[HN Gopher] Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office
mandate
Author : mmurph211
Score : 184 points
Date : 2023-02-21 20:21 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| xivzgrev wrote:
| "For instance, some employees who are part of global teams will
| come into the office only to continue taking virtual meetings,
| and they may not even have a coworker in their office, the
| petition states."
|
| My company is RTO, but with teams across offices, so I know this
| pain all too well. Our leadership has not addressed this
| disconnect either, so I wouldn't hold your breath.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| I guess the obvious question is that if no one on your team is
| in the same office as you, who will even notice if you don't
| show up to the office? As long as your direct manager is on
| board, it seems easy to just disregard the RTO requirement and
| keep working from home.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Clearly you don't have the kind of dystopian office which
| records to the second when you scan your office pass for the
| first and last times in a day.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| This is basically how I started WFH before the pandemic
| necessitated it
|
| The doors know I haven't been there in X months, but nobody
| in my distributed org cares to look
| dvtrn wrote:
| _who will even notice if you don 't show up to the office?_
|
| They don't have to "notice" it. They don't even have to _see_
| it.
|
| Do you have an access badge to get into your company
| campus/building/suite?
|
| My last job started tracking access badge activity to monitor
| and enforce RTTO compliance.
|
| Found it funny to get nagged about not hitting the required
| minimum number by a boss who lived four states away.
|
| Laughed all the way out the door and into a new company whose
| policy is "if you wanna wfh, then wfh. If you want to come to
| the office, be our guest."
| paxys wrote:
| I'm in the exact same situation. My company issued a 3 day/week
| in the office mandate for anyone living within X miles of an
| office. Except that most of our hiring during the pandemic has
| been remote and in lower-cost regions (to cut costs no doubt),
| and so people who do end up going to the office will still not
| have any coworkers around them and will just be in meeting
| rooms doing zoom calls all day.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Remote work definitely comes down to a company culture issue. For
| _most_ engineering jobs I would say flexibility is a massive
| competitive advantage. There are so many great engineers out
| there who prefer not to be in the office it 's a great talent
| pool, but needs to be actively managed in order to get the best
| out of it. Having said that, Amazon comes across as exactly the
| company that would require you to be in the office, I'd be kind
| of surprised if many people joined Amazon not expecting an
| extremely high pressure, highly demanding, strong cultured work
| enviornment.
| x86x87 wrote:
| imho Amazon has a big problem with its image and hiring. It is
| literally impossible to find good developers that want to work
| for Amazon. Taking advantage of the current market conditions
| to do this is going to spectacularly backfire once the market
| recovers.
| bitL wrote:
| Given Meta and Google are slowly turning into another Amazon
| (e.g. by an influx of Amazon managers bringing their
| "culture" with them) and Amazon is now paying competitive, I
| don't think that would be a big medium-term problem for them.
| generalpf wrote:
| I worked for a mid-cap tech company that brought in Amazon
| and Salesforce senior leadership in 2021. The culture
| immediately eroded as these guys' penchant for finger-
| pointing and hustling beyond a reasonable human's capacity
| became clear.
| bitL wrote:
| TeamBlind today:
|
| https://www.teamblind.com/post/Ex-Amazon-managers-are-
| horrib...
| geodel wrote:
| Also, markets can stay irrational longer than people stay
| solvent.
| x86x87 wrote:
| I'm going to tell you what. I still remember the Microsoft
| layoffs in 2008. I was not impacted but at that point I
| decided I will never work for Ms again. Amazon is also on
| my "hell no" list.
| base698 wrote:
| The company hired and promised whole orgs and teams remote work
| for the last two years, many in areas with no Amazon offices.
| Some were tied to offices 3+ hours away on paper, but during
| recruiting were promised never returned to office. Others have
| remote only as a condition of their employment.
|
| When your recruiter, boss, director, VP are all remote and
| promising a remote only employment, what are you supposed to
| think?
