[HN Gopher] Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely in...
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Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely
Author : chickenpotpie
Score : 280 points
Date : 2021-10-11 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.seattletimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.seattletimes.com)
| cletus wrote:
| Does Amazon still insist on that draconian vesting schedule? They
| always had 5/15/40/40% for years 1/2/3/4.
|
| I ask because I'm curious how far employee pressure goes as
| that's so much worse than other FAANG companies.
| hbosch wrote:
| In my experience, they offset the first 2 years of vesting with
| cash. So all 4 of my first years were equivalent with RSUs/Cash
| with the first 2 years cash heavy, and the final 2 years RSU
| only.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| There must be a bonus that's not properly represented on
| levels.fyi, because Amazon's cash compensation is pretty poor
| compared even to some non-FAANG companies.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Off-topic, but is levels.fyi... on the level? I ask because
| I'm hearing about all sorts of 350k-500k offers for senior
| engineers, but they're not showing up there. My current
| salary seems right about "in band" on there, but people in
| my network who I talk to seem to think I'm way underpaid.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Keep in mind most of the posts are from SV, so will
| include the substantial cost of living adjustment.
|
| It is easy the underestimate the significance of it.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I'm an ICT5 at Apple, pushing for ICT6 (but it won't be
| next year, ICT6 is more about who you know than what you
| know), and just had my perf review. This year I got total
| comp (salary, bonus, RSUs) of just over 520k, which is
| consistent with last year and the year before.
| loeg wrote:
| 350-500k annual comp levels exist (that's E5-E6 at
| Facebook, for example). There are a lot of E5s, but fewer
| E6s.
|
| Your friends might also be including the full four-year
| grant in a single number, which creates a sort of
| nonsense figure? Another thing that increases comp is if
| the stock rises a lot after grant -- but that would not
| show up in offers.
|
| Levels.fyi is as legit as any other source, as far as I
| know.
| comp_throw7 wrote:
| What do you mean when you say "they're not showing up
| there"? If you look at senior SDE comp for Amazon, you'll
| see that most of the numbers fall in that range
| (especially for new hires, with 0 years of experience at
| the company):
| https://www.levels.fyi/company/Amazon/salaries/Software-
| Engi...
| [deleted]
| discodave wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Amazon offer generally gives you roughly the same "total
| compensation" for the first 4 years, assuming that the
| stock price doesn't change much.
|
| So if they're trying to pay you 300k per year, then you get
| 160k salary, ~140k starting bonus each of the first two
| years, and ~300k of stock that mostly vests in years 3 and
| 4.
| loeg wrote:
| > assuming that the stock price doesn't change much.
|
| Their current offers are actually scaled on the
| assumption their stock grows 15% annually, I think.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| The labor market is super tight, so whatever labor wants, labor
| gets. I suspect this will turn on a dime, when the labor market
| softens.
|
| The cynic in me thinks big tech wants to promote WFH forever, as
| they have benefited stupendously from the war-time economy and
| they are in no rush back to normalcy.
| docflabby wrote:
| One of the things that's been missed is that remote working has
| been a big part of counteracting the massive inflation that's
| been caused by covid. Making people go into the office is a
| effectively a pay cut with all the price increases. Start forcing
| people in and salary expectations will rise accordingly.. .
| josiahsiegel wrote:
| Productivity has also appeared to increase with remote work (at
| least at my job), yet I keep seeing articles from high-profile
| CEOs on how remote work is bad for business. I'm not quite sure
| where all the resistance to remote work is coming from.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > I'm not quite sure where all the resistance to remote work
| is coming from.
|
| You are assuming that the people who make decisions are
| somehow more rational than anyone else.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| They may be measuring productivity wrong. People may be
| working. But are they working on the right things and solving
| the problems correctly? For example, is creativity and
| genuine cross-team collaboration suffering? Those are much
| harder to measure, and at certain companies like startups
| that have ill-defined processes, these may be breaking down.
| Again, I'm not saying this with certainty. But perhaps this
| could be one view from the C-suite.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| Curious, what makes you think productivity has increased at
| your job? Like how are you measuring that?
| kimbernator wrote:
| I've worked at two fairly large companies during the
| pandemic, and both have publicly stated that their
| productivity has increased as a result of WFH. I've heard a
| variety of measures being mentioned such as profitability,
| hours worked per week, and responsiveness of employees when
| they are needed outside of normal working hours for
| production issues - they found people to be much easier to
| reach when their home office is their office.
|
| It is clear, however that this data was gathered and
| released by a different part of the company than the ones
| that make the call on whether or not people will be
| required to come back in. Ultimately it's as we would
| expect: executive leadership deciding to pull people back
| in has little to do with data and more to do with feelings.
| Despite publishing that data and overwhelming support for
| full-time WFH, both have begun the process of pulling
| people back in.
| Cookingboy wrote:
| >such as profitability, hours worked per week, and
| responsiveness of employees when they are needed outside
| of normal working hours for production issues
|
| I'm sorry none of those are direct indication of
| productivity per se, even profitability, which is a long
| lagging indicator of productivity.
| cutenewt wrote:
| I've seen a lot of data that shows hours per week have
| gone up, but hours isn't necessarily productivity.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Ultimately it's as we would expect: executive leadership
| deciding to pull people back in has little to do with
| data and more to do with feelings."
|
| One of the few things the far left has been right about
| all along: it is not a meritocracy, it is all about
| perception and feelings.
| rlewkov wrote:
| From what I see and hear the work-in-the-office rule is,
| for the most part, cause I (mgt) say so
| josiahsiegel wrote:
| It's not an exact science, but based on our team's velocity
| which is tracked in Jira, we appear to complete more units
| of work while remote...but of course there are likely
| numerous factors to consider.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Anecdotally, we've seen more velocity in Jira from the same
| engineers - about 20% more. However, I've also noticed
| people are working more hours, which is more challenging to
| quantify. Hour-by-hour productivity may be a wash.
| Regardless, more stuff is getting done, and employee
| sentiment seems to remain the same as pre/post pandemic.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I think you'll find that it makes sense if you begin
| imagining non-productivity reasons why execs want workers
| back. Sunk cost fallacy over an expensive office is a regular
| guess, personally I suspect that it's got to be quite a rush
| to see hundreds of people working at your direction in an
| office and remote work cannot replace that.
|
| That or bad management techniques work better in person.
| xyst wrote:
| I don't know why these companies with massive in-person
| offices don't just convert them into mini data centers.
| Maybe have 1 or 2 top level floors reserved for in-person
| meetings or executives but the rest of the building can be
| used for housing data centers.
|
| Most businesses wouldn't even need to an entire floor.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's astonishing how unified the message is, across big
| tech and smaller tech leaderships. It's like every CEO is
| reading a script from the same business magazine: "We
| understand how important it is for employees to return to
| the office and we can't wait to make this happen! We know
| that this is the One True Way to work, and that everyone is
| looking forward to it! We must get Back To Normal and the
| only way to do it is to get bodies in offices." How many of
| us have heard variations of this script in our own internal
| memos?
|
| I've never seen all of Corporate America's CxO-level
| Leadership so aligned with each other on a topic like they
| are aligned on Return To Office being the only logical
| way...
| superflit2 wrote:
| They are reading the script. It is an narrative.
|
| Mostly it is very hard politics.
|
| Forcing tech people to live in zone X will increase
| voters and tax revenues to political party Z.
|
| there is whole system to "milk" the middle class.
|
| Rents, taxes, products, private schools, medical centers,
| etc.
|
| Now with remote working suddenly some rents are getting
| lower in high rent places.
|
| People are now really choosing where they want to be and
| whom they will socialize.
|
| Imagine the audacity of serfs having freedom..
| munificent wrote:
| I assume most of this is simple survivorship bias. The
| kind of people who become executive leaders are the those
| who thrive in that specific office environment, so
| naturally they will want to preserve it.
|
| It's like asking polar bears what temperature to set the
| thermostat. They're going to want it like the arctic
| because that's their home.
| PixelOfDeath wrote:
| Maybe the are used to collect all the suffering by
| sitting over the main office with all its cubicles.
|
| Maybe they are afraid of a way more aggressive
| competition for workers and what they have to pay them.
| Considering they now could switch the workplace via
| different login credentials.
| renewiltord wrote:
| What alternative hypotheses have you considered and
| dismissed to explain why so many CEOs agree on this
| approach?
