-...
- tjpnz 3y ago
  I read that to suggest the execs aren't coming to the office themselves.
  - rlabrecque 3y ago
    I don't work at Amazon, but my C-suite and leadership team is in the office and that really makes a HUGE difference in going back. Both by them leading by example and getting to have the face to face time with them.
- revlolz 3y ago
  It's a multitude of things. The LPs are the start of it, but the data oriented culture has been ignored by rto mandate and the head of HR's apathetic response to the remote advocates. Amazon is a very heavy document writing company and more often than not if you had to write a doc you faced someone saying "so what?" and then that person or their/your leaders requiring proving points and writing narratives leveraging facts through data to challenge biases. Amazon's leadership pissed the workers (formerly "leaders") off by instead explaining all mandates and changes are based upon their feelings and beliefs. There is no data (at least any they care to share) and it's heavily speculated to be a 4th wave of layoffs due to the only data publicly available was aws employee surveying demonstrating 80+% of workers wanted remote as a choice. The other thing often referenced is something of a company culture thing known as "day 1." The tldr there is bezos coined the term day 1 culture to pretend Amazon was always imitating being at launch day status (day 1) and that day 2 is ruin. MThe rto mandate is a cookie cutter example of "day 2 behavior" listed by bezos and his high level leaders. Finally, there is the hypocrisy. Executives have tons of exemptions, reasons to bend the mandates for themselves, and the power to choose how and where they work, or influence policies involved. Meanwhile, workers have faced a brick wall when it's come to things even medical accommodations for remote. Workers have posted demands from HR forcing employees to at length detail private and embarrassing medical conditions only to auto-decline accommodations after. Workers have no ability to transfer locations that would benefit both the and the company due to red tape from the RTO edicts. Some workers, having been hired full remote, or to a location not where their direct manager resides are being mandated to move across the country due to no exemption stance taken by Amazon leadership.
x86x87 3y ago
Wed 5/31 12pm near Bezos's balls (ie the spheres). It would be a shame if other people that are forced back into the office would not show up in support.
- patch_cable 3y ago
  So people are walking out at lunch time? Do they plan to return after lunch?
- MortimerDukePhD 3y ago
  [dead]
olliej 3y ago
If only there were some kind of organization employees could belong to that would help counter the asymmetric power of corporations.
- hirako2000 3y ago
  The interesting part it isn't even needed for this walk to organise. We don't need unions like we used to, some online admin at most is enough
  - clipsy 3y ago
    That sounds lovely, but I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself. They haven't actually won any concessions or really accomplished anything yet; they haven't even demonstrated a reasonably successful walkout yet (we'll see whether they can manage that on the day of). For what it's worth, though, I hope your optimism is justified.
  - jasonhansel 3y ago
    Unions get a large number of legal protections that aren't available otherwise.
  - olliej 3y ago
    how are you organizing thing online? how do you contact people? how do you choose policy? How do you support people who aren't being paid due to a strike? What is it you think unions are doing, that they don't need to do now?
  - runarberg 3y ago
    No, we need them more than we used to. Back before the National Labor Relations Board unions were unregulated and collective action was unprotected. Unions were more like activist groups (think if BLM had a leadership structure and memberships). During strikes unions had to build solidarity and convince every worker to join. Strikers had to physically prevent scabs from entering the workplace, often with violence. Now it is simply illegal to scab. With today’s militarized police there is no way we could return to the era before NLRB and hope for success. We can, and we should organize outside of unions, but the goal should ultimately be to form a union, and benefit from all the protections you get from having one.
mbgerring 3y ago
This is long overdue. It is well past time for tech workers to organize and demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs.
- coin 3y ago
  Getting FAANG salary isn’t enough?
  - clipsy 3y ago
    Is a FAANG salary enough for Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk?
    - clipsy 3y ago
      It would be lovely if some of the folks downvoting this could explain precisely why it is that I should accept my FAANG salary as "enough" while tech billionaires apparently shouldn't, rather than just trying to make this post disappear. It's a perfectly reasonable question -- the ownership class has never considered (and will never consider) any amount of money to be "enough," so why on earth should any of the rest of us?
      - quesera 3y ago
        It is not a reasonable question. Employee wages and founder equity are not comparable things. What if Bezos said "y'know what, I'd good with AMZN at $10MM market cap, I'm all set"? There'd be no jobs at Amazon. And no one to complain about the jobs at Amazon. I would venture to guess that none of your Axis of Excess is particularly motivated by money. They do what they do because they enjoy the game. The game of global corporate titan. Money is an abstract metric that lets them keep playing.
