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A dirty trick for Amazon is to reduce the workforce as layoffs at large corporations are regulated. Once enough people quit, they will allow either a hybrid or

A dirty trick for Amazon is to reduce the workforce as layoffs at large corporations are regulated. Once enough people quit, they will allow either a hybrid or fully remote option again. Soon after Oakley was acquired by Luxottica, they hired a guy to make our lives miserable and let us quit. After he did what he was hired for, they filled the vacant positions with contractors. I still feel sorry we didn't respond with a class action lawsuit for the blatant and widespread harassment - they really deserved it!

andrepew 2y ago
Are there jurisdictions that allow this? In my jurisdiction, that would be considered a constructive dismissal and legally treated the same way as a layoff with the same employer obligations.
- jedberg 2y ago
  The Amazon contracts specially say five days a week in office, and always have. Even through the pandemic. The work from home was always a "trust us". So it's not constructive dismissal because they are just enforcing the already existing contracts.
  - milch 2y ago
    I just checked mine and I don't see a provision that says I have to be in office 5 days a week anywhere. I've even seen a few folks that even had a contract that specifically said remote pre-pandemic, which the company "converted" to in-office post RTO announcement
_yb2s 2y ago
It seems like such an approach would cause the most skilled and in demand workers to leave first. The ones that stay would be the ones that are unable to find a job elsewhere.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Yes. But the ones who leave are also likely the ones who are paid better. To a certain kind of exec, that might be a net win.
- prewett 2y ago
  Since Luxottica operates by having a monopoly on eyeglasses and charging exorbitant rates, expensive skilled workers are probably not high on their list of needs.
  - nikolay 2y ago
    Exactly! This was Oakley's legacy they wonted to get rid of. We had some of the best web designers, and it used to be a dream workplace with many, many exceptions. When I first went to work there, the entire huge room was completely dark, everybody had his own light, some people had their own minifridges stocked up with beer. I wrote above, we also had a bar. Supposedly, it was employee-run with various beer on tap, which ("supposedly" again), was supplied by employees... but that wasn't exactly true. :)
- nikolay 2y ago
  They didn't care. They had one person supporting the old platform, which was written in a weird mix of Ruby on Rails and PHP, which also had the entire copy in code, so every single promo was code and needed a code push. Anyway, I was hired to migrate to Magento Enterprise. We first migrated Ray-Ban in no time, then migrated some other online properties, and then finished migrating the Oakley site. Rarely would you see the migration of a large e-commerce website happening so smoothly, as Oakley had a lot of requirements that needed custom code, but it was done on time and budget. But, I guess the Italians decided they are just an eyewear manufacturer. They chose (without telling us) to eliminate Oakley's Web Team, responsible for most Luxottica brands' online presence. So, they engaged the entire organization and we had more than a month of reviewing different enterprise e-commerce platforms, then we had to vote after we carefully reviewed all platforms, had long Q&A sessions with the vendors, etc. So, the votes overwhelmingly picked vendor A. But the manager-from-hell told us unofficially that he doesn't have only platform B on his resume, and he overwrote the voting for tens of people. Then, he presented a close-to-him consulting company, which used people on work and L1 visas to reimplement everything into platform B. When I said "harassment," I meant even physical harassment, making comments about people's looks and posture, verbal abuse, calling people offensive names, etc. So, one by one and in groups, everybody left. I was checking the various properties - it took them over 3 years to finally implement the new platform; meanwhile, they were using the old, buggy, and maintained by a single-person platform! Oakley used to a dream place to work! We had a secret bar inside (called "The Engine Room"); we had a Russian armored personnel carrier, which we called "tank", which was driving employees around the HQ; we had all kinds of competitions, some sponsored by Red Bull, too, huge employee discounts for eyewear and apparel (which included all Luxottica brands, including some of the super expensive brands). I remember one iconic employee was leaving, and he was very much into boats, so Oakley bought a boat, created a small pond, let the boat float in the pond, and then ran it over with the APC just for fun! Oakley used to wave the Jolly Roger flag and was getting fined monthly by the city of waving it above the US flag. If I'm not wrong, the fine was more than $5,000. We also used to have a gun and shoot it across the road into the wilderness. In the outside cafeteria, some crazy scientists were melting and burning all kinds of metals - I think once they managed to burn a huge hole in the concrete even. It was crazy, but after Luxottica took over, slowly, all this went away! I found this website, which captures some of the old Oakley [0]. [0]: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/oakley-factory-2010.html https://www.pinkbike.com/news/oakley-factory-2010.html

andrepew 2y ago

Are there jurisdictions that allow this? In my jurisdiction, that would be considered a constructive dismissal and legally treated the same way as a layoff with the same employer obligations.

jedberg 2y ago
The Amazon contracts specially say five days a week in office, and always have. Even through the pandemic. The work from home was always a "trust us". So it's not constructive dismissal because they are just enforcing the already existing contracts.
- milch 2y ago
  I just checked mine and I don't see a provision that says I have to be in office 5 days a week anywhere. I've even seen a few folks that even had a contract that specifically said remote pre-pandemic, which the company "converted" to in-office post RTO announcement

_yb2s 2y ago

It seems like such an approach would cause the most skilled and in demand workers to leave first. The ones that stay would be the ones that are unable to find a job elsewhere.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Yes. But the ones who leave are also likely the ones who are paid better. To a certain kind of exec, that might be a net win.
prewett 2y ago
Since Luxottica operates by having a monopoly on eyeglasses and charging exorbitant rates, expensive skilled workers are probably not high on their list of needs.
- nikolay 2y ago
  Exactly! This was Oakley's legacy they wonted to get rid of. We had some of the best web designers, and it used to be a dream workplace with many, many exceptions. When I first went to work there, the entire huge room was completely dark, everybody had his own light, some people had their own minifridges stocked up with beer. I wrote above, we also had a bar. Supposedly, it was employee-run with various beer on tap, which ("supposedly" again), was supplied by employees... but that wasn't exactly true. :)
nikolay 2y ago
They didn't care. They had one person supporting the old platform, which was written in a weird mix of Ruby on Rails and PHP, which also had the entire copy in code, so every single promo was code and needed a code push. Anyway, I was hired to migrate to Magento Enterprise. We first migrated Ray-Ban in no time, then migrated some other online properties, and then finished migrating the Oakley site. Rarely would you see the migration of a large e-commerce website happening so smoothly, as Oakley had a lot of requirements that needed custom code, but it was done on time and budget. But, I guess the Italians decided they are just an eyewear manufacturer. They chose (without telling us) to eliminate Oakley's Web Team, responsible for most Luxottica brands' online presence. So, they engaged the entire organization and we had more than a month of reviewing different enterprise e-commerce platforms, then we had to vote after we carefully reviewed all platforms, had long Q&A sessions with the vendors, etc. So, the votes overwhelmingly picked vendor A. But the manager-from-hell told us unofficially that he doesn't have only platform B on his resume, and he overwrote the voting for tens of people. Then, he presented a close-to-him consulting company, which used people on work and L1 visas to reimplement everything into platform B. When I said "harassment," I meant even physical harassment, making comments about people's looks and posture, verbal abuse, calling people offensive names, etc. So, one by one and in groups, everybody left. I was checking the various properties - it took them over 3 years to finally implement the new platform; meanwhile, they were using the old, buggy, and maintained by a single-person platform! Oakley used to a dream place to work! We had a secret bar inside (called "The Engine Room"); we had a Russian armored personnel carrier, which we called "tank", which was driving employees around the HQ; we had all kinds of competitions, some sponsored by Red Bull, too, huge employee discounts for eyewear and apparel (which included all Luxottica brands, including some of the super expensive brands). I remember one iconic employee was leaving, and he was very much into boats, so Oakley bought a boat, created a small pond, let the boat float in the pond, and then ran it over with the APC just for fun! Oakley used to wave the Jolly Roger flag and was getting fined monthly by the city of waving it above the US flag. If I'm not wrong, the fine was more than $5,000. We also used to have a gun and shoot it across the road into the wilderness. In the outside cafeteria, some crazy scientists were melting and burning all kinds of metals - I think once they managed to burn a huge hole in the concrete even. It was crazy, but after Luxottica took over, slowly, all this went away! I found this website, which captures some of the old Oakley [0]. [0]: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/oakley-factory-2010.html https://www.pinkbike.com/news/oakley-factory-2010.html