| rodgerd wrote:
| There exists an area of study emerging in economics
| covering the effect of companies being directed by a
| small number of shareholders - for example, if the key
| stakeholders of all US airlines are (for the sake of the
| argument) Black Rock, then what effect does that have on
| the companies? If they same shareholder selects the same
| sort of execs for all their airlines in their portfolio,
| how does that affect the strategies for each company? If
| Delta loses share but United gains it and you've got a
| similar shareholding in both, what difference does it
| make.
|
| If significant investors have heavy positions in
| commercial and residential real estate in particular
| locations, and also has a significant position in
| companies who employ workers in those locations, how
| might that change the perception of how your employer
| does business? Will support a CEO taking a position that
| tanks their real estate positions?
| jdhn wrote:
| I think that part of the resistance is that if you have
| people who work remote, the bonds you build with the company
| and your coworkers can potentially be less strong than if you
| were there in person. This may make it easier for employees
| to job hop.
|
| Another reason could be real estate related. If you signed a
| long term commercial lease right before covid hit, you want
| to make sure that you're getting your moneys worth.
| harshaw wrote:
| Yes, as a hiring manager I have seen this. There is
| certainly less friction to moving jobs when all you do is
| show up on a different video call the next monday. However,
| I would argue that there is certainly something lost in the
| personal interaction. While we've been individually
| productive during the pandemic, more complicated
| design/brainstorming has been slower.
|
| Also, part of the human experience is that bond. fellowship
| with your team if you will.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Somewhat related: I wonder how many companies are seeing profit
| increase because of reduced costs associated with on-site
| workers? I wonder if the increase in costs as folks return to
| the office is being factored in their stock prices?
| cle wrote:
| Conversely in Amazon's case, they finished building multiple
| huge buildings in downtown Seattle right before COVID-19,
| which have been mostly empty since March 2020.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Some of those buildings were built for them and they would
| just be leasing them. They already backed out of their
| Ranier Square lease (the new skyscraper in Seattle that
| looks like a bunch of steps).
| kimbernator wrote:
| As much as it may frustrate them not to use the buildings,
| it is still strictly costing them less given the lower
| maintenance and utility costs.
| superflit2 wrote:
| They can rent it free to BLM and other social causes?
|
| It is better than giving money to "something" they would
| be providing real stuff and places.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Those maintenance and utility costs are then passed on to
| the employee and reduce the take home pay, which is
| frustrating to workers.
|
| There's also more uncompensated time spent on duties a
| janitor, office manager or IT person would perform, like
| unloading the dishwasher, preparing coffee or being on
| the phone with an ISP during an internet outage.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Might want to consider moving if your internet connection
| is bad enough to result in material time being spent
| getting it fixed. And maybe drink less coffee if there is
| material time being spent on making it and rinsing the
| cup and putting it in the dishwasher.
| ghaff wrote:
| The cost situation varies a lot. For some who already have an
| office in a house some commute from a company office, WFH
| financially saves a lot of commute costs which can be
| substantial. For someone who lives in a city, want to live
| there, and no longer have the option to work in a company
| office (which is admittedly mostly not a common situation if
| they haven't changed jobs, their costs have probably just risen
| substantially.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Since they're having problems with retention, I wonder if they'll
| also get rid of that 6 month rejection cooldown? I had an Amazon
| recruiter cold e-mail me 2 months ago and me, being off the
| market for 8 years, had no idea software engineering interviewing
| was its own skillset, and subsequently bombed the online
| assessment. 2 months later, I've "grinded Leetcode" and passed a
| few phone interviews, but I'd be interested in circling back to
| Amazon. I will probably find another job before that 6 month
| cooldown is up, so as it is, Amazon basically is missing out on
| someone who is otherwise qualified just because they reached out
| to me first.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I'd recommend scanning all the "leaks" publicized about 4
| months ago from internal Amazon HR policies. They're real, and
| why I was like eff this, and quit. It is plausible they're very
| varied across divisions and teams.
| aantix wrote:
| Is $600K TC possible as a remote SDE III or Principal SDE?
| thereare5lights wrote:
| > "We're intentionally not prescribing how many days or which
| days -- this is for Directors to determine with their senior
| leaders and teams."
|
| This reminds me of what George said to Jerry in _The Deal_ on
| _Seinfeld_ :
|
| > Jerry: Spending the night. Optional.
|
| > George: No, you see? You got greedy.
|
| Making the policy discretionary will ultimately make it like an
| "unlimited vacation" policy where it actually doesn't happen but
| the company gets to say that it's their policy.
| NotAnOtter wrote:
| As someone on the inside: the title is mostly BS.
|
| They are pushing the decision from the L10+ level to the L7/L8
| level. But we all know behind the scenes, L7/L8 will be pushed to
| behave a certain way. If it was truly their choice, those with a
| strict policy would bleed engineers to the directors with more
| lax policies, Amazon would not accidentally create a free market
| within their own company.
|
| This is a deflection of blame, and nothing else.
| mabbo wrote:
| I quit Amazon 3 weeks ago after nearly a decade. Work from home
| was one of the biggest reasons.
|
| In my view, the personality traits that are conducive to
| promotion up the Amazon leadership ladder are strongly aligned
| with loving work-from-office. Most people L10 and higher not only
| don't understand the desire for permanent work from home, I think
| maybe they cannot understand it. It's just too foreign to many of
| them.
|
| The first announcement was "We can't wait to be back in the
| office, and we know you can't either". Senior engineers started
| quitting. Then it was "Okay, okay, you can work from home 2-3
| days per week, but only with your L10's approval". The exodus
| continued.
|
| Now it's "Fine, you can work from home with your L8's approval,
| but you better be ready to show up on 24 hour notice if we say
| so!". The biggest benefit of work from home is not needing to
| commute, and lower cost of living by leaving the HCOL cities.
|
| They don't get it. Other companies do. And anyone who has spent 5
| or more years working for Amazon is well-trained enough to get a
| better paying job with a company that understands the cultural
| shift that just happened to the developer world.
|
| Edit: I know not all developers are anti-office. But for those of
| us who _are_ , working for people who don't understand us, who
| make policies based on what works best for them, is a problem.
| smashem wrote:
| Funny, I left Amazon two weeks ago because WFH burned me out.
| I'm currently taking a sabbatical.
|
| * Zoom fatigue is real.
|
| * I find it much harder to collaborate with peers.
|
| * I feel like less of a part of the company. Not being in the
| office, so I'm no longer seeing that busy bee activity on the
| floors, not able to mingle with other people from other teams,
| not seeing new faces, no team activities, and no desk with my
| name on it. It's a very isolated feeling.
|
| * I find it even more Groundhog Day. To wake up from bed, walk
| a few steps to my desk, and start plugging away. Yeah,
| commuting can suck, but at least there's more stimulation and
| "life" to it.
|
| * Deadlines, at least from my perspective, got even more
| ridiculous since WFH started.
| mabbo wrote:
| And that's a totally valid view. Strangely enough, I suspect
| Amazon will be a great company for you long-term if you go
| back. Management is aligned with your needs, not mine.
|
| The question is whether there are enough developers like you
| to run one of the largest software companies in the world,
| while maintaining 'the bar'.
| asdff wrote:
| All that stuff can be ameliorated somewhat imo with a
| cultural change. At my job (admittedly a much smaller group
| of a few dozen, nothing on amazons scale), we initially had a
| ton of zoom meetings but have cut out most of them since
| people want to have uninterrupted days of productivity, with
| room to schedule their own submeetings with peers when it
| comes time to collaborate with specific people. We all still
| live in the area so we've gotten together in a park and do
| potlucks and stuff like that after we got our vaccines. For
| the lack of commute thing, I find it helpful to build in a
| morning routine rather than wake up > work. I tend to my
| garden in the mornings, workout, and usually do a walk around
| my neighborhood to serve as a faux commute before I make my
| cup of coffee and begin the workday. Sometimes I head out to
| the golf course early in the morning and get back home before
| 9. If I had to commute it would be tough to fit in gardening
| and working out or golf without waking up indescribably early
| to make it all work.
| ducharmdev wrote:
| This is so accurate, especially the 3rd bullet. When WFH, all
| interactions are centered around your immediate work
| responsibilities; although minimizing social interactions at
| work sounds great for some, it can make it much harder to
| gauge where you stand in relation to all the people you work
| with.
| christophilus wrote:
| If you're going to work from home, do so for a company where
| WFH is first class. I've worked for remote-only companies and
| for mixed companies. The mixed ones were really terrible WFH
| experiences. The remote-only / remote-first ones were
| excellent. It really makes a difference.
