3 ms·

My team is fully distributed across the globe yet they are tracking my badge swipes to an office an hour away where no one else works. The environmental impact

My team is fully distributed across the globe yet they are tracking my badge swipes to an office an hour away where no one else works. The environmental impact of this just drives me nuts. Not to mention the danger to my personal well being and the cost. They don't know how to track performance here either so I know they aren't making data based decisions.

zamalek 3y ago
And you're tolerating an employer who treats you like a child, why? There are so many other employers who will treat you like the adult that you are.
- denimnerd42 3y ago
  They've just started this enforcement. Career change takes time :)
- mdgrech23 3y ago
  the market is really tightening up. people love to say if you can't find a job it's b/c you're not skilled blah blah but if your making good money it may be hard to find another job at that income level.
  - zamalek 3y ago
    If you're reasonably polyglot then finding a well-paying job isn't too hard - the market is already swinging back towards favoring talent and open positions are climbing (at least according to an interview I listened to the other day [1]). Of course, if you're coming from the likes of Amazon then I'd be inclined to agree: 400k+ is a rarity - but you'd probably be able to pull it off by migrating to another MOFAANG. Edit: in addition, if you are 400k+ you'd probably enjoy the privilege of skipping the interview and even having a position opened for you. [1]: https://rustacean-station.org/episode/cedric-sellmann/ https://rustacean-station.org/episode/cedric-sellmann/
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      Favouring talent? The recruiters won't know how good you are. Talent doesn't help. Recruiting is more or less random in my experience.
      - zamalek 3y ago
        For upper level MOFAANG engineers earning more than 400k?
        antisthenes 3y ago
        How many of these people actually exist worldwide? Maybe try to make your advice more applicable to at least 5% of the population?
        zamalek 3y ago
        That's moving the goal posts. The first reply was concerned about the pay scale and 300-400k are scarce but usually available. So either you are in the < 400k camp where jobs are typically available, or you are in the > 400k camp where you don't have to worry about job availability. Overall, if your opinion is that jobs aren't available with your pay scale, have you recently searched for one?
        noisenotsignal 3y ago
        >400k and fully remote is still not easy. Most of the obvious high payers in big tech (e.g. Meta) have required days in the office, and I can think of very few high-paying companies that don’t have N days RTO at all levels (literally only Netflix off the top of my head). It is also not the case that such people get in without interviews. Senior+ (though largely staff+) is generally when you can make 400k and there are definitely still grueling interview loops at those levels.
        zamalek 3y ago
  - asoneth 3y ago
    Agreed. Finding remote jobs seems easy, the challenge is finding remote jobs that are interesting and pay close to my current salary. I'd accept a 10-20% salary hit to skip my 20m commute 3 days a week, but so far the only options have been for 40%+ lower salaries or work that I am less interested in. For me that tradeoff is not worth it.
wil421 3y ago
Same here, I commute 3 days a week to work in an office alone. There is not a single person I work on a project with in the office. Everyone I work with is distributed from East to West coasts and larger cites in between.
mdgrech23 3y ago
eff your personal well being but don't take it personally it's just your part of some cohort the elite have dictated must return to the office. you see we've calculated out that we sell the building at a loss of x dollars if we attempt to sell right now, and our other buildings have a couple years left on the lease and can't get out of that, plus we already pumped y dollars into renovations in this building plus we received tax breaks to come to these communities to offer you poor slobs jobs and now the mayors and governors are threatening to take back those tax breaks if we don't get buts in seats soon. Now we now some of you will leave and we've factored that into our calculus. The math says x% will leave which is totally acceptable and way cheaper than breaking leases or pissing off governors and that sort of thing. /sarcasm
- vitaflo 3y ago
  Not sure why you added /s, this is exactly what’s happening.
snarfy 3y ago
I recall hearing 'your odds of dying in a car wreck are 1 in 18'. I'm not sure what the injured or disabled number is, but it can't be good.
oblio 3y ago
> My team is fully distributed across the globe yet they are tracking my badge swipes to an office an hour away where no one else works. Do they need to be distributed around the world or is that just an artifact of past hiring decisions?
- denimnerd42 3y ago
  What's the alternative? They don't want to pay a full team SV or NYC wages that's for sure. There's not many places they can just layoff and re-hire what would be tens of thousands of people. Total headcount is north of 100k. I'm not sure what it would be including contractors. Are they gonna pay support roles like scrum masters and admin assistants NYC wages too? We have offshore resources on the team too to maintain a 24 hours global presence. Europe and India. So are we onshoring to night shifts too?
  - oblio 3y ago
    Is Amazon hiring scrum masters?
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Any large company is going to have a lot of locations, both to take advantage of wage disparities and because people are often resistant to packing up and moving. Teams can sometimes be colocated but, especially with so much location-independent hiring over the past few years, the norm is that people are scattered all over the place and it's pretty hard to but the genie back in the bottle absent massive organizational and people changes. So, to the degree you communicate in real-time, you're going to be on Zoom a lot.
    - denimnerd42 3y ago
      They already have work locations allowed per department. Mine has 3 in the US and 4 abroad, but we work with others in far more. I could see them trying to move the number of work locations allowed down by shuffling people around or laying off but that'd just be a horrendous undertaking.
slipshady 3y ago
> danger to my personal well being and the cost I don't know what your personal situation is, and you don't have to go into any detail, but how/why is coming to the office affecting your personal well being?
- denimnerd42 3y ago
  driving every day is more dangerous than not driving every day. job is basically saying take a small chance to be injured every day that we don't have to insure to keep your job.
  - slipshady 3y ago
    > driving every day is more dangerous than not driving every day Can't disagree there. Do you also do thing like having groceries/shopping delivered to your place of residence, to avoid having to leave the house. Or do you still walk/commute/drive/travel to things that most would consider part of everyday life?
    - denimnerd42 3y ago
      of course i drive/bike/walk in daily life. the risk is proportional to miles traveled. adding 10-50 a day compared to 10-50 a week is quite a bit. is that snark