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| There's no evidence that remote-only ("Virtual location")
| employees have to ever go to the office. It's really just
| people that would have had an office before that had a loose
| RTO policy since like 2021.
| modoc wrote:
| The issue is that Andy Jassy letter isn't clear on this, or
| many other specifics, so there's a lot of concern due to
| lack of clarity.
| hummus_bae wrote:
| [dead]
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| The thing is these big companies don't really need a lot of
| great talent. They're fine skating by with masses of mediocre
| talent and a few great ones sprinkled in.
|
| So yes, they'll attract fewer great engineers, but it won't
| matter much.
| ironfootnz wrote:
| Rumors are those are now under PIP
| brianjking wrote:
| Good, anyone that requires me to go to an office for something
| that I can do as effectively or more effectively from home should
| not be able to have a job.
| benjismith wrote:
| I must be one of the very very few software engineers that would
| prefer to RTO. (I'm not at Amazon, btw).
|
| I do enjoy the flexibility of being able to occasionally work
| from home. But I miss the bustling office culture, going out to
| lunch with coworkers, forming friendships with people from the
| office who don't necessarily work in the same department/team.
|
| Most days, I go into town and work from a WeWork (because it's
| nice to have a daily change of scenery), but 95% of the time, I'm
| the only person there (in an office with nine desks). Before the
| pandemic there were 80~100 people in our office.
|
| Sigh...
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Some food for thought: seems like the majority prefer to WFH,
| now think of all the coworkers you were having lunch with, how
| many of them would prefer to have lunch with you if they were
| not forced to go to the office? Not many.
|
| Don't get too attached to people from work.
| spike021 wrote:
| A lot of people will say to do your socializing outside of
| work.
|
| IMO the kinds you described are really helpful for work
| collaboration and even politics.
|
| Plus when you build better communication relationships with
| coworkers for regular chatter then it drastically improves
| respect and discourse in important team discussions and code
| reviews.
| ebzlo wrote:
| A lot of comments are indicating you're alone on this, but I'm
| finding the contrary. Our team doubled in size in the last 6
| months or so with an office mandate (to almost 20 now). With
| aggressive hiring goals, we discussed whether we might have to
| transition to a remote company to satisfy market expectations,
| but found that as long as we're completely transparent in the
| initial conversation, there are people who are all-in on RTO.
|
| One of our recent senior hires specifically wanted an in-office
| role and a lot of our junior engineers are hungry to learn from
| the seniors.
|
| What I suspect is there will be a divide in the coming years
| and as long as companies are open about who they are, people
| can make the choice of where they want to work.
| clnq wrote:
| So you are asking people if they would be fine with RTO as a
| part of their interviewing process? I feel like there's some
| room for biased answers there.
| chucknthem wrote:
| As a parent who also enjoy lunch with co-workers and in person
| time, I'm a big fan of hybrid going to work a couple times a
| week. I'm also the only parent that goes in regularly.
|
| I'm in a small "remote-first" company where there's only a
| handful of other engineers in the area, most of us used to work
| in in-person offices. Even just a handful of us is enough
| critical mass to have a good conversation and even
| collaborating on a few problems together that would otherwise
| require more effort to schedule and work through.
| clpm4j wrote:
| Do you mind me asking if you're under 30yrs old?
| dopeboy wrote:
| Not OP - I'm in my mid 30s and do this for roughly the same
| reasons.
| mypalmike wrote:
| I'm over 50 and I'm in the same boat. Hybrid is ideal for me
| for the same reasons. I find collaboration on work to be more
| difficult when I don't have an in-person connection with my
| teammates.
| old_hat wrote:
| I'm 40 and I work from the office 5 days a week for roughly
| the same reasons. General expectation from the company is
| around 2 days a week in the office, but I prefer it, so I
| come in every day.
| mikhael28 wrote:
| Do you mind me asking you if you are anti-social?
| rullelito wrote:
| What do you think of having it completely voluntary to RTO?
| ryankshaw wrote:
| Same. I do like the flexibility but miss the "bustling office
| culture" as you call it.
|
| Seems like the idea for me would be some kind of hybrid where
| 2-3 days a week at least most co-workers are together in-office
| and the other days people are where they are personally most
| productive.
|
| Wouldn't have to be draconian, leaders could say "I highly
| encourage" and provide things like lunches and expectations
| that that's when collaboration, meetings, etc would happen and
| then also have expectation that there would be "get shit done"
| days on those non-collaboration-focused days
| codemac wrote:
| I prefer the office as well. Work 4-5 days / week.