|
| /anecdote
| aerosmile wrote:
| You are right - the market has shifted and developers can now
| work from home, far away from their office, and still get paid
| great salaries. This may also work for marketers, designers,
| and few other digital verticals. For the majority of regular
| people (teachers, bakers, warehouse workers, hospitality
| workers, waiters, medical workers, etc etc) this is going to
| stay a pipe dream with physical barriers in place that will
| never enable them to get something similar.
|
| What an advantage in life to have chosen this career path over
| any of the above ones. And what a shame whenever we come across
| one of those "I am a developer and it's horrible!" type of
| posts.
| anonporridge wrote:
| It's the circle of life.
|
| Success leads to ossification, which creates opportunity for
| new life to exploit untapped potential.
| roland35 wrote:
| I am noticing a lot of the big tech companies are becoming more
| flexible about remote work, but they are still far away from a
| true remote friendly option for me at least.
|
| It seems the expectation is that they want people to be available
| to come to the office on demand every once in a while, so you
| need to be living within at least a 1-2 hour drive from the
| office. While that is certainly an improvement, it isn't true
| remote.
|
| If there are any big tech companies who only expect travel to the
| office a few times a year I would love to hear about them!
| kimbernator wrote:
| As someone working for a company I like while living in a place
| that I'd rather not, there's no more annoying thing for me to
| dwell on than the fact that the only thing standing between me
| and moving is the fact that my employer expects me to be in the
| office 2 days/month.
| jedberg wrote:
| 2 days a month seems like it could be handled pretty well
| with an airplane? Like even if the commute were six hours and
| you had to stay in a hotel, that doesn't seem awful twice a
| month if the other 28 days you get to live somewhere that
| makes you happy.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Facebook has this option. Idk if it's new but I know one person
| who's doing it, and talked to a recruiter recently about
| another role of the same type. Come in to the office once per
| quarter (ish - varies by team), but they'll pay for your
| travel.
| tdeck wrote:
| Dropbox has gone "remote first" and sold off some of their
| offices, so I assume that means you don't need to live near
| one. Perhaps folks who work there can correct me.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| A colleague told me that NTT, with a staff of 320,000, is now
| 100% permanently remote.
| thehappypm wrote:
| 1-2 hours away from a major city is actually kind of a sweet
| spot, IMO.
|
| Big cities have things like major hospitals and major
| employers, they have airports, they have baseball stadiums.
| They've also got social networks -- it's much easier to make
| friends in a place with 100,000 people your age than 50.
|
| Now, escaping to the undeveloped areas is cheap, and many of
| them have access to things like beautiful mountains or beaches
| that are either far away from or too crowded near big cities.
| However, rural areas generally have poor infrastructure that
| big cities have, and often have extremely bad schools.
|
| Being 1-2 hours away from a big city? That's kind of a sweet
| spot. You're still close enough to the city for culture and
| hospitals and the airport. But you're on a big plot of land,
| and since you're still in a metro, you've probably got
| reasonably good infrastructure and schools.
|
| The whole "move to the mountains" thing that so many people
| talk about assumes you don't care about good schools, airports,
| hospitals, etc.
| roland35 wrote:
| Yeah I agree it is helpful to be close to a large city, but
| unfortunately for me it isn't the right city for most tech
| companies! I am also closer to the east coast, so less
| convenient for Seattle or SF.
| kodah wrote:
| My company _said_ they 'd let people work remotely, but based on
| my observations from friends on other teams and my own, this is
| more of a last resort. If you're going to quit and are not a lead
| engineer, then they'll offer you remote. If they can't fill a
| position in a timely manner, then they'll start looking remote.
|
| My takeaway is that maybe the C-Suite has been convinced, but now
| you need to convince line-managers and the like.
| dudul wrote:
| It reminds me of the "will consider remote for strong
| candidates" that you can see on job postings. There aren't many
| bigger red flags for me for how the company treats remote
| employees.
| atlgator wrote:
| Are they still forcing recruits to travel to Seattle for a loop
| interview or have they gone virtual? I interviewed a few years
| ago and the cross-country travel was tiresome. Also, my room at
| the Inn at the WAC smelled like mold. Not an experience I care to
| repeat.
| BSOhealth wrote:
| I'm on the opposite side of many folks responding. After spending
| the quarantine at home through the pandemic, I'm now looking at
| HCOL cities which headquarter big tech or startups (SF, NYC,
| Seattle, Austin). I'd love to spend time in a posh office again,
| meeting new people, getting drinks after work. Now, I have
| everything I need in one room: computer, weights, instruments,
| art supplies, dog, etc.
|
| TBH, I'm crossing my fingers employers will prioritize folks
| willing to work in the office to compensate for my lack of
| pedigree in other hiring/HR attention areas.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I think it depends on 2 important factors: age and the team. At
| early age you like to go out for drinks, later you may want to
| go home and rest or read or take a bicycle ride or spend time
| with the family. Also it depends a lot on the team you are in:
| I worked with teams where we spent a lot of time together
| outside business hours and I was in teams where I avoided even
| seeing most people, by no means spending any time together.
| KallDrexx wrote:
| From the blog post
|
| > At this stage, we want most of our people close enough to their
| core team that they can easily travel to the office for a meeting
| within a day's notice. We also know that many people have found
| the ability to work remotely from a different location for a few
| weeks at a time inspiring and reenergizing. We want to support
| this flexibility and will continue to offer those corporate
| employees, who can work effectively away from the office, the
| option to work up to four weeks per year fully remote from any
| location within your country of employment.
| taurath wrote:
| Really curious why only within country? Security reasons? Also
| why 4 weeks? Just to be available for meetings?
|
| I find it funny that this is the American version of a nice
| holiday - go pay money to rent an Airbnb so you can work in a
| different environment.
| mimischi wrote:
| Likely tax?
| metagame wrote:
| Almost certainly. Taxation is hard enough between states,
| for both the employer _and_ the employee. Adding another
| country in the mix and it gets _really_ hard, especially
| when (as is common with tech employees) people go to other
| countries to work without paying the slightest attention to
| how incredibly many immigration and labor laws they 're
| breaking in their target nations.
| arnvald wrote:
| There are a number of reasons, first is that by working from
| another location you might be breaking the law, second is
| taxes - if you stay somewhere long enough they might argue
| you need to pay income tax there. Lastly, data protection
| laws vary per country and there's a chance you have to give
| your laptop with company data to authorities in another
| country, which might be a security issue.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| >second is taxes - if you stay somewhere long enough they
| might argue you need to pay income tax there
|
| This is true even if you work a single day in a state.
| Consultants at Accenture, PWC, Bain etc. end up having to
| file in dozens of states a year sometimes. Fortunately
| their employer almost universally handles all the
| paperwork.
| ghaff wrote:
| It depends on the state but some states, as you say, want
| you to file for even working a single day and states are
| apparently really starting to crack down.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > I find it funny that this is the American version of a nice
| holiday - go pay money to rent an Airbnb so you can work in a
| different environment.
|
| It's not.
|
| BUT its a nice way to get a change of scenery without burning
| holiday time.
| dboreham wrote:
| There's really no such concept as an employee in another
| country. You need a subsidiary incorporated in that country
| and then they become an employee of that entity. So...huge
| paperwork hassle at the very least.
| wonder_er wrote:
| It's likely that this is the Official Policy, but then people
| will just not mention to HR where they happen to be traveling
| to.
|
| > Hey [team], I'll be in [foreign country] for the next 3
| weeks!
|
| and no one outside of that team ever knows anything except
| someone's zoom background has changed.
|
| If it gets mentioned once in a press release, and HR forgets
| to work hard to implement this in an ongoing way, it becomes
| a non-rule.
|
| Useful for lawyers and when talking to compliance people, but
| not a meaningful barrier for anyone actually going anywhere.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| You can visit family and take care of them. I could imagine
| some doing this the entire month of December for the
| holidays.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| There's different tax, visa and HR regulatory implications
| they probably don't want to deal with. For example if Amazon
| has an American worker who decides to work remotely in France
| (where Amazon is also established) can Amazon fire the
| American "at will" or are they subjected to French
| regulations that make terminating workers extremely
| difficult?
| cutenewt wrote:
| Speaking of tax, allowing employees to work from home may
| allow them to avoid the newly created Seattle payroll tax:
| https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/tax/articles/city-
| of-s...
