9 ms·
AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
- kahon65 2y ago[flagged]
- 22c 2y agoI don't think Amazon is making a good decision here, but what makes you think the existing workers who are happy to work from the office would not be willing to work from home during a crisis if asked? A global crisis necessitating a transition to working from home should not immediately result in a company like Amazon needing to substantially hire more staff, in fact, that is probably a big part of what got them into this situation.
- firesteelrain 2y agoThey hired because there was demand. People had Prime and were scared to go out so they ordered.
- firesteelrain 2y agoI hope the next time there is a pandemic like Covid that we do more sensible things like not ban access to outdoor activities, shutdown beaches, shutdown everything for months, destroy the economy, etc.. Also ironically WFH is great unless you are the poor soul who still needs to work on the “front line” every day like warehouse workers, delivery drivers, etc.
- drewrv 2y agoWork from home is good for people who have to work in-person, because it lessens the spread. Also, just because I have a job that has some level of risk does not mean I would expect others to have a similar level of risk. Especially if it can be easily mitigated.
- cyborgx7 2y ago> I hope the next time there is a pandemic like Covid that we do more sensible things like not ban access to outdoor activities, shutdown beaches, shutdown everything for months, destroy the economy, etc.. At the time we didn't have enough information to know locking down outdoor activities was unnecessary. All we knew is it is more contagious than other infectious diseases, like the flu. Given what we knew, it was a reasonable policy, even if in hindsight we know it wasn't necessary. It's funny how the same people who kept saying we don't have enough information about if masks work, because we didn't test them enough specifically with covid, are now the ones who say we should have known that outdoor activities could have been left open. > Also ironically WFH is great unless you are the poor soul who still needs to work on the “front line” every day like warehouse workers, delivery drivers, etc. "Front line" workers like warehouse workers and delivery drivers also profit from limiting vectors of infection by office workers staying home. Nothing "ironic" about it.
- stickydicky 2y ago[dead]
- lynx23 2y agoYou're full of negative energy. Precondition for your rant being yet another pandemic, which is... diabolic to say the least. Please take a deep breath, and try to get the hate out of your system.
- GoToRO 2y agoIf you want to do a mass layoff, be honest about it.
- benoau 2y agoI wonder which tech company will be the first to take this too far and implode because of some easily-avoidable cataclysm. I think in some ways you could say Twitter / X already did although they are still limping along for now...
- kredd 2y agoIt’s a fairly calculated move, as they know market for engineers isn’t in the best shape, so a significant chunk will keep working with no complaints. They also ramped up hiring heavily, if the number of messages I get from Amazon’s recruiters is an indicator.
- bee_rider 2y agoAmazon is mostly known for burning out their engineers, right? It is a shame if they are doing these back door layoffs because it means more people will have to get churned through. Burning out can have some pretty negative long term effects, hopefully not too much human potential is sacrifices to the altar of slightly faster shipping.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoTheir recruiters basically never stopped sending out messages even during the mass layoffs of the past few years, from my experience
- Loggias 2y ago[dead]
- rsynnott 2y ago> It’s a fairly calculated move, as they know market for engineers isn’t in the best shape, so a significant chunk will keep working with no complaints. Of course, that's the sort of thing that tends to be true right up until it abruptly isn't.
- 22c 2y agoI remember reading a blog post many years ago that stuck with me, I don't remember the title of the post or who wrote it but it was essentially along the lines of "beware when companies start to take away the free snacks". It made a pretty convincing argument about how even seemingly minor changes like that start to signal a greater shift in the companies attitude toward how they want to treat and be perceived by their staff. I think a lot of Amazonians, even those who choose to stay, will look back on this as their "no more free snacks" moment (I also think there are probably many Amazonians who are already past that point, but that is a different topic).
- moandcompany 2y agoThey should be bold and make it six days a week.
- Ekaros 2y agoAlso set working times from 9 to 9. Also there is some strange perks there like food. Do you really need that much better than say some starving African?
- skirmish 2y agoThe only free food is bananas from what I hear. Fits the starving African theme!
- moandcompany 2y agoTaking dogfooding to a new level.