zamalek 3y ago

And you're tolerating an employer who treats you like a child, why? There are so many other employers who will treat you like the adult that you are.

denimnerd42 3y ago
They've just started this enforcement. Career change takes time :)
mdgrech23 3y ago
the market is really tightening up. people love to say if you can't find a job it's b/c you're not skilled blah blah but if your making good money it may be hard to find another job at that income level.
- zamalek 3y ago
  If you're reasonably polyglot then finding a well-paying job isn't too hard - the market is already swinging back towards favoring talent and open positions are climbing (at least according to an interview I listened to the other day [1]). Of course, if you're coming from the likes of Amazon then I'd be inclined to agree: 400k+ is a rarity - but you'd probably be able to pull it off by migrating to another MOFAANG. Edit: in addition, if you are 400k+ you'd probably enjoy the privilege of skipping the interview and even having a position opened for you. [1]: https://rustacean-station.org/episode/cedric-sellmann/ https://rustacean-station.org/episode/cedric-sellmann/
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Favouring talent? The recruiters won't know how good you are. Talent doesn't help. Recruiting is more or less random in my experience.
    - zamalek 3y ago
      For upper level MOFAANG engineers earning more than 400k?
      - antisthenes 3y ago
        How many of these people actually exist worldwide? Maybe try to make your advice more applicable to at least 5% of the population?
        zamalek 3y ago
        That's moving the goal posts. The first reply was concerned about the pay scale and 300-400k are scarce but usually available. So either you are in the < 400k camp where jobs are typically available, or you are in the > 400k camp where you don't have to worry about job availability. Overall, if your opinion is that jobs aren't available with your pay scale, have you recently searched for one?
        noisenotsignal 3y ago
        >400k and fully remote is still not easy. Most of the obvious high payers in big tech (e.g. Meta) have required days in the office, and I can think of very few high-paying companies that don’t have N days RTO at all levels (literally only Netflix off the top of my head). It is also not the case that such people get in without interviews. Senior+ (though largely staff+) is generally when you can make 400k and there are definitely still grueling interview loops at those levels.
        zamalek 3y ago
- asoneth 3y ago
  Agreed. Finding remote jobs seems easy, the challenge is finding remote jobs that are interesting and pay close to my current salary. I'd accept a 10-20% salary hit to skip my 20m commute 3 days a week, but so far the only options have been for 40%+ lower salaries or work that I am less interested in. For me that tradeoff is not worth it.

wil421 3y ago

Same here, I commute 3 days a week to work in an office alone. There is not a single person I work on a project with in the office. Everyone I work with is distributed from East to West coasts and larger cites in between.

mdgrech23 3y ago

eff your personal well being but don't take it personally it's just your part of some cohort the elite have dictated must return to the office. you see we've calculated out that we sell the building at a loss of x dollars if we attempt to sell right now, and our other buildings have a couple years left on the lease and can't get out of that, plus we already pumped y dollars into renovations in this building plus we received tax breaks to come to these communities to offer you poor slobs jobs and now the mayors and governors are threatening to take back those tax breaks if we don't get buts in seats soon. Now we now some of you will leave and we've factored that into our calculus. The math says x% will leave which is totally acceptable and way cheaper than breaking leases or pissing off governors and that sort of thing. /sarcasm

vitaflo 3y ago
Not sure why you added /s, this is exactly what’s happening.

snarfy 3y ago

I recall hearing 'your odds of dying in a car wreck are 1 in 18'. I'm not sure what the injured or disabled number is, but it can't be good.

oblio 3y ago

> My team is fully distributed across the globe yet they are tracking my badge swipes to an office an hour away where no one else works. Do they need to be distributed around the world or is that just an artifact of past hiring decisions?

denimnerd42 3y ago
What's the alternative? They don't want to pay a full team SV or NYC wages that's for sure. There's not many places they can just layoff and re-hire what would be tens of thousands of people. Total headcount is north of 100k. I'm not sure what it would be including contractors. Are they gonna pay support roles like scrum masters and admin assistants NYC wages too? We have offshore resources on the team too to maintain a 24 hours global presence. Europe and India. So are we onshoring to night shifts too?
- oblio 3y ago
  Is Amazon hiring scrum masters?
- ghaff 3y ago
  Any large company is going to have a lot of locations, both to take advantage of wage disparities and because people are often resistant to packing up and moving. Teams can sometimes be colocated but, especially with so much location-independent hiring over the past few years, the norm is that people are scattered all over the place and it's pretty hard to but the genie back in the bottle absent massive organizational and people changes. So, to the degree you communicate in real-time, you're going to be on Zoom a lot.
  - denimnerd42 3y ago
    They already have work locations allowed per department. Mine has 3 in the US and 4 abroad, but we work with others in far more. I could see them trying to move the number of work locations allowed down by shuffling people around or laying off but that'd just be a horrendous undertaking.

slipshady 3y ago

> danger to my personal well being and the cost I don't know what your personal situation is, and you don't have to go into any detail, but how/why is coming to the office affecting your personal well being?

denimnerd42 3y ago
driving every day is more dangerous than not driving every day. job is basically saying take a small chance to be injured every day that we don't have to insure to keep your job.
- slipshady 3y ago
  > driving every day is more dangerous than not driving every day Can't disagree there. Do you also do thing like having groceries/shopping delivered to your place of residence, to avoid having to leave the house. Or do you still walk/commute/drive/travel to things that most would consider part of everyday life?
  - denimnerd42 3y ago
    of course i drive/bike/walk in daily life. the risk is proportional to miles traveled. adding 10-50 a day compared to 10-50 a week is quite a bit. is that snark