|
| A big part is my employer allowed me to transfer to a closer
| office to my home, so now my commute is ~15 mins via light rail
| rather than ~1 hours via car.
| ahelwer wrote:
| You pay a few hundred bucks a month to rent a wework desk so
| that you have an excuse to commute somewhere?
| qvrjuec wrote:
| He explains why he does this in his post.... >But I miss the
| bustling office culture, going out to lunch with coworkers,
| forming friendships with people from the office who don't
| necessarily work in the same department/team.
|
| Not everyone is built the same way
| ahelwer wrote:
| No, they say they do it for the change of scenery and
| nobody else is there.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Some people find they benefit from physically separating
| home life from work life.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| npalli wrote:
| Amazon has over 1.4 Million employees. Looking at this article,
| 14,000 joined a slack channel to complain. So only about 1% is
| pushing Andy Jassy about this. Should we assume the remainder
| (~99%) is OK? If so, this is yet another instance of a small
| group of people strategically using regular/social media to
| amplify a minority position which the majority doesn't support.
| ben0x539 wrote:
| Why would you assume the remainder is OK with this? Joining a
| slack channel isn't a referendum.
| amzn-throw wrote:
| 1.5, but probably over a million of those are FC workers who
| are not on slack cuz they're running around the warehouse.
|
| There are just over 400,000 office employees WW
|
| So it's closer to 3.5%, and the announcement was only posted
| Friday morning before a long weekend so that's likely to grow.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| I've already shared my negative Amazon experience on HN a couple
| of times, so I wasn't going to comment on this article, but this
| line caught my eye:
|
| "Amazon's positions on diversity and inclusion..."
|
| As someone with ASD who worked at Amazon for over two years, I
| can say that Amazon's stated positions on diversity and inclusion
| are absolute bullshit. My last manager violated my reasonable
| accommodations in every conceivable way for over a year and HR
| did NOTHING about it. In fact, they somehow warped the universe
| by doing less than nothing.
|
| I now work at another FAANG company and the difference is night
| and day. My current manager is actually a manager with real
| management skills and the company treats me exceptionally well.
| If I were an engineer looking for a big-tech job, I'd skip that
| second A in FAANG and save myself a whole lot of misery and
| frustration.
| xt00 wrote:
| If people being in the office is somehow more valuable, then pay
| them more than remote workers and see what fraction want to be
| remote vs non remote. Capitalist solution to the problem for all
| the hardcore "let the market find the solution".
| x86x87 wrote:
| this RTO mandates are getting old. Do people, in general, believe
| that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic
| started?
| turtlebits wrote:
| The complaints are also getting old. If you were hired with the
| expectation that you go in the office, RTO is an eventual
| expected outcome.
|
| I do see the psychology of taking away what many see as a
| "benefit", but it's really just going back to the norm.
| rtp4me wrote:
| Agreed. If the expectation was to work from the office when
| you were hired, you should expect to go back to the office
| once the pandemic is/was over. Otherwise, why would you take
| a job in an office if you didn't want to work there (there -
| as in "in the office")?
| x86x87 wrote:
| Hmm... the complaints are getting old? I guess the beatings
| need to continue until morale improves.
|
| https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/traditi.
| ..
|
| Hard disagree with "If you were hired with the expectation
| that you go in the office, RTO is an eventual expected
| outcome." Ask yourself why do we need to RTO? Who needs the
| RTO?
| rtp4me wrote:
| Don't ask yourself or your neighbor. Ask your company why
| they want you to RTO.
|
| Who needs the RTO? Apparently, the company does. This is
| why they are asking people to return...
| x86x87 wrote:
| hah. i did ask. I also did ask about the metrics that are
| used to measure productivity. Do you want to hear what
| the answer was? crickets!
| rtp4me wrote:
| So, I guess at this point you have at least two options:
|
| * Go back to the office as expected
|
| * Look for another job
|
| Which one will you pursue?
| x86x87 wrote:
| If I had to make the choice it would be another job. Easy
| choice.
| eurticket wrote:
| we should all read between the lines, this big push is from
| those that invest in the office buildings and surrounding
| businesses chains, and are hurting from lower proximity of
| consumers.