- faizshah 2y agoThe fact that US labour laws are this weak is a travesty. You can just circumvent severance by making working conditions unpleasant and you don’t even need to hide it.
- wordofx 2y agoNo one is making the working conditions unpleasant. The company which pays you to do work wants its employees to be in the office. If you don’t like it. Don’t work there. Looks like all the employees about to lose their work from home jobs are upset and downvoting.
- Foobar8568 2y agoIf your work contract and agreement has remote office, guess what? That's a breach of contract.
- stickydicky 2y ago[dead]
- b800h 2y agoI suspect Amazon know that and their contracts are worded accordingly.
- Rebelgecko 2y agoDoes Amazon even do contracts?
- wordofx 2y agoThat’s a contract. The vast majority of people currently working from home do not have a contract explicitly stating it’s a work from home position permanently. Those people who went from office to home during covid will have to go back to the office or they will be fired and receive nothing because they did not fill their role.
- hajimuz 2y agoSounds more like a layoff strategy now.
- bee_rider 2y ago> But compliance to the hybrid work order was fiercely enforced, with some employees who did not adhere to the policy told they were "voluntarily resigning" and were locked out of company systems. I wonder how this will play out. Previously the perception seems to have been that WFH was OK. So it seems like a pretty big change to their working conditions. Just making a massive change to somebody’s working conditions and then shutting off access if they don’t comply… I mean, how long will they pay them to do nothing? It seems like they are just being fired to me? We have shit worker protections in the US generally, but at least I hope some folks file for unemployment.
- punnerud 2y agoAny statistics on the kind of people that stick to office work. A, B, or C players? Introverts vs extroverts, programmers vs project managers..
- moandcompany 2y agoI heard Amazon employees were told 9 out of 10 Amazonians were looking forward to returning to the office. I guess they asked ten employees this question. Nine were on H1B visas, and the tenth was already on Focus/PIP.
- exe34 2y agobeware of any survey where management asks the questions, answers the questions and then analyses the responses and frames the presentation.
- stephenr 2y agoI'm honestly not sure what's more cringeworthy: demanding your already ridiculously flighty workforce return to cubicles to satisfy the middle management requirement of seeing bums on seats, or calling your staff Amazonians.
- zombiwoof 2y agoThis is a strategy to get rid of non H1B workers. It’s pure discrimination
- syspec 2y agoAren't H1B workers the most likely to comply?
- moandcompany 2y agoThe H1B workers have to comply.
- justanorherhack 2y agoThat’s what he is saying. Get rid of non h1bs then keep draining people until they leave and then use that as justification to expand h1b positions. H1b is really not fair. They have virtually no negotiation standing without risking their immigration status. They are underpaid and subsidized, and drive domestic wages down. Among many simple reforms they should execute, a big one would be tonseperate the sponsor company from the visa. Which would allow them to negotiate and have more agency.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago> They are underpaid and subsidized, and drive domestic wages down. This is true in outsourcing companies (such as Wipro, Infosys, etc.), who account for the lions share of H1B visas, but their entire value prop is outsourcing. I think FAANG pay H1Bs pretty well. I have known several who make above the median of their salary band because the comp systems reward good performance.
- devnull3 2y agoHighly doubt it. It is increasingly becoming difficult to get (or renew) H1B visa.
- PorterBHall 2y ago
- michaelhoney 2y agoThing is, if you are the CEO of AWS, you are fantastically well-compensated to be in meetings with people who suck up to you. Of course you think the office is a great place to do your work. But that’s not what 95% of AWS workers do.
- 2muchcoffeeman 2y agoI doubt that has anything to do with anything. It’s far more likely they want to encourage people to move on without having to pay severance. I read on some news site there’s some employee chat channel with thousands of members advocating for flexible work.
- DataDaemon 2y agoAt least they're still allowing working from home on Saturday and Sunday.