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Tax, visa, and regulatory reasons. Other jurisdictions will
| impute residency for all legal purposes if you spend too much
| time there or work from there. They are trying to avoid
| myriad very messy legal edge cases.
| kreeben wrote:
| >> work up to four weeks per year fully remote
|
| Wow, that's really something.
|
| Personally, having spent a pandemic working fully remote I
| wouldn't even consider working for a company that didn't offer
| that as an unquestionable human right, didn't frown upon it,
| didn't consider it to be "a way to refresh my sense of duty"
| and didn't think of it as a privilege.
|
| I'm never going back to the open landscape of hell.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| Unquestionable human right?? Christ we are spoiled in tech.
| kreeben wrote:
| It is not I who is spoiled. It is old school boomer
| management who have become spoiled and exploitative.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| We are very fortunate to be paid as much as we are for
| sitting at home and working on a computer. Compared to
| 99% of other adults around the world, we are spoiled.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| a large chunk of the workforce, from accountants to stock
| brokers to HR, work on a computer. It's not a privilege
| to have no fresh air and to spend 70% of your life in
| front of a screen on a chair.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| haha yes it is. The vast majority of people don't have
| that opportunity.
| kreeben wrote:
| I don't fully agree. Instead, what I think, is that the
| stock holders of the company I work for are very
| fortunate that I work for them.
|
| Are we better off compared to service workers? Oh yeah,
| definitely.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Would love to know if they believe that 'unquestionable
| human right' extends to all the service workers that tend
| to their daily life by making and delivering their food,
| transporting them to/from entertainment, packing and
| delivering their toys/consumer goods, etc. too.
| kreeben wrote:
| >> 'unquestionable human right' extends to all the
| service workers
|
| The notion of service workers working remote is a silly
| one. I regret calling it a 'unquestionable human right'.
| randomsearch wrote:
| not spoilt, rather, forgetful
| WalterBright wrote:
| I guess we can dispense with the usual idea that workers have
| no choice but submit to anything a company wants.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| This is the most privileged, special snowflake and tech
| bubble thing I've ever read on this site.
| lolsal wrote:
| > I wouldn't even consider working for a company that didn't
| offer that as an unquestionable human right,
|
| I don't think things you prefer automatically get elevated to
| 'unquestionable human rights'.
| kreeben wrote:
| Then you must think of it as a privilege. And I shall not
| work for you.
| lolsal wrote:
| I understand and that's fine. I don't actually care about
| where you work in this context.
|
| Human Rights are special things. They aren't preferences.
| The more you conflate the two, the more you erode your
| position and the term 'human right' in general. I would
| urge you to stop doing that.
| kreeben wrote:
| >> Human Rights are special things
|
| Very true and my point would have been made without me
| presenting it as such. My apologies.
| filomeno wrote:
| Well, at least the right to life is a human right. It
| turned out that having to work in a crowded space with
| many others can be a real threat for your life.
| Cookingboy wrote:
| Man as much as I hate the whole "snowflake"
| thing...comments like yours really are pushing it lol.
| shukantpal wrote:
| I won't hire you either.
| kreeben wrote:
| The old "you can't fire me because I quit" inverted.
| That's fine.
| shukantpal wrote:
| Sure, if that makes you feel good about yourself.
| nsonha wrote:
| Didn't you do it first?
| jon-wood wrote:
| How disorganised does a team need to be that they need to call
| meetings so involved they can only be done in-person with less
| than 24 hour's notice? This isn't a genuine business
| requirement, it's just management wanting to remind everyone
| that they're on a leash which can be yanked whenever they like.
| andrewjf wrote:
| I've found this really depends on seniority. Higher
| seniorities like principle engineers, senior managers,
| directors, vp meetings are much different than a normal stand
| up, strategy session or engineering discussion and physical
| presence does have an advantage. But I admit this isn't
| likely to be the target audience for the original policy.
| smileysteve wrote:
| The question this raises to me, is what travel times is this
| accounting for?
|
| There are more complex issues (taxes, school pickup, dog
| walking, local errands) before travel in a plane and rental
| car can't get you somewhere in 24 hours.
|
| Pre pandemic some nycers had a 15 minute walking commute,
| others might grind it out for 2 hours each way in the
| northeastern corridor.
| smileysteve wrote:
| As an errand example. I schedule my dental appointments 6
| months out. If my work gives me only 24 hour notice I have
| to be in the office for a meeting that didn't exist until
| now, it makes no difference if I live a 6 hour flight away
| or a 30 minute walk away.
|
| Now do the same for a 1hr meeting at 10am or 2:30pm with a
| need to be able to dropoff or pickup school children at 9am
| or 4pm.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > How disorganised does a team need to be that they need to
| call meetings so involved they can only be done in-person
| with less than 24 hour's notice?
|
| I've put similar bounds on WFH hires before. Not because we
| were calling short-notice meetings frequently, but because it
| prevents single, long-distance employees from dominating all
| of the scheduling requirements.
|
| Once you have someone on your team who needs a lot of notice
| to attend any meeting, you are now planning every single
| meeting around their schedule. Everyone else must choose
| between accommodating that person or quietly doing the thing
| without them. It's ultimately not a great experience for the
| employee who gets left out of things because their schedule
| has become difficult to accomodate.
|
| It also sets appropriate expectations. Some people interview
| for flexible WFH positions when they really want full-remote
| positions, then spend a lot of energy trying to shut down any
| in-person meetings no matter how much the rest of the team
| wants them. This is a good way of signaling that in-person
| meetings are a requirement for the job.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I think this is putting the cart in front of the horse.
|
| The thing you should be optimizing for is not geo-location,
| but _time zone_. The latter is only weakly related to the
| former. It doesn 't matter if someone is within driving
| distance of the office so long as they are in (or willing
| to work in) the time zone that the office works at.
| Rejecting someone in Los Angeles because they're not within
| driving distance of Seattle would be penny wise and pound
| foolish.
|
| > Once you have someone on your team who needs a lot of
| notice to attend any meeting, you are now planning every
| single meeting around their schedule.
|
| This doesn't sound like you're actually running a "WFH"
| team then. You just can't demand short notice in person
| meetings with a remote team; that's an unreasonable ask.
| Hold remote meetings and schedule in-person meetups far in
| advance, or don't call it a "WFH" team.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't know how productive it is to search for the true
| definition of "WFH". Regardless of what we call it, it
| seems reasonable to have an intermediate model like
| Amazon's proposing, where you can mostly work from
| wherever you'd like but you have to be available for in-
| person meetings because the company thinks they're
| valuable.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That's sort of the worst of both models. You have to pay
| expensive rent/mortgage to stay within range. You're
| commuting at the whim of your boss.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > I don't know how productive it is to search for the
| true definition of "WFH".
|
| It's very productive, because abusing terms like "WFH"
| will be the technique that companies use to try and get
| through this without giving up anything. If you thought
| you were going to be "working from home" and discovered
| that your boss had the option to demand a commute from
| you at will on short notice, you would probably feel like
| you'd been tricked, no? Or if you landed that dream WFH
| job only to discover that it required you be X miles from
| Y expensive city, you would probably have some questions
| about what exactly they meant by "work from home".
|
| Personally, I'd call the environment OP described above
| as semi-remote or "Flexible Working Arrangements",
| although I'm sure there are other terms that would
| suffice.
|
| > Regardless of what we call it, it seems reasonable to
| have an intermediate model like Amazon's proposing, where
| you can mostly work from wherever you'd like but you have
| to be available for in-person meetings because the
| company thinks they're valuable.
|
| Not for me, but that's fine I guess. But it's very
| important that everyone be clear about what this is, and
| it's not WFH. If the expectation is that you'll commute
| regularly or on the demand of your boss (ew), then that's
| not a WFH job. Come up with a new name for it if you
| want, but it does not meet the social expectation of what
| "WFH" means.
|
| Unrelated to the terminology, I find this intermediate
| proposition utterly perplexing. So I have to live within
| reasonable commute range for the 2-3x times I commute per
| week, _and_ I have to pay higher per foot cost if I want
| to work from my home? You do you, but I find this to be
| the worst of both worlds; I 'd rather have a short
| commute to an office all the time, or no commute and more
| personal space.
|
| (Excepting of course the "I have a dentist appointment in
| the other direction, I'm going to WFH for that." But even
| my non-remote jobs have offered one-off remote days for
| logistical reasons for years, so I implicitly exclude
| that from such discussions).
