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Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule
- poleez 3y ago[dead]
- doitLP 3y agohttps://archive.is/gwuFp https://archive.is/gwuFp
- golemotron 3y ago> Amazon has tracked the attendance of US-based workers and targeted those who appeared to fail to comply with its hybrid working policy, sparking concerns about privacy. Concerns about privacy? Really? They expect that entering and leaving their employer's building should be something that they should be unaware of?
- francisofascii 3y agoSure. Most companies track entering/leaving but are not actively monitoring it, Employees become concerned when moving from tracking to actively monitoring.
- golemotron 3y agoThat's more than a little silly. Someone being tracked has no idea whether or not they are being actively monitored. It's naive to assume that one won't be.
- ilyt 3y ago"Concerns about privacy" on just "works at office/remotely" is a weird complaint. I'd think even under EU and GDPR logging whether user badged in or used VPN would be entirely fine.
- Abroszka 3y agoNo, it's not fine. It adds a lot of complications and EU countries are different. It's not an accident that this is US only. The main problem is that while it's fine to collect that data, but to use it to calculate attendance is an another question.
- ilyt 3y agoI think only problem would be not telling the employee that is used as attendance data. Anyone with full time employment (at least here in Poland) will have attendance data in one or other way because it's required by law
- Eumenes 3y agoThis is going to spawn a plethora of linkedin influencer and biz insider articles about "psychological safety" and "hostile communication" and HR consultants will get paid to use chatgpt to make language sound less bad
- 1-6 3y agoIt's the end of WFH Hybrid for certain industries.
- catchnear4321 3y agoagain? already?
- ojhughes 3y agoMany (most?) London based roles are hybrid now , train occupancy seems back to pre-covid levels
- sapiogram 3y agoWhat a bizarre article. How can an employer not be allowed to keep track of when you work?
- _ea1k 3y agoYeah, that was oddly non-specific. How can being at the company's office ever be "private"?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoindeed this is location tracking, not productivity monitoring.
- housemusicfan 3y agoIt reads like an Onion headline. "Gen Z learns their badges can be used to track their movements. Said one employee: 'This is not OK!'"
- yellow_lead 3y agoJust let your coworker/friend swipe in for you. If they can't tell otherwise, does it really matter? *Not financial advice
- x86x87 3y agoLol. Based on chats with a buddy that [still] work there, in [most] a lot of buildings they have a system sort of like the subway. Swipe, door open, you pass through, door close. There isba sensor that can tell if you went in. You also swipe in and out of the building. So not only they know you were there, they know for how long. From a business security point of view this makes sense. You want to know who is in the building at all times. Also, from conversation with same person: everyone got the email. Not a single soul they talked to met the "quota". Isn't it great? Now they're gonna move to the fire everyone stage?
- yellow_lead 3y agoWow, that's inconvenient. Seems like a courthouse/prison
- tivert 3y ago> Lol. Based on chats with a buddy that [still] work there, in [most] a lot of buildings they have a system sort of like the subway. Swipe, door open, you pass through, door close. There isba sensor that can tell if you went in. You also swipe in and out of the building. So not only they know you were there, they know for how long. Could you swing a backpack through to fool the sensor? But it's sounding like fooling it would be way to attention-grabbing to work.
- amzn1691681962 3y ago> everyone got the email. Not a single soul they talked to met the "quota" As an Amazon employee who has been RTO'ing 3 days a week like a good corporate drone, I can absolutely attest that this is not true. It does seem like the query used didn't take things like time-off or holidays though either. My anecdote - there are MANY director level managers who are against RTO and thought they could just turn a blind eye and message to their org "I am not keeping track of this so don't worry." I pointed out to MY director that I didn't think it was going to be in their power to turn a blind eye. They would get some sort of report with tough questions attached, directly from their manager or higher. Turns out I am still Right A Lot. I'm guessing your friend has a director with a similar mindset who is finding out the harsh reality of the situation themself now. They have no control over this. Every manager (L6 - L8) I've talked with about this was both unaware this was happening and pissed off because they were removed from the communication chain with their team.
- jitl 3y agoI have a friend who’s required to do 3 days in the AWS office, buuuut… Amazon hasn’t re-opened the building he’s supposed to report to. Like he has a desk assigned in a closed building.
- spacemadness 3y agoDid they get the email?
- jitl 3y ago¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they’ve been getting prompt emails generally I don’t know about this one. Their manager is trying to get the various enforcement machinery worked out but not much luck stopping the emails.
- rybosworld 3y agoI'm very pro WFH but this is pretty benign and standard tbh. One of the reasons employers give you a badge in the first place is to track whose coming and going into the building. Before the pandemic/WFH, another employee got let go at my company because they were trying to stealthily work remote. My understanding is that their badge-in/out data (or lack thereof) was used.
- jjulius 3y ago>The email to a select number of employees prompted some to raise concerns about privacy... This is a fascinating perspective for Amazon employees to take given the numerous privacy concerns many people have had about Amazon for a long time.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoAt a prior megacorp that I just quit from for their return to office strategy people would come into the office, swipe their badge at the entrance, log in to their machine, lock the screen, and go home to work.
- taeric 3y agoA lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept.
- tivert 3y ago> A lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept. I've been joking with my coworkers that we should pool our badges, and just rotate one person who goes in and swipes everyone's badges in, works a day, then swipes them out.
- taeric 3y agoIt is not uncommon to have an attendant posted at badge in locations. Such that... this wouldn't really be hard to put a stop to. And that is assuming you couldn't just spot it in the data. As I said in other response, I have no doubt these things can and will get gamed. I don't like the seeming escalation that is implied by this, though. Why start down that slope, if we can avoid it? (Valid to argue that the start down that pat was the badge readers, I think. But at some point, the last step has to stop being justification for the next.)