  - Madmallard 3y ago
    With return to office it's nowhere near enough on the west coast. Unless you hold a top position at a large corporation on the west coast you don't even have enough money to buy a house. Considering you're helping generate billions in revenue yeah, I'd say you should be being paid more.
ackbar03 3y ago
Is this really going to work? Aren't they laying off people? Just layoff the walkouts
- losteric 3y ago
  that's likely a major motive behind RTO, yes - voluntary attrition and termination with cause (ie no severance, unlike layoffs and pip). A large walk out would probably boost share pricing.
- joelcollinsdc 3y ago
  Officially you can’t be fired for striking right? Guessing there’s a lot of ways a company can get around that though.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    If you strike against the US government as a public servant, yes you can be fired for breaking the law.[1] Strictly within the context of the private world however, I don't know. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_(1968)#August_1981_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...
  - idlewords 3y ago
    Under the Wagner Act you can't be fired for concerted collective action in the workplace, if the goal of such action is to improve working conditions. That is a much broader protection than for just strikes (which are pretty narrowly defined). But like you say, any corporation worth its salt can find ways to get rid of problem employees without violating the letter of the law even when it's not already planning big layoffs.
idlewords 3y ago
The danger of any walkout is that you won't be allowed to walk back in. The time for useful collective action was back when tech companies couldn't hire fast enough, and tech employees enjoyed unusual leverage. After 27,000 layoffs, a performative walkout without a defined goal is just making it easier for Amazon management as they plan the next round of cuts.
- causality0 3y ago
  That's a good point about the defined goal. I'd personally like to know if Amazon treats its white-collar workers as shitty as it treats its blue-collar ones. If so, why are they working there when tech has been so hot for the past years, but if not, does that make this a case of "voting for leopards eating people's faces off party"?
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  If the number is a large enough percentage they couldn't do a lockout. While it may be an industry-wide supply side problem for employees you can't just fire a huge portion of the staff and hire new people and expect things to just keep on truckin', losing that much institutional knowledge would be suicide.
  - idlewords 3y ago
    That's certainly the theory behind collective action. But the problem is you can't go from nothing/online venting to organizing multi-thousand-employee walkouts, any more than you can get up after years of bedrest and run a marathon. The capacity to effectively organize white collar tech workers at Amazon (or anywhere else) was never built up, and now it's too late.
  - thisarticle 3y ago
    Tell that to Twitter.
    - tarsinge 3y ago
      It's way too soon to draw conclusions.
btbuildem 3y ago
Wow, the pro-corp tone in some of the comments is surprising. Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production -- and can withhold them to our leverage. These folks are walking out for the right reasons -- big f-off to RTO, and even if a bit late, the layoffs.
- chadcmulligan 3y ago
  There are so many people that stand to lose if a fully remote work force came to pass. Building management, HR, middle managers, property investors, they're the ones you're hearing I'd guess. Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely, it's not like we spend all day talking to people any way.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    Software developers lose due to increased competition. Instead of competing with just silicon valley you are competing with the entire world.
    - greesil 3y ago
      The cat's out of the bag already
      - mvdtnz 3y ago
        This article is partially about RTO, so, is it?
    - dijit 3y ago
      Surely that's a good thing though, if we're preaching meritocracy? Practically speaking it's not so different than how it is currently though (except maybe lower CoL areas in the same country), it's very difficult to have FTE's in foreign countries, I am in a position to feel this very much right now- either you have to do very complex accounting, become a multi-national or they have to be hired as contractors. There's still many barriers to it being off-shored, and the kinds of companies that would do that aggressively are looking to replace you anyway.
poorbutdebtfree 3y ago
[flagged]
dukeofdoom 3y ago
Perhaps the "Wagie get back in the cage" policy, would go over better if the boss did not blow 100s of millions on chefs, cnn hosts and trying to escape gravity. "Jeff Bezos, the Amazon (AMZN) founder and world's wealthiest man, said Tuesday after flying to the edge of space that he planned to award $100 million each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef José Andrés."
WheelsAtLarge 3y ago