- moandcompany 2y agoSEV 1's don't care if you're at home!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- aussieguy1234 2y agoWell, one way to make people to something they don't want to is by forcing them. "Do X, or quit". However, doing this will only breed deep seated resentment. That can only be bad for the company and Amazon as a whole. If the figures here are correct, 90% are unhappy with the decision and ~70% are considering switching jobs, it could become quite entertaining to watch this company implode from a distance. It will be the top talent who leave first, instantly creating a weaker company. Its not even a good decision from an innovation/productivity perspective, studies are mixed and many that claim a productivity improvement in the office, if you look at who was involved in funding them, were actually funded by people or entities with a vested interest in office real estate.
- tomaskafka 2y agoBanning remote work (or even just signaling the intent) is an excellent solution to ‘we effed up by hiring too many people in ZIRP/AI expectations era and now we need to get rid of them without paying severance’.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoIt's a really bad solution to that: https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/the-data-is-in-return-to-office-mandates-aren-t-worth-the-talent-risks https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/the-data-is-in-return-to... You end up losing your higher performers, because they have many alternatives, and keeping the people who have fewer options.
- chii 2y agounless you know you don't actually need those higher performers (presumably an assumption the bean counters have). People who have fewer options then would necessarily not going to ask for pay rises too. Therefore, you double whammy get both cheaper workers, as well as more obedient ones.
- smt88 2y agoMy impression as a longtime user of AWS is that they don't care to retain competent people. They seem to have a "throw more bodies at it" attitude toward work.
- jnaina 2y agoThis. The number of otherwise useless overlays upon overlays at AWS is staggering. And quite a number of these L7 (non-sales/customer facing) overlays can be pruned without much impact to overall team/BU output/Rev. Jassy seems to be correcting some of the excess from the Bezos era.
- he0001 2y agoAnd what difference does that make?
- lynx23 2y ago[flagged]
- globular-toast 2y agoEntitled to what? Control over their own lives? I hope you didn't have any choice in your job, or take holiday or weekends, or even get paid or sleep. Otherwise you might feel entitled to these things.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lynx23 2y agoQuit, and you have full control over your life again. Stop being so childish. Comparing holidays, sick leave, pay and nightly sleep to physical presence is simply laughable. The pandemic was an exceptional situation. Holding onto that special status is plain entitlement.
- franga2000 2y agoStandards change. Before paid sick leave was common, people would've laughed you out of the room for even suggesting it - "you're saying I should be paying you for doing nothing just because you got sick? I didn't make you sick, how is that my problem?". But now we all (hopefully) agree it's one of the basic worker's rights. If all I do is press buttons on a keyboard all day, there is no reason I should have to be in the office for that. Entitlement would mean expecting something unreasonable - WFH for programmers etc. is reasonable. People have been asking for it for years and companies refused. They were forced into it and the world didn't end. Why shouldn't we keep it? The only people forced return to office benefits are the middle managers "overseeing" the people doing the actual work.
- lynx23 2y agoDemand and supply will determine if the standards changed. Its such a classical USA position: the market wll regulate itself. So, if you are unreplaceable, go for the gamble. However, I am afraid most people here are not, and the young generation will destroy whatever you think you are entitled to
- gdiamos 2y agoHire and retain only the best
- ninalanyon 2y agoDoes this apply to Amazon operations in the EU and UK as well. I could imagine that it might be possible to fight such an edict under UK employment law. I'm pretty sure that they would not be able to do it quite so easily here in Norway.
- dtquad 2y agoWe have stronger worker entitlements here in Europe but WFH is often just a positive remnant from the COVID era and not something specified in our contracts. For example I work fewer hours and from home on Fridays but nowhere in my contract does it say I'm allowed to do that.
- ninalanyon 2y agoIf you are a salaried employee in Norway you are paid for the results not for where you work. You are expected to work about 37.5 hours a week. Almost everyone I worked with worked very flexible hours. I read somewhere that 100 000 people in Norway work only Monday to Friday (in a population of 5 million), it's not in their contract either, just in employment law.
- fxtentacle 2y agoIt seems now is the time to start asking for a private office, some furniture, a massage chair ;) That way, if performance drops, you can blame it on the inferior office at work :)
- kadushka 2y agoNow is the time when we have thousands of people laid off from other FAANGs looking for jobs. It seems to be slowly getting better, but it's still pretty far from when you can ask for anything.