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'm not sure what we're discussing here. "WFH" is a
| common, casual shorthand for any sort of arrangement
| where you work while being at home - I've only seen the
| term used to summarize, not to trick or mislead people.
| It's worth noting that Amazon's formal message
| (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/amazon-
| offering-t...) identifies what they're offering not as
| "WFH" or "work from home" but "more flexibility as we
| return to office".
| ashtonkem wrote:
| We're discussing GP requiring that their "WFH" team live
| within a certain radius of the office for regular
| meetings. It's my assertion that the team described is
| not really WFH, but rather a mislabeled form of flexible
| working or semi-remote work.
|
| I do not believe that Amazon's framing here is
| duplicitous, although I find their policy insufficient. I
| would however keep an eye out for companies offering
| "WFH" with expectations that are incompatible with the
| popular understanding of that term. Therefore I disagree
| with your assertion that it's not profitable to discuss
| what "WFH" means.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Or, just host fully remote meetings. Which, if your
| employer is large enough, you have to do anyways because
| there's an office in Europe or India or someplace else.
| kevinsundar wrote:
| Pretty sure facebook needed to do this last week :)
|
| It's important for large companies to still have some way of
| getting people together quickly to solve problems. That's
| hard if people in are different timezones.
| tra3 wrote:
| I spoke to an Amazon recruiter the other day; the expectation
| that he shared was that everyone is still expected in the office
| in the new year.
| spike021 wrote:
| This announcement was literally today, and the announcement
| specifically says people are probably only just learning about
| it today...
| vineyardmike wrote:
| They changed the policy today. The recruiter probably didn't
| know.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| I don't know why people say Amazon has a bad reputation as an
| employee. You have to consider there is a million employees and
| it most likely depends on department, location, job. I personally
| know a couple handful Amazon employees who are all most happy and
| treated well. Some of them have previously been at google and
| they say Amazon is the better employer period.
|
| In some jurisdictions they pay clear above industry standard.
|
| All companies have good and bad aspects, some feel better in a
| startup , some feel better in a corporate giant.
| wil421 wrote:
| Google doesn't have a massive distribution network. If you take
| out the distribution and warehouse has jobs there are still
| many complaints like the hire to fire headcount. Not to mention
| one must ask themselves do they want to work for a company that
| doesn't give lower employees bathroom breaks or fires people
| based on AI feedback? How long until they use AI feedback to
| fire SWEs?
| morelandjs wrote:
| Anecdotal sure, but I joined earlier this year and am
| absolutely loving it so far. Fantastic pay, great manager,
| interesting impactful work, and more than enough flexibility on
| the personal side.
|
| I specifically chose a team based on my perception of the
| manager, and that decision has paid off so far. Amazon is a
| huge company and experiences can vary dramatically.
|
| Imagine if 20 public state schools, 50,000 students each,
| formed a mega university and someone started describing it in
| terms of a singular culture. Ridiculous right?
|
| I fully expect my experience is different than others and I
| don't expect it to generalize to Amazon as a whole. It's nice
| to hear first hand accounts from former employees (positive and
| negative), but I could do without the people parroting what
| they read online.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > I don't know why people say Amazon has a bad reputation as an
| employee.
|
| Note this isn't actually a question. You then go on to
| preemptively defend Amazon's reputation with:
|
| - "depends on department, location, job."
|
| - "I know a couple of employees who are happy."
|
| - They pay really well.
|
| - "All companies have good and bad aspects"
|
| What I find striking about this defense is that it is so
| generic, it could apply to any and every company (aside from
| maybe pay). You obviously have no interest in learning why
| Amazon's reputation is negative, and frankly are trying to shut
| down discussion of it.
| zeko1195 wrote:
| Yeah, I have the same experience. I work on a major aws team
| and we have a lot of focus on work life balance. Oncall sucks
| for sure but otherwise it's fine. My girlfriend at Google has a
| much worse work life balance. It depends on what team you're
| on.
| jedberg wrote:
| > as long as they are able to commute to the office when
| necessary
|
| This is they key right here. Basically you still have to live
| within a few hours drive of Seattle or Palo Alto, or even less
| depending on your patience.
|
| Still better than five days a week in the office though!
| aantix wrote:
| Could the commute be via a plane?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > you still have to live within a few hours drive of Seattle
|
| That encompasses the entire state of Washington, and includes a
| good chunk of Oregon.
|
| Not a burden.
|
| P.S. Friends of mine have lived in Seattle and commuted to
| eastern Washington some decades ago. It's entirely workable.
| jedberg wrote:
| And includes parts of Canada too! But you still have to live
| nearish to Seattle.
| ghaff wrote:
| Doing a sometimes long commute that gets you out of high-cost
| areas is hard in the Bay Area but a few hours gives you a
| _lot_ of flexibility in what type of place you live in
| generally.
| asdff wrote:
| I'd be looking hard at housing along regional rail lines. If
| the commute is going to be an hour or more, I'd much rather do
| that occasional trek in a commuter train with wifi and my
| laptop than in a car when I'm still half asleep in the morning.
| Eventually with cal HSR you will have the choice of living like
| a 23 year old in a tiny bay area apartment or living like an
| emperor in fresno or bakersfield for as much money.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Or Austin, Denver, DC, etc. There are a lot of Amazon offices
| and from what I've heard this has always been expected of their
| fully-remote employees.
| zz865 wrote:
| Is Amazon really such a bad employer? I've just started process
| with them now. I dont want to work for Facebook, there is no
| local Netflix and I'm probably not good enough for Google -
| Amazon is the only FANG company I'm realistically going to get.
| jnwatson wrote:
| This is only a single data point, but I recently went through
| the whole interview cycle with Google, Facebook, and, Amazon,
| and I thought Amazon was the toughest interviews.
|
| I have friends that work at Amazon. It seems that work/life
| balance varies quite a bit among different parts of it.
| anonporridge wrote:
| If you're good enough for Facebook, Amazon, or Netflix, you're
| plenty good enough for Google.
|
| Google of today isn't the same as that of a decade ago. It's
| just another megacorp.
| MatteoFrigo wrote:
| Please be aware that Amazon will insist on a non-competition
| agreement. Depending on your seniority level and whether such
| agreements are enforceable in your jurisdiction, there is a
| high chance that this will limit your opportunities after you
| leave Amazon. Don't overlook this aspect when evaluating
| offers.
|
| This is an example of how this interferes with the career of a
| very senior executive: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/microsoft-
| standoff-amazon-big-... However, this problem also affects
| junior engineers, more junior than you may think.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It is all relative. In comparison with the other FANG
| companies, the people that I know told me Amazon has worse
| work-life balance and a more stressing environment, but it can
| be fine versus other companies outside the FAANG group,
| especially with the top compensation you get for that.
| ferdowsi wrote:
| Maybe you should back up and ask why you are limiting your
| search to those four/five companies?
| zz865 wrote:
| No other companies pay >250k in NYC.
| vesuvianvenus wrote:
| Plenty pay >$250k remotely and in large cities such as SF
| and NYC-- For Engineers, Managers/Executives (Eng, Mktg,
| other), Salespeople, etc. You just have to ask for it. If
| you're unfamiliar, join TeamBlind.com
|
| A company sent me roles at $125k recently. I wrote them
| back with a polite variation of "heck no, my rate is
| $250k".
|
| I'm currently quite broke-- $5k to my name (too many
| sabbaticals, plus only recently paid off student debt and
| pivoted into engineering). But I bluff every time and
| sometimes it works out. Nothing to lose: there seem to be
| infinite employers in need of software engineers.
|
| They wrote back to schedule an interview.
| zz865 wrote:
| 250k I'm on already, its going up from there is the hard
| part.
| jnwatson wrote:
| That's not true. What about fintech?
| zz865 wrote:
| Any good examples? Yes there are some top end jobs that
| pay well, but the tail is thinner than the bay area.
| https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/New-
| York-C...
| vineyardmike wrote:
| They're not that bad, uniformly. But they have a vocal cohort
| of people that had a bad experience. From what i see in my
| cicle, its not rare to have a bad experience, but its not
| uniformly bad. But often bad. It seems heavily dependent on
| manager and the team's combo of priority and funding and
| history of good/bad development (aka tech debt).
|
| They have some good cultural points (easy to change teams) but
| also bad ones (bad on-call). So depending on your tolerance of
| WLB vs salary, and how good you are at shipping, you could have
| a good experience.
| comprev wrote:
| 16 days per annum remote is nothing but a small token.
| tbihl wrote:
| As someone with zero remote days, I strongly disagree.
| Jochim wrote:
| Why do you disagree?
|
| I hate these kinds of half-compromises because they feel
| really disingenuous. The company knows a significant
| proportion of their engineers want to work from home
| permanently and rather than giving a straight yes or no they
| try to weasel their way out with a solution that sucks for
| almost everyone.