I'm always surprised to see this much desire to work from home all the time. The way I see it. Given a few years, every work from home job will be outsource to some country where the pay is less. Companies are all about cutting costs. If a job can be done at home then it can be done from anywhere in the world. Why not hire the least expensive workforce?
- user3939382 3y ago
  Communication across cultures is a huge problem even when the language is the same, let alone when it’s not. Also being in the same time zone is a big advantage for remote collaboration.
- 1123581321 3y ago
  Lots of companies have learned the hard way that cheaper engineers aren’t always better, or watched others learn it. And great engineers aren’t necessarily willing to work for last decade’s local wages.
- jojobas 3y ago
  Try working with a team composed of people from Bangalore, Philippines, Russia and Brazil and let us know how you went. Besides, the most capable and industrious people from these countries have already moved to better places, so you'll have to wait for the next crop (and hope they don't move to countries with better pay).
  - petre 3y ago
    Especially Russia since you can't even pay them due to the sanctions and you also risk your guy getting drafted.
- roncesvalles 3y ago
  The jobs that were going to be outsourced have already been outsourced. I really don't think physical presence is the big levee that keeps white-collar jobs in America.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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MortimerDukePhD 3y ago
Cue the analogies of how forcing coders back into the office (in one of the first places where you could bring your dog to work) is worse than working in a salmon cannery in 1926. I weep for those that must endure these atrocious working conditions, I heard they're running low on sparkling water in the kitchenettes.
TheGigaChad 3y ago
[dead]
ramesh31 3y ago
Bets on how long until they seize the means of production and occupy those spheres with some kind of eco-libertarian anarcho neutral zone?
petedoyle 3y ago
Would be fun if this turned into a huge recruiting event :)
opmelogy 3y ago
This isn't surprising. Amazon said that they were going to support remote work indefinitely and then changed their minds even though people have moved away from the main offices. Then they pull every back in the midst of massive layoffs and it really comes across as intimidation and manipulation. It doesn't matter if that's what it is - it's very very easy to perceive it that way. From what I've seen, older generations tolerate this sort of treatment better than younger generations. I don't mean that as a dig on younger folks and it being a commentary on maturity - I think that the younger generations have a different view of how things can and should function (to inject my opinion here - I tend to agree with them...things are really really broken and we have to change).
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  Does indefinitely not mean something like no timeline or deadline, but subject to change It doesn’t seem like a change of mind if the operative word is indeed “indefinitely”.
  - hackernewds 3y ago
    Yes but indefinitely also does not mean 1 year generally
deleted 3y ago
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smsm42 3y ago
> to show their frustration with recent layoffs, return-to-office mandates and a lack of action to address the company’s impact on climate change Now one only has to add social justice, marriage equality, immigration policy and saving the whales, and the mission of making it impossible to understand what it is about will be accomplished. Dudes, it's OK to be upset by just RTO, you don't have to bring the whole list every time.
- runarberg 3y ago
  Modern labor struggle is social justice. Just see the most successful labor leader in recent years, Christian Smalls, see how he talks, and what he emphasizes. See also various union statements by Starbucks worker’s unions. Climate change, gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, BLM, #metoo, those are all integral to a modern union. And raising those among your labor concerns has proven to be effective in building up the solidarity required for meaningful action.
  - smsm42 3y ago
    I guess whatever works, works - but I wonder how many union members actually support that and how many just go along because of the benefits and because there's no choice. I understand the original idea of unions, as means for improving worker's conditions, but this is not that. That's just generic leftist activism masquerading as worker's movement, and prioritizing things that have little to do with workers' benefit. Maybe that's why the unions are in decline now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Union_Membership_in_the_United_States,_1960-2020.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta... Maybe if they were more about the workers and less about the wokers, they had more willing members.
mathattack 3y ago
Seems like walking out when the company is doing layoffs is doing their own dirty work for them, no? My sense is if they think the work can be done remotely, it will be done in a low cost location. It’s too easy to say “You’re not here, you’re fired. Let’s move it to Iowa/Liverpool/India.”
tmaly 3y ago
“A group of workers is urging their colleagues to walk out May 31” I think that is a holiday for most in the US no?
adultSwim 3y ago
United we bargain, divided we beg