- r00fus 3y agoAre you serious? You’d need one attendant for each badge-in location. My work building has like a half dozen of these entries for fire reasons. Feasible in high rises maybe not in the PNW or Bay Area.
- spacemadness 3y agoThey could have just made the article focus on how the big corps are trying to anger staff enough to quit on their own so they don’t have to pay severance. These companies are playing with fire. It turns out you do need some staff to finish projects and the more chaos you cause, the less will get done with existing staff.
- glimshe 3y agoI'm a huge WFH fan, but I don't see the problem of a company demanding 3+ or even daily attendance. It's a bad business decision IMHO, but it's simply that: a business decision. And they have the right to know if you are complying with that job requirement, it's not too different from requiring warehouse workers to lift boxes.
- nine_zeros 3y agoI think employees should also have a law in their favor stating that once they badge out of office at 5 pm, their laptop is locked completely. This will make all attendance reasonable.
- pimlottc 3y agoThe title reads less confusingly with some well-placed hyphens: “Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3-days-in-office rule”
- alex-nt 3y agoThis week I went to the office (not Amazon, another company in Europe) for 3 days in a row because we had new-joiners and I wanted to make it easier for them in the beginning. I live near the office, just a 15m walk away, and I would still not like to continue 3D/W. I know, people call it entitlement, but my problem is that the office is a hostile environment. Here is my experience, in an office that was at most 30% capacity, in a 3Y old building: - The "kitchen" area is so tiny, if you want water you will queue, there are only 2 places on the whole floor where you can get it and they are tiny rooms where at max 5 ppl could enter, 3 comfortably. - Queues at the bathroom, there are 2 stalls, for the whole floor, I couldn't find another one (I really hope there is one more, I just failed to find it, I did ask, nobody knew about another one). This got worse and worse as the week progressed. I've noticed a similar issue at my previous employer (5Y old building, part of why I left, health issues that are greatly improved by the access to a toilet) - They implemented some eco-friendly lights, with movement sensors. This sounds great and I am for helping the environment, the problem is that in practice these lights turn on-off every few minutes, during the day, in summer, in a sunlight filled building. My eyes were so tired every EOD. - In the same eco-friendly manner they made the AC not run during the night and morning. So, if you respected the work schedule and came to the office in the morning it was hotter than outside. It's summer, we had 30C in the morning, 47C in the afternoon. I needed to wait for 1-2h for the AC to kick in and recover after arriving in the office. I am conflicted, I did see that the new-joiners liked the in-person meetings and all, and I do get it. It is easier for non-experienced people to talk to new colleagues online if they have some interactions before. But, time after time, as my employers change buildings I see always reductions in common areas/bathrooms/etc. I find it hilarious now that I have to research the building of potential employers and ask them if they plan to move out in the next 1-3Y (more and more jobs no longer offer remote work in my area).
- late2part 3y agoA long long time ago, I initiated a project to move 80% of the SaaS company's workload out of a big cloud provider that is fond of 3 day in office work weeks into privately run data center cages. To be clear, we bought and ran the computers, rented the network and the cages/rooms in the data center buildings/campuses. One of our grading criteria was how many bathroom stalls and urinals they had in the men's and women's bathrooms. Some of these places had 200k sqft (20k m^2) and just 1 stall. No bueno!!! When we were evaluatin the sites/locations (in the early days) we had to queue our 8 folks up for 5-20 min for bathroom breaks before we could go to lunch!
- someonehere 3y agoWith all the talk of more Covid coming this winter, should be interesting to see how that plays out with lockdowns again if they happen.
- hiyer 3y agoWell, they didn't make up the rule just for kicks. It was bound to be enforced eventually, and that's what they're doing now.
- squalo 3y agoBezos is desperate to hold on to those corporate tax incentives.
- nunez 3y agoJassy's running the show now though.
- lopkeny12ko 3y agoTo summarize: * Amazon requires in-office work N days a week. * Employees agree. * Employees don't honor the agreement. * Amazon sends a notice that employees need to honor the agreement they made to return to office. * Entitled employees are upset.
- schott12521 3y ago- Amazon employees that were going into an office pre-pandemic switched to virtual when the company asked. - Amazon employees stay productive, company makes the most it ever has due to the pandemic. - Amazon fumbles for 1.5 years, doesn’t clearly communicate the desire to have everyone working in Seattle/hubs again, continues hiring remote talent. - Most employees get frustrated at the fact that Amazon has complete control of the contract. Amazon says “you must work here” and there’s 0 room to negotiate. Now I get it, we’re US workers with little workers rights and we get paid good money. So, to people like you, we should suck it up and just deal with it! Quit being so entitled! Sure. Where’s the empathy for our fellow humans that are being forced to move across the country with their family because they took a job that promised them one thing, and is now taking that away?
- lopkeny12ko 3y agoTell me you're a low performer without telling me you're a low performer ;)
- schott12521 3y agoLow performers == people acting with empathy? I thought the Earth's best employer would "lead with empathy" [1]? I'm (voluntarily) leaving today after 5 years, I guess my performance was good enough to let me stay for that long. [1]: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/two-new-leadership-principles https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/two-new-leader...
- rokkitmensch 3y agoAbsolutely! The performance rubric looks at your value to them, not any of the other wishy-washy axes, comrade.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoI've heard a lot of orgs have flex weeks or flex days. I really want more awareness of who is doing what in this regard. My org is giving folk 6 flex weeks a year where they can work remote all week.