|
| People that want to WFH permanently are forced into the
| office, with the restrictions on commuting that entails.
|
| People that want to work in the office are frustrated that
| people aren't in when they want to speak to them.
|
| Hybrid solutions genuinely look like the absolute worst of
| both worlds from the perspective of all parties involved.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know.
|
| It seems that somewhere between you must be butt in seat
| all day every day and everyone can move to a mountain town
| or the beach if that's what rocks their boat there probably
| exist reasonable flexible approaches.
|
| Some will doubtless resent that they can't depend on being
| able to tap an arbitrary coworker on the shoulder on a
| given day and others really don't want to live close enough
| to an office to drive in occasionally. But there seem to be
| intermediate approaches that make most people happier
| overall.
| thehappypm wrote:
| 16 days is kind of a lot. For me the hybrid model means I
| can much more easily do long weekends or weeks-in-an-
| interesting-place as 16 days would let me do 2 weeks and a
| half dozen long weekends.
|
| Compared to my old employer that's a ton.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| As someone who works remotely, I strongly agree.
| Forge36 wrote:
| More than my 2
| sharkweek wrote:
| I live in Seattle and thus a notable percentage of my social
| circle works at Amazon.
|
| The folks I know who work there were almost entirely all prepared
| to quit if the company forced their initial "everyone back in the
| office" requirement, especially in this current job market.
|
| It feels rare to see Amazon ever make a change to such a publicly
| stated policy like this, I can only imagine that the groundswell
| of feedback from employees was quite startling in how much of a
| problem their retention would be with such a hard rule.
| mxmel wrote:
| After reading the article it's not clear why this is a change
| to such a publicly stated policy. The only thing that has
| changed is that the directors have discretion to choose how
| many days in the office will be required for teams. The
| headline is extremely misleading.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Because they'd publicly sworn to SLU businesses that they
| _were_ going to be dragging employees back.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _It feels rare to see Amazon ever make a change to such a
| publicly stated policy like this..._
|
| Jeff Bezos recently stepped down as CEO. Google tells me that
| happened July 5th of this year, a few months ago.
|
| He founded the company. It's essentially _under new management_
| for the first time ever.
|
| I don't think you can infer much from this incident. There are
| too many unusual factors at play and we don't have an
| established track record for what the "new normal" (post Bezos)
| will be for Amazon.
| picardo wrote:
| Jeff was still with the company when the last version of the
| policy was announced, i.e. "3 days from office, 2 days from
| home." It was probably the head of HR who came up with it.
|
| Jeff accepted it like, "Oh well." You could tell he couldn't
| care less.
|
| But Andy Jassy looked ashen. I think his becoming CEO was the
| reason Amazon changed course. If Jeff had stayed, he would
| have let HR decide the policy for the entire company, and it
| would have been disastrous for AWS.
| [deleted]
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| I interviewed w/ Amazon - they contacted me during the pandemic
| and I though what the hey, ignore the worst reviews of any
| company on glassdoor, let's see what they're all about.
|
| The interview was, and I hate to use this word, followed a
| template clearly put together by an MBA who went into middle
| management without any work experience, The two people to whom
| I talked showed the enthusiasm of a dead wet beaver while
| asking the questions. This was for a storage position that I've
| been doing for 20+ years at some of the biggest accounts all
| over the planet.
|
| During the 2 hours, I got asked two very basic questions. Then
| a bunch of weird generic scenarios - what have you done that
| fits this scenario and how did you handle it.
|
| About half way through the second interview I decided there's
| not enough money in the world, and decided to have fun with it.
| I tells ya what - I made up some of the most ridiculous
| obviously fake <and then vanilla ice walked into the meeting>
| stories ever. They sent me a rejection letter, just to ask me
| to interview for a similar position two months later. I asked
| their recruiter to read their employee reviews and only contact
| me again if they offer 7 figures. Been a year now - nothing.
| Maybe they got the hint.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| The other thing to add on is that Amazon is having a hard time
| recruiting, at least anecdotally from friends who work there.
| Between their reputation as a company and hot job market,
| filling some senior level eng roles has become near impossible.
| [deleted]
| morelandjs wrote:
| They also sort of shoot themself in the foot with their
| interview process. I recommended the absolute best person I
| know for a position he was exceedingly qualified for. Amazon
| would have been lucky to have him.
|
| They blitzed him with leadership questions and were "not
| inclined". Incredibly dumb given their current situation.
| He's not even bad on those dimensions, they just can't get
| pretty off topic imo.
| rzanella wrote:
| I interviewed for Amazon Brazil once, it felt like I was
| being questioned by the police as if in a movie:
|
| - 4 straight hours inside a room
|
| - every hour the interviewer changed
|
| - got asked the same questions over and over again
|
| I was quite upset that I didn't pass... couple weeks later I
| was not, what a shitty experience it was.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| This sounds like a fairly normal interview process. How do
| tech interviews typically work in Brazil?
| mypalmike wrote:
| Apart from getting asked the same questions, the other
| parts are quite common in the industry. I mean, some places
| might move you around a bit between rooms, but literally
| every job interview I've had over the last 25 years has
| been essentially 4-6 hours of tag team wrestling with
| coding/systems/personality questions.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "- 4 straight hours inside a room
|
| - every hour the interviewer changed
|
| - got asked the same questions over and over again"
|
| It's the same in UK, at least they standardised it!
| humanlion87 wrote:
| It's the same in North America as well. If you get
| scheduled during lunch time, you will get the opportunity
| to go outside at least :)
|
| All that is moot now because of covid.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| It's the same in the US too. My last (internal transfer)
| job interview at Apple was 8 hours long, 8 interviews.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I think I might have you beat with 9 hours, but that was
| an external interview
| sharkweek wrote:
| I have shared this story on here before, but my first "real
| interview" out of college was at Amazon and to this day it is
| still one of the worst experiences of my career.
|
| The recruiter was great, super nice, got me all organized for
| a full-day loop. They gave me some things to prepare, so I
| did. Admittedly, I was under-qualified for the job as a fresh
| grad but was assured that'd be fine.
|
| Still, the entire team made it abundantly clear how much I
| was apparently wasting their time even being in the room with
| each of them as they took turns throughout the day talking to
| me.
|
| Felt so unbelievably toxic, and even though this was in the
| early 00s, I have never even considered working there since.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I found my Amazon interview to be surprisingly easy and
| friendly, except for one interviewer who gave me Alien
| Dictionary and got offended when I told her this was a well
| known leetcode problem. Oops..didn't get the job.
| dayvid wrote:
| Very similar experience. It was a boring and tedious
| interview. The behavioral part of the interview felt odd
| with a focus on tailoring my experiences around Amazon
| principles which I wasn't aware of until a few days before
| the interview. The employees seemed nice, though, but not
| really cheerful and a little standoff-ish. It honestly felt
| like a more traditional style of interviewing.
|
| I contrast that with another FAANG interview I had, where
| you had lunch on campus and they tried to leave a positive
| impression.
| teh_infallible wrote:
| A recruiter contacted me one for a position at Amazon, and I
| straight up said I will never work there because of the way
| they treat their employees. (Probably burned a bridge with
| that recruiter, but oh well)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > (Probably burned a bridge with that recruiter, but oh
| well)
|
| They seem to have a lot of recruiters and I'm surprised if
| this even got you off their "contact every month" list.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Both Facebook and Amazon have contacted me recently, and in
| both cases it was a senior manager doing the recruiting.
| Maybe just a new strategy in general, or perhaps it's
| because both companies struggle with reputation.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| If they were contacting you with a specific interesting
| position, that would be something. If they were
| contacting you with a generic position they just needed
| to fill...that sounds like a lot of cringe.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have only actually talked with the guy from Facebook.
| All he did was talk about how great his teams are, how
| super intelligent his engineers are, etc. While he
| politely listened to what I had to say, he was definitely
| on a mission to market his little slice of Instagram and
| get me interested in running the Facebook interview
| gauntlet.
|
| He even suggested that it would be totally okay if I was
| one of those people that wanted to study for a month or
| two before interviewing. Study?! For a job interview?
|
| It was a weird experience. I normally shun recruiters,
| but I was just curious enough to hear what this guy had
| to say. His LinkedIn profile didn't indicate any past
| involvement with recruiting, so I wanted to know why a
| senior manager would spend time recruiting random people
| -- he must spend every waking hour on these calls.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Studying a month for a job interview...well, if you need
| a job and have the time, it can definitely work out well
| in the end. The leetcode problems are kind of fun to work
| on once you get into them, but they are definitely of
| limited use.