230 points by runarberg 3y ago

If these workers could get remote jobs, they would- but they can’t. Amazon knows this, and probably can’t wait for them to quit. For now all they can do is complain about having to go to an office to be a spoiled, overpaid tech worker. If I had that job I would be keeping my mouth shut and enjoying the paycheck, but to each their own I suppose.

x86x87 3y ago
Amazon has a small window to force the drones back to the office. Once people start having options we're done. WFH will be here to stay.
- worrycue 3y ago
  After they force people back to office then what? It’s not like they won’t leave if they manage to get remote job elsewhere. Frankly, I don’t get this drive to RTO. The only gain is face to face meetings might improve productivity (in some people). The downside is increased pollution due to commuting - even with EVs you are wearing out tires increase the amount of micro plastics in the environment, wearing out their batteries, and wasting electricity.
  - hw 3y ago
    > It’s not like they won’t leave if they manage to get remote job elsewhere. Even without RTO, people will still leave for other jobs if the grass is greener on the other side. If anything, WFH makes it easier for someone to go job hunting and do interviews. If the environment is your downside to RTO - you’re reaching. The loss in productivity when someone does 2 hours in traffic a day is probably a more compelling argument. Companies also have to stock their pantry, hire more office management, renew their office space leases.
    - worrycue 3y ago
      For most people the waste of time, energy, and money commuting is what they will care about but you can’t deny the environmental impact of millions of people commuting.
      - x86x87 3y ago
        Climate Pledge, amiright? /s
    - zamalek 3y ago
      It's not only the environment, RTO also clogs the road for those who are causally tied to a job location (doctors, nurses, baristas, chefs, waste management, etc.). > 2 hours in traffic a day I'm starting to wonder if demanding that commute being paid work time would be a reasonable tradeoff (that I wouldn't take myself). If being at the office is part of the job description, then commuting logically follows as a job function. At the moment, employers are ripping into employees time at the monetary expense of employees. Should we just live closer? Sure! Let's talk about compensating employees for property prices and home security.
  - tjr225 3y ago
    [dead]
- benjaminwootton 3y ago
  Objectively, people are seemingly being forced back to the office at least part time, and there are less WFH opportunities. Those in favour of WFH are losing the standoff.
crop_rotation 3y ago
Most of them sadly can not get even a non remote job easily. Most of big tech, and Amazon specially, massively lowered their hiring floor to hire more over the years, and are full of extremely incompetent people who will find it hard to survive elsewhere. Orgs are more like fiefdoms and full of incompetent people. A lot of such incompetent people know they are incompetent and go to massive lengths to survive (getting credit for everything they can, acting as information gatekeepers whenever they can).
- x86x87 3y ago
  Who can get a remote job easily? The top performers. Incoming dead sea effect.
  - crop_rotation 3y ago
    Yes, so return to office will cause top performers to leave. The incompetent people are not going anywhere due to such policies.
    - hw 3y ago
      I know lots of top performers who enjoy being back in the office, and low performers who would prefer WFH so they can coast under the radar
      - x86x87 3y ago
        Lol. Lots! All of the top performers. Because sitting in traffic pissing your life and time away is #worthit. Because being able to eat a healthy lunch you make youself is lame. Because going to the office to attend virtual meetings on Chime is the best.
- DenisM 3y ago
  Astute observation. I imagine this effect will eventually consume any company. Or will it? Do we know of a way to stave it off?
mbgerring 3y ago
Instead of begging to be exploited by billionaires, yob could band together with your fellow tech workers and win better treatment for all of us.
- tjr225 3y ago
  What? These people have lives better than 99% of the population.
  - clipsy 3y ago
    So do medical doctors; and they've preserved that status by unionizing to protect it.
    - hw 3y ago