|
| Stop making your own meals, start consuming from their fast
| food chain down the block from the building theyre leasing
| to your company.
|
| Stop for gas and buy from their other investments close by.
|
| Need people to stop being so self sufficient at home, and
| suck the rich tit.
|
| We are so desperate for the help :( /$
| x86x87 wrote:
| i agree that things are shifting. forcing everyone to the
| old routine that is worse for them, worse for the
| environment and worse for the tech corporations that are
| peddling this is insane.
|
| Gas? If we consume less gas that's good right?
|
| Less wear an tear on the cars? Good
|
| Not wasting 1-2 hours commuting? Great
|
| Having a quiet place where you can gather your thoughts
| and do knowledge work? Amazing
|
| But what about the hard working real estate companies
| that are going to be impacted by this? What about the
| small businesses? What about them? Close shop and/or
| figure out something else that works. Why does everyone
| have to have a crappier life for you to continue with
| your crap practices?
| dunefox wrote:
| 1. of all the norm for a couple of years is home office
|
| 2. it is an objective benefit
|
| 3. the norm is what the majority want it to be
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| Why does it have to be the norm?
|
| We can't just stick to what's been done previously just
| because it used to be that way. Clearly, for years, workers
| have been productive remotely. I get some people like being
| in the office more than WFH, but the "some" is key here and
| does not align with an RTO _mandate_
| ye-olde-sysrq wrote:
| I think the biggest wins from covid will just be that we did a
| massive 3-year WFH experiment and overall it went just fine.
| Great, even, if you account for the fact that it wasn't just a
| WFH test in isolation, it was accompanied by a generation-
| defining negative psychological and virulogical event. We all
| went fully remote for three years during a terrible
| humanitarian crisis and nothing exploded (except inflation but
| that's not our fault)
| twblalock wrote:
| I don't think it went "just fine". It looked like companies
| were doing well because we were in a bubble market.
|
| I definitely feel, and observe, a noticeable decrease in
| productivity and speed of execution compared to where my org
| was a few years ago. I know others have noticed it too,
| including management.
|
| On top of all that, companies are expected to run leaner than
| before because now that the bubble is over, apparently
| everyone remembered that having a sane balance sheet and
| making a profit are things that matter. So now we want per-
| worker productivity to increase because we can't hire as many
| people.
|
| The basic social contract of work has not changed. Tech
| workers have better pay and benefits than almost anyone else,
| and we should not be whiny about this. Most workers in other
| fields had to return to the office too.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Times are tough.. let's spent what little money we have on
| renting an office space?
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| > Tech workers have better pay and benefits than almost
| anyone else, and we should not be whiny about this. Most
| workers in other fields had to return to the office too.
|
| So, if it's bad for some, let's make it bad for everyone?
| What kind of reasoning is that? FFS, we should be making
| progress, not the opposite!
| twblalock wrote:
| Define "progress".
|
| Working from an office is not some kind of dystopia.
| Quite a few people prefer it to other arrangements.
| Having a pandemic that forced people to work from home
| for a year or two does not change the fundamental reality
| of human social interactions.
| piva00 wrote:
| Nothing exploded while most companies had no idea whatsoever
| on how to implement it properly. Things worked mostly fine
| even though it was through a panic emergency plan that was
| completely winged due to sheer necessity.
|
| Imagine if it was a plan properly designed and implemented?
| All this bullshit of RTO is getting old for me exactly
| because of this point, nothing was done in what would be even
| close to the optimal way for working remotely and things are
| still going ok...
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Some parts of it were coupled with parents trying to
| homeschool their kids (for younger kids, at least, the
| parental attention required for remote school was high enough
| it wasn't too far off from simply home-schooling) while
| "working". Plus the extra stress of, you know, the whole
| being-in-a-pandemic thing. I recall some grumbling in those
| days about remote worker productivity and it's like, yeah, no
| shit, daycares and schools are all closed and households are
| all dual-income because game theory and zero-sum competition
| for housing/schools, so....
|
| Those parts ought to be disregarded for any kind of lessons-
| learned from this, as far as the broader viability of WFH.
| 2020 through early 2021, at the very least, had some strong
| _confounding factors_ going on which, one hopes, will not be
| common in the future.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before
| the pandemic started?
|
| Yes. We built