|
| My Facebook interview was weird also, but the people were
| super nice and the coding problems were fairly easy. I
| failed on distributed systems architecture, oddly enough,
| as it was an area I had no experience in for a senior
| hire (but I got an offer from Google the same day I was
| rejected from Facebook, so I didn't have much time to be
| sad about it).
|
| But managers recruiting random people, just seems weird
| to me. If they wanted me for my specific skill set, that
| would be great! But if they were just looking for general
| hires, they must have lost a bet or something.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I know a local Amazon director and he was spending a lot
| of time with recruiting, he had to hire a very large
| amount of people and that was his top measure for that
| year. Even paying above the market, with their reputation
| and the competition on the market it was difficult to
| meet the target.
| hacker_newz wrote:
| Don't worry, they don't last that long.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| It's not possible to burn a bridge with a recruiter, these
| are 'salespeople' who get many no's per day and have
| pressure to perform.
|
| A recruiter call doesn't mean a company has interest in a
| candidate. It just means the Amazon job description and
| your resume both included the word JAVA.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I probably burned a bridge with Activision-Blizzard a few
| years ago. They contacted me about a potential job, and I
| said "When I was earning my degree, I dreamed of working
| for Blizzard. But then earlier this year, you announced
| record profits, and then only a couple days later announced
| the lay-off of over 800 workers. No thank you."
|
| And considering their current controversies, my opinion on
| working for them has not changed.
|
| If they ever contacted me again, I'd probably just laugh.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| You sure showed that HR drone.
| void_mint wrote:
| But...you're aware that record profits aren't a blank
| check to employ whoever you want in whatever positions
| they want, right?
| the_only_law wrote:
| Both and I someone else I've spoken to have been reached
| out to by Amazon recruiters for different, both technical
| roles.
|
| Neither of us get any attention from "good" companies
| whatsoever, but we both at least got a handful of messages
| from Amazon recruiters. They seem desperate. I didn't
| bother pursuing as a little research showed they wouldn't
| offer enough for me to relocate anyway. I'm not a fan of
| the FAANG hiring/placement and would probably not engage
| Amazon on that unless they could offer me a particularly
| enticing role, at least not now. Am I missing out on money?
| yeah probably.
|
| The most interesting thing though, was how robotic the
| recruiter felt. The messages I got felt more like some mass
| automated messages than someone reaching out to speak to me
| about open roles.
| mrRandomGuy wrote:
| Good, if you treat all your employees like garbage don't be
| surprised when not that many people with actual skill are
| willing to join
| cle wrote:
| Many employees voted with their feet. From the outside it seems
| like Amazon has already suffered significant brain drain, they
| are likely trying to stop the bleeding at this point. In
| addition to their poor reputation as an employer, seems like
| they've backed themselves into a corner.
| anonporridge wrote:
| As a former Amazonian, I'm giddy to see their chickens come
| home to roost.
| natalyarostova wrote:
| They stopped being able to hire seniors easily. So I quit,
| because working with 8 people 1 year out of college, and
| myself with 7 years exp, was awful.
| hbosch wrote:
| In my opinion, "bar raisers" often impede the hiring of
| candidates who could be good senior level employees.
| backoncemore wrote:
| Not to mention the absolutely ridiculous amount of
| grilling over leadership principles.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| With stack ranking, many engineers blacklisting Amazon, and
| the sheer size of their engineering department, they must be
| close to literally running out of engineers to hire in
| America, right? At least if they stuck to in person work and
| limited their hiring pool geographically.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| If they can turn someone into a backend engineer in nine
| months they can hire forever even with a lot of turnover.
|
| > Lambda School to Launch New Backend Engineering Program,
| Jointly Developed with Amazon
|
| https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/lambda-school-
| launches-...
|
| > Inspiration for the new backend program came from Amazon
| Technical Academy, which trains current, non-technical
| Amazon employees for software development engineering roles
| within the company. Amazon Technical Academy's curriculum
| is based on the critical knowledge, skills, and attributes
| required to succeed as a software development engineer at
| Amazon, which Lambda's program will cover in their
| entirety. Amazon Technical Academy is part of Amazon's
| commitment to upskill 100,000 of its own employees by 2025.
| bluedino wrote:
| They can hire new grads every year
|
| Getting expensive to move to Seattle though
| whatshisface wrote:
| Running a giant company with nothing but new grads is
| really asking for every project management problem ever
| discovered.
| [deleted]
| VRay wrote:
| Nah, all the new grads will be able to balance a red-
| black tree on a whiteboard in seconds, so they should be
| able to easily handle all other engineering tasks
| adolph wrote:
| Every problem is a solution in the waiting. Imagine a
| "every project management problem ever" as a service for
| enterprise customers of AWS. Every year there could be an
| almanac of recently discovered screwups. Amazon Studios
| would have a long run reality TV series.
| spoonjim wrote:
| This is where news and reality diverge
| Jyaif wrote:
| I know that they are hiring across the world for their
| Vancouver office.
| dangerwill wrote:
| Yep can confirm, got multiple Amazon Vancouver specific
| recruiters in my inbox last month, and I'm in Ireland
| plebianRube wrote:
| I replied back to one of these and explained that due to
| their anti-union actions, and they way they treat
| employees, I would never be interested in working there,
| no matter the salary. I thankfully have never received
| any more of their spam.
| aerosmile wrote:
| To be fair, very few tech companies would hire someone
| who starts off by expressing their support for
| unionization. It's certainly a good "unsubscribe" tactic.
| For example, if you want to get rid of unwanted Linkedin
| outreach, just put into your title "Go unions!"
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Sounds like you both dodged a bullet.
| mathverse wrote:
| It is amazing that some americans can be so picky to give up
| their many hundred thousand/per year jobs because they dont
| want to go to the office.
|
| I am just envious at how developed your tech scene is.
| acchow wrote:
| They aren't giving up anything. They'll just switch to
| working at another company offering them hundreds of
| thousands. Those jobs are plentiful.
| haswell wrote:
| The way I read the parent comment, it's not that people are
| "giving up" the ability to make hundreds of thousands, but
| rather they're able to give up their _role_ at a company
| paying that much because the market allows them to make
| that money elsewhere.
|
| This is not possible everywhere.
| munificent wrote:
| The flip side is that many feel an intense pressure to do
| whatever it takes to get the most lucrative job they can find
| because the US has much less of a social safety net than many
| European countries.
| ghaff wrote:
| Once you get beyond a certain threshold that's not really
| true. Or it's a story they tell themselves because they
| care more about money than other considerations.
| oblio wrote:
| Have you ever had a 1 month long holiday? Not sabbatical,
| just regular PTO.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, several times--most recently a few years ago was
| close to that. Another probably 4x in the 3 week to 4
| week range in previous job. Pretty standard tech industry
| jobs. More recently have had many other holidays that
| were a combination of tech events and pure PTO.
|
| I realize a fair number of people can't do that or,
| commonly in my experience, feel that they can't do that
| but it's not actually impossible if that's what you
| prioritize.
| andreilys wrote:
| It's not about being picky, it's about knowing your worth. If
| an employer chooses a ham-fisted approach of forcing everyone
| to work out of the office, then they will have to pay the
| consequences of their top talent leaving for companies that
| are more flexible (and often pay the same or more)
| noir_lord wrote:
| Wasn't amazon but this is exactly what happened, they
| mandated "back to the office, no exceptions" last summer, I
| put my notice in and went to work for a company that was
| 100% remote, within a year I got promoted from lead
| upwards.
|
| Turns out sometimes not only is the grass greener but it's
| much better tasting as well.
|
| Ironically the place I left announced a "developers can
| work from home forever" policy a couple of months ago
| (after they'd lost 7 out of 9 senior devs off their 9 teams
| - the attrition rate wasn't _much_ lower for non-seniors).
|
| They are so fucked it's not even funny - literally
| _decades_ of accumulated domain /business knowledge walked
| out the door.
| [deleted]
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Do you really mean "give up" here? You're strongly implying
| that you're not in America, so there's a decent chance
| English is not your first language, so maybe you don't mean
| "give up" in the way it usually means in English.
|
| To be explicit, there's nothing being sacrificed. People
| leaving their jobs because they don't want to go to an office
| are finding new jobs that pay the same amount or even more.
| They're not giving up anything.
| backoncemore wrote:
| American programmers are mercenaries, capitalist minded
| workers, that have access to a digital hive mind that not
| many other professions can fully access. We hold a lot more
| power than I think we realize.
|
| Europeans work to live. Americas live to work.
| VRay wrote:
| Probably worth mentioning that you aren't safe if you hide
| out in some low-paying European job. Sooner or later the
| US/Chinese platform companies are going to come and eat
| your boss' lunch
|
| So you may as well come over and get a share of the spoils
| Someone1234 wrote:
| They aren't given up anything. They can walk into multiple
| other jobs with similar pay and benefits, and that's the
| problem Amazon has.
|
| It isn't being picky, it is employees having actual worth and
| choice. Employees can "pick" the pay, conditions, and
| benefits that suite them best: In this case moving out of one
| of the highest housing cost areas in the country.
| oblio wrote:
| I think you misread his comment. He's saying that what
| you're describing is a privilege developers in many other
| countries don't enjoy.
| ikiris wrote:
| You should stop being a crab in a bucket, and go try to
| improve your own situation instead of being unhappy that
| others have done so in their own lives.
| abawany wrote:
| The social contract is different here. You focus on the
| salary but most employees are considered fungible here by
| most employers with 'industry standard' as a synonym for
| 'sucks about as much as what we consider our competitors'.
| Due to the unique circumstances, employees in some industries
| finally have some ability to try to better their lot so it
| would be irrational of them to not avail themselves of likely
| a once-in-many-lifetimes opportunity before the iron fist of
| our corporate masters comes crashing down upon our spines
| again. Yes, I am old and cynical - how did you know :) ?
| un_montagnard wrote:
| It is amazing that some Americans are so picky about going to
| the office instead of actual vacations with all your
| corporate access disabled.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| These types of jobs have 4+ weeks of vacation anyway.
| drunkpotato wrote:
| Has this changed recently? My offer from AWS came with 2
| weeks of vacation, non-negotiable, and was part of why I
| rejected it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Wow, that is very poor. I don't know many Amazon people
| though, but I have read they are stingy. Although, I
| assumed 3 weeks of vacation was a minimum for white
| collar employees, especially in finance/law/engineering.
| I got 3 weeks when I came out of college in mid 2000s.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Why are you asserting people are giving up anything? I got a
| pay raise when I quit my in office job.
| dudul wrote:
| Nothing to do with being picky. It's just about people having
| different priorities.
| bowmessage wrote:
| Another nail in the coffin for downtown Seattle's recovery?
| jvolkman wrote:
| I was downtown this weekend and it was much busier than I
| expected. I rode the light rail from the new Northgate
| station, and the train was (relatively) full after the
| university stations. I hope the two are related.
| Spivak wrote:
| It's not as doom and gloom as you might think. Without such a
| huge wealth gap between the people who work for the downtown
| industry and tertiary business you might get lucky and have a
| cultural resurgence as artists, musicians, restauranteurs,
| local retail, etc etc can afford to live and set up shop
| downtown again.
|
| People seem to forget that outside of the supermega metro
| areas the typical downtown/financial districts are basically
| dead.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| What is stopping local restaurants and retailers from
| serving downtown workers? Back when I worked in a CBD, I
| almost always ate lunch at local/regional businesses.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > What is stopping local restaurants and retailers from
| serving downtown workers
|
| The lack of downtown workers going into offices.
| Effectively there is no one working near those
| restaurants.
| kodah wrote:
| > People seem to forget that outside of the supermega metro
| areas the typical downtown/financial districts are
| basically dead.
|
| Before working in tech I lived in mostly small and medium
| sized cities. The downtowns were always packed, and usually
| the artists were local, but as much as I hear "artists and
| musicians" brought up with respect to a cities value, they
| don't lure people in. It's just a bonus. What does is good
| schools, affordable home prices, stable jobs, and a decent
| economy.
| munificent wrote:
| I think you're oversimplified and over-regimenting.
| Cities are like organisms. A healthy city needs a large
| number of different kinds of organs and systems all
| working in concert. Some may not be entirely _essential_
| --you can live without an appendix and give up a kidney--
| but almost all of them need to be in place to have
| something someone would call a thriving city.
| kodah wrote:
| Can you be more specific about what you're arguing? I
| can't really tell.
| munificent wrote:
| I'm saying artists and musicians aren't a bonus. A city
| without them might be functional, but no one would love
| it and few would call it thriving. No part of a city is
| really inessential.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Before working in tech I lived in mostly small and
| medium sized cities.
|
| How long ago? If you compare downtown Seattle to downtown
| Seattle 10 years ago, it was much better back then.
| Things changed quickly this decade, I wouldn't be
| surprised if the places you left packed are struggling
| today.
|
| Seattle in general isn't struggling at all, it grew 25%
| this decade and the housing market...but downtown has a
| huge hill to climb in going to back to a fun place to
| visit on the weekend.
| kodah wrote:
| The two I'm thinking of are in Texas and they're doing
| well.
|
| If I'm reading it right, the problem you're calling out
| is that it is unaffordable to live in a downtown metro
| after it reaches a certain density. People still think
| they can hack together solutions by subsidizing housing,
| rent control, applying grants, etc but I'm more of the
| mind that there's probably a _max size_ to a city, where
| once you hit a threshold it either takes a nosedive into
| poverty or becomes so unsustainably expensive that it
| chases out what desirable things may have existed there
| in the first place.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > the problem you're calling out is that it is
| unaffordable to live in a downtown metro after it reaches
| a certain density.
|
| I don't know where you got that. Affordability downtown
| isn't really what is keeping people away (and it is not
| like rental buildings have lots of vacancies, nor are
| close to downtown condos, towhomes, and SFHs difficult to
| sell), but retail and restaurant choices have been
| decimated over the last decade, it isn't thriving from
| the point of view of someone going there to do things.
| kodah wrote:
| Ah, retail and restaurants are low-margin businesses, so
| I usually associate their decline with a rise in cost
| (labor + real estate). Usually restaurants don't just go
| away, they're replaced by fewer-in-number but more-
| expensive options that people don't want or can't eat at
| regularly. Cost also correlates with density, but I think
| that's more abstractly. Eg: more businesses show up, more
| workers are needed, more houses are needed, supply and
| demand flip flops as inventory in a relatively-fixed area
| shrinks or becomes a rental market instead of buyers
| market.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Retail has declined due to online commerce. Seattle
| ironically lost its downtown Bon Marche/Macy's to become
| more office space for Amazon.
|
| The homeless factor can't be understated in Seattle,
| especially with all the encampments downtown. I worked at
| 3rd and Pine McDonalds in the mid-90s, and for as bad as
| it was back then, it is ten times worse today.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was just in Seattle for the first time in about 5
| years. The situation was... not good. And this from
| someone who has spent a lot of time in SF and always had
| a not totally positive take on Seattle with respect to
| the grunge factor compared to other PNW cities.
| Arainach wrote:
| When was downtown the fun evening getaway? I've been here
| 15 years, and unless you're looking for a Frat Bro party
| in Belltown, Fremont/Cap Hill/Ballard were always where
| the _real_ social life was. They 're all doing just fine
| now - you wouldn't know there was a pandemic on.
| asdff wrote:
| I'm surprised that's your experience to be fair. Mid
| sized cities like Columbus or St. Louis's downtown
| effectively shuts down at 5pm in my experience. All those
| tall buildings are offices, most of the restaurants
| around them serve business people and don't offer dinner
| service and close after the workday. Night life is in
| other neighborhoods adjacent, but not in downtown.
| kodah wrote:
| St Louis and Columbus are much bigger than the towns I'm
| thinking of. The two towns are basically suburbs with a
| downtown area. I was able to bike to both of them from my
| house. In my favorite of the two there were two
| restaurants that offered dinner service and were owned by
| locals. Everything else was chain restaurants and they
| all offered dinner and late night/bar services.
| asdff wrote:
| Yeah if there isn't a ton of office space downtowns seem
| a lot more lively, since businesses stay open outside of
| 9-5 and people might actually live closer by. Even lower
| manhattan is considered a dead area after hours due to
| all the offices and not a lot of other businesses and
| housing to draw demand outside of 9-5 m-f.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of core downtowns (whether financial district or
| something more diverse) were pretty dead pre-pandemic
| after hours even if nearby areas of the city were pretty
| lively.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| "you might get lucky and have a cultural resurgence as
| artists, musicians, restauranteurs, local retail, etc etc
| can afford to live and set up shop downtown again." Or you
| might get what you have now: boarded up businesses, open
| air drug markets, rampant unprosecuted crime, needles and
| human waste everywhere.
| void_mint wrote:
| Curious, when was the last time you were in downtown
| Seattle?
| kyleblarson wrote:
| 2 weeks ago.
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