      Medical doctors spend a lot of time and money in med school and residency. They have malpractice risk, and perform more essential work like saving lives and improving people’s health, your health. Working a hospital especially in the ED is stressful. No stock options, rsu grants. Tech workers on the other hand, say engineers, can easily get a high paying FAANG job without a 4yr degree - just spending time grinding leetcode or a coding bootcamp. Not to mention the RSUs, office perks like free lunches, WFH, on site laundry and daycare, flexible time off, no set work hours… come on
      - clipsy 3y ago
        > Tech workers on the other hand, say engineers, can easily get a high paying FAANG job without a 4yr degree It is prima facie absurd to say that tech workers can "easily" get a job at FAANG; if it were that easy to work at FAANG surely the 50%[0] of Software Engineers who make less than $121k or 75%[0] of Software Engineers who make less than $152k would simply do so. [0]: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...
      - o1y32 3y ago
        Did you just make things up? There are people who work at FAANG without a degree, but that's the absolute minority. Most people have spent years on a formal education, many of which have a master's or even PhDs.
cvoss 3y ago
Believe it or not, there are other motivating factors for doing good work than money. Just because I'm fairly compensated doesn't mean I'm going to tolerate major inconveniences that impede my ability to work efficiently, productively, and with a positive attitude. Part of why I want to do my job well is because I find the work itself gratifying. Once that motivating factor vanishes, I'm going to complain or look elsewhere for work. It's in both parties' best interest for complaints to happen, to be heard, and to be addressed, so that workers can get back to being both content for themselves and productive for the company.
- tjr225 3y ago
  [dead]

neilv 3y ago

> “There’s a feeling of the culture and the values that are being told are important for us to bring to the table are not being mirrored by the top executives,” the worker said. “They do not model with their behavior what we are told to do with our roles.” Are they referring to Amazon's Leadership Principles, or something else? https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-...

tjpnz 3y ago
I read that to suggest the execs aren't coming to the office themselves.
- rlabrecque 3y ago
  I don't work at Amazon, but my C-suite and leadership team is in the office and that really makes a HUGE difference in going back. Both by them leading by example and getting to have the face to face time with them.
revlolz 3y ago
It's a multitude of things. The LPs are the start of it, but the data oriented culture has been ignored by rto mandate and the head of HR's apathetic response to the remote advocates. Amazon is a very heavy document writing company and more often than not if you had to write a doc you faced someone saying "so what?" and then that person or their/your leaders requiring proving points and writing narratives leveraging facts through data to challenge biases. Amazon's leadership pissed the workers (formerly "leaders") off by instead explaining all mandates and changes are based upon their feelings and beliefs. There is no data (at least any they care to share) and it's heavily speculated to be a 4th wave of layoffs due to the only data publicly available was aws employee surveying demonstrating 80+% of workers wanted remote as a choice. The other thing often referenced is something of a company culture thing known as "day 1." The tldr there is bezos coined the term day 1 culture to pretend Amazon was always imitating being at launch day status (day 1) and that day 2 is ruin. MThe rto mandate is a cookie cutter example of "day 2 behavior" listed by bezos and his high level leaders. Finally, there is the hypocrisy. Executives have tons of exemptions, reasons to bend the mandates for themselves, and the power to choose how and where they work, or influence policies involved. Meanwhile, workers have faced a brick wall when it's come to things even medical accommodations for remote. Workers have posted demands from HR forcing employees to at length detail private and embarrassing medical conditions only to auto-decline accommodations after. Workers have no ability to transfer locations that would benefit both the and the company due to red tape from the RTO edicts. Some workers, having been hired full remote, or to a location not where their direct manager resides are being mandated to move across the country due to no exemption stance taken by Amazon leadership.

x86x87 3y ago

Wed 5/31 12pm near Bezos's balls (ie the spheres). It would be a shame if other people that are forced back into the office would not show up in support.

patch_cable 3y ago
So people are walking out at lunch time? Do they plan to return after lunch?
MortimerDukePhD 3y ago
[dead]

olliej 3y ago

If only there were some kind of organization employees could belong to that would help counter the asymmetric power of corporations.

hirako2000 3y ago
The interesting part it isn't even needed for this walk to organise. We don't need unions like we used to, some online admin at most is enough
- clipsy 3y ago
  That sounds lovely, but I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself. They haven't actually won any concessions or really accomplished anything yet; they haven't even demonstrated a reasonably successful walkout yet (we'll see whether they can manage that on the day of). For what it's worth, though, I hope your optimism is justified.
- jasonhansel 3y ago
  Unions get a large number of legal protections that aren't available otherwise.
- olliej 3y ago
  how are you organizing thing online? how do you contact people? how do you choose policy? How do you support people who aren't being paid due to a strike? What is it you think unions are doing, that they don't need to do now?
- runarberg 3y ago
  No, we need them more than we used to. Back before the National Labor Relations Board unions were unregulated and collective action was unprotected. Unions were more like activist groups (think if BLM had a leadership structure and memberships). During strikes unions had to build solidarity and convince every worker to join. Strikers had to physically prevent scabs from entering the workplace, often with violence. Now it is simply illegal to scab. With today’s militarized police there is no way we could return to the era before NLRB and hope for success. We can, and we should organize outside of unions, but the goal should ultimately be to form a union, and benefit from all the protections you get from having one.

mbgerring 3y ago

This is long overdue. It is well past time for tech workers to organize and demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs.

coin 3y ago
Getting FAANG salary isn’t enough?
- clipsy 3y ago
  Is a FAANG salary enough for Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk?
  - clipsy 3y ago
    It would be lovely if some of the folks downvoting this could explain precisely why it is that I should accept my FAANG salary as "enough" while tech billionaires apparently shouldn't, rather than just trying to make this post disappear. It's a perfectly reasonable question -- the ownership class has never considered (and will never consider) any amount of money to be "enough," so why on earth should any of the rest of us?
    - quesera 3y ago
      It is not a reasonable question. Employee wages and founder equity are not comparable things. What if Bezos said "y'know what, I'd good with AMZN at $10MM market cap, I'm all set"? There'd be no jobs at Amazon. And no one to complain about the jobs at Amazon. I would venture to guess that none of your Axis of Excess is particularly motivated by money. They do what they do because they enjoy the game. The game of global corporate titan. Money is an abstract metric that lets them keep playing.
- Madmallard 3y ago
  With return to office it's nowhere near enough on the west coast. Unless you hold a top position at a large corporation on the west coast you don't even have enough money to buy a house. Considering you're helping generate billions in revenue yeah, I'd say you should be being paid more.

ackbar03 3y ago

Is this really going to work? Aren't they laying off people? Just layoff the walkouts

losteric 3y ago
that's likely a major motive behind RTO, yes - voluntary attrition and termination with cause (ie no severance, unlike layoffs and pip). A large walk out would probably boost share pricing.
joelcollinsdc 3y ago
Officially you can’t be fired for striking right? Guessing there’s a lot of ways a company can get around that though.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  If you strike against the US government as a public servant, yes you can be fired for breaking the law.[1] Strictly within the context of the private world however, I don't know. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_(1968)#August_1981_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...
- idlewords 3y ago
  Under the Wagner Act you can't be fired for concerted collective action in the workplace, if the goal of such action is to improve working conditions. That is a much broader protection than for just strikes (which are pretty narrowly defined). But like you say, any corporation worth its salt can find ways to get rid of problem employees without violating the letter of the law even when it's not already planning big layoffs.

idlewords 3y ago

The danger of any walkout is that you won't be allowed to walk back in. The time for useful collective action was back when tech companies couldn't hire fast enough, and tech employees enjoyed unusual leverage. After 27,000 layoffs, a performative walkout without a defined goal is just making it easier for Amazon management as they plan the next round of cuts.

causality0 3y ago
That's a good point about the defined goal. I'd personally like to know if Amazon treats its white-collar workers as shitty as it treats its blue-collar ones. If so, why are they working there when tech has been so hot for the past years, but if not, does that make this a case of "voting for leopards eating people's faces off party"?
sleepybrett 3y ago
If the number is a large enough percentage they couldn't do a lockout. While it may be an industry-wide supply side problem for employees you can't just fire a huge portion of the staff and hire new people and expect things to just keep on truckin', losing that much institutional knowledge would be suicide.
- idlewords 3y ago
  That's certainly the theory behind collective action. But the problem is you can't go from nothing/online venting to organizing multi-thousand-employee walkouts, any more than you can get up after years of bedrest and run a marathon. The capacity to effectively organize white collar tech workers at Amazon (or anywhere else) was never built up, and now it's too late.
- thisarticle 3y ago
  Tell that to Twitter.
  - tarsinge 3y ago
    It's way too soon to draw conclusions.

btbuildem 3y ago

Wow, the pro-corp tone in some of the comments is surprising. Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production -- and can withhold them to our leverage. These folks are walking out for the right reasons -- big f-off to RTO, and even if a bit late, the layoffs.

chadcmulligan 3y ago
There are so many people that stand to lose if a fully remote work force came to pass. Building management, HR, middle managers, property investors, they're the ones you're hearing I'd guess. Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely, it's not like we spend all day talking to people any way.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  Software developers lose due to increased competition. Instead of competing with just silicon valley you are competing with the entire world.
  - greesil 3y ago
    The cat's out of the bag already
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      This article is partially about RTO, so, is it?
  - dijit 3y ago
    Surely that's a good thing though, if we're preaching meritocracy? Practically speaking it's not so different than how it is currently though (except maybe lower CoL areas in the same country), it's very difficult to have FTE's in foreign countries, I am in a position to feel this very much right now- either you have to do very complex accounting, become a multi-national or they have to be hired as contractors. There's still many barriers to it being off-shored, and the kinds of companies that would do that aggressively are looking to replace you anyway.

poorbutdebtfree 3y ago

[flagged]

dukeofdoom 3y ago

Perhaps the "Wagie get back in the cage" policy, would go over better if the boss did not blow 100s of millions on chefs, cnn hosts and trying to escape gravity. "Jeff Bezos, the Amazon (AMZN) founder and world's wealthiest man, said Tuesday after flying to the edge of space that he planned to award $100 million each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef José Andrés."

WheelsAtLarge 3y ago

I'm always surprised to see this much desire to work from home all the time. The way I see it. Given a few years, every work from home job will be outsource to some country where the pay is less. Companies are all about cutting costs. If a job can be done at home then it can be done from anywhere in the world. Why not hire the least expensive workforce?

user3939382 3y ago
Communication across cultures is a huge problem even when the language is the same, let alone when it’s not. Also being in the same time zone is a big advantage for remote collaboration.
1123581321 3y ago
Lots of companies have learned the hard way that cheaper engineers aren’t always better, or watched others learn it. And great engineers aren’t necessarily willing to work for last decade’s local wages.
jojobas 3y ago
Try working with a team composed of people from Bangalore, Philippines, Russia and Brazil and let us know how you went. Besides, the most capable and industrious people from these countries have already moved to better places, so you'll have to wait for the next crop (and hope they don't move to countries with better pay).
- petre 3y ago
  Especially Russia since you can't even pay them due to the sanctions and you also risk your guy getting drafted.
roncesvalles 3y ago
The jobs that were going to be outsourced have already been outsourced. I really don't think physical presence is the big levee that keeps white-collar jobs in America.
kitsunesoba 3y ago

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MortimerDukePhD 3y ago

Cue the analogies of how forcing coders back into the office (in one of the first places where you could bring your dog to work) is worse than working in a salmon cannery in 1926. I weep for those that must endure these atrocious working conditions, I heard they're running low on sparkling water in the kitchenettes.

TheGigaChad 3y ago

[dead]

ramesh31 3y ago

Bets on how long until they seize the means of production and occupy those spheres with some kind of eco-libertarian anarcho neutral zone?

petedoyle 3y ago

Would be fun if this turned into a huge recruiting event :)

opmelogy 3y ago

This isn't surprising. Amazon said that they were going to support remote work indefinitely and then changed their minds even though people have moved away from the main offices. Then they pull every back in the midst of massive layoffs and it really comes across as intimidation and manipulation. It doesn't matter if that's what it is - it's very very easy to perceive it that way. From what I've seen, older generations tolerate this sort of treatment better than younger generations. I don't mean that as a dig on younger folks and it being a commentary on maturity - I think that the younger generations have a different view of how things can and should function (to inject my opinion here - I tend to agree with them...things are really really broken and we have to change).

DiggyJohnson 3y ago
Does indefinitely not mean something like no timeline or deadline, but subject to change It doesn’t seem like a change of mind if the operative word is indeed “indefinitely”.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  Yes but indefinitely also does not mean 1 year generally

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smsm42 3y ago

> to show their frustration with recent layoffs, return-to-office mandates and a lack of action to address the company’s impact on climate change Now one only has to add social justice, marriage equality, immigration policy and saving the whales, and the mission of making it impossible to understand what it is about will be accomplished. Dudes, it's OK to be upset by just RTO, you don't have to bring the whole list every time.

runarberg 3y ago
Modern labor struggle is social justice. Just see the most successful labor leader in recent years, Christian Smalls, see how he talks, and what he emphasizes. See also various union statements by Starbucks worker’s unions. Climate change, gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, BLM, #metoo, those are all integral to a modern union. And raising those among your labor concerns has proven to be effective in building up the solidarity required for meaningful action.
- smsm42 3y ago
  I guess whatever works, works - but I wonder how many union members actually support that and how many just go along because of the benefits and because there's no choice. I understand the original idea of unions, as means for improving worker's conditions, but this is not that. That's just generic leftist activism masquerading as worker's movement, and prioritizing things that have little to do with workers' benefit. Maybe that's why the unions are in decline now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Union_Membership_in_the_United_States,_1960-2020.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta... Maybe if they were more about the workers and less about the wokers, they had more willing members.

mathattack 3y ago

Seems like walking out when the company is doing layoffs is doing their own dirty work for them, no? My sense is if they think the work can be done remotely, it will be done in a low cost location. It’s too easy to say “You’re not here, you’re fired. Let’s move it to Iowa/Liverpool/India.”

tmaly 3y ago

“A group of workers is urging their colleagues to walk out May 31” I think that is a holiday for most in the US no?

adultSwim 3y ago

United we bargain, divided we beg