- pal9000 2y agoAmazon (aws) was by far the worst place I’ve worked. Literally every engineer was offered and this was in Germany, where the culture and labor laws are super employee friendly. Everything was soulless including the god ugly Chime and other internal tools. Although principles like bias for action, disagree and commit are pretty effective and cool. Just for work culture, I’d have preferred to work at Google or Facebook for upto 30% pay cut. So with policies like this, I’d imagine people who don’t quit are the ones who can’t quit. Maybe that’s fine for Amazon. They diversified the workforce geographically
- ramchip 2y ago> Literally every engineer was offered I might be missing an idiom here - offered what?
- Gud 2y agoBeing overworked is a choice you make.
- ein0p 2y agoIdk about Meta, but Google is also pretty soul draining these days. Pre-Pichai it was a pretty cool place, but that was ages ago.
- znpy 2y agoFrom my experience (only one of the FAANGs, so far)... It seems to me that FAANGs are the new banks. Like, today's equivalent of 40 years ago's bank job (cushy, well-paying soul-draining job). So far I'm done with FAANGs. I can get a nice salary, albeit lower, elsewere and still live comfortably. FAANGs are just not worth it anymore in my opinion.
- squiffsquiff 2y agoI realise this topic has been covered repeatedly but considering it from another angle: As an engineer employed by third party companies using AWS, this doesn't look good. I don't care if the support people are in an office. I do care if they're available and know what they're doing. There are other cloud providers available. For new entrants, what's Amazon's unique selling point?
- rat9988 2y agoI'm not sure what your argument is. I feel like you just wanted to bash amazon. If you don't care if the support people are in office, why are you concerned by the RTO news?
- happytoexplain 2y agoThis is a pretty strained framing. The parent didn't say anything ambiguous or illogical.
- exe34 2y agorto causes the competent people to jump ship and keeps the script readers who won't/can't complain
- squiffsquiff 2y agoI'm concerned that Amazon is driving their best people away for a vanity metric that their customers don't care about- see 'The Dead Sea Effect'
- stephenr 2y ago> what's Amazon's unique selling point The same thing it's always been: cargo cult membership for tech bros who think Amazon invented renting virtual servers.
- dopylitty 2y agoThis is something I think people are missing but which is really important. AWS is flailing now and pissing off all the competent workers. Those who have the skill will leave for newer gen cloud companies without the baggage like Fly or Tailscale or even Oxide. Or they'll start their own thing. So do you really want your whole company's compute environment running on infrastructure managed by burnt out and low skilled people? This might be the start of the migrations from the first generation infrastructure focused cloud services to the new more application focused services.
- justanorherhack 2y agoDoesn’t this open them up for wrongful termination suits..
- jemmyw 2y agoI don't understand. Why would they tell you to quit? What's in that for you? Just keep going until they tell you to work from the office or they'll fire you, and then you can make a decision.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41874178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41874178
- omar_alt 2y agoIf AWS has such a high turnover of staff how does this affect the suite of new services that companies build their infra around?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Simulacra 2y agoPresumably A lot of great engineers are going to quit, and AWS is going to lose a lot of people. That is going to have an impact on their business. Is there a way we can measure this impact? It would be an interesting study to look back over the last five years at the company's performance, and then compare it moving forward now that they are going back to the office fully.
- falcolas 2y agoTo borrow from the freelancer's creed: Fuck you, fire me. No, I don't work there, but I'd rather be fired than quit myself. At a minimum, I can get unemployment, and the job market is so saturated that the extra time to find a replacement job will be welcome.
- sublinear 2y agoIf there are this many workers unhappy and about to quit, I wonder if this is a watershed moment for Amazon as a company and its investors. AWS is a huge part of their revenue isn't it? This also affects pretty much every tech company since they all use AWS to some extent.
- thedevilslawyer 2y ago> If there are this many workers unhappy Yes > and about to quit No.
- tessierashpool9 2y agoeverybody here all gangsta about making big $$$ until they are on the receiving end all flabbergasted having to realize that companies like amz are hypercapitalist companies which also only care about making big $$$.
- kjsingh 2y agoNow if only he can also write the resignation letters for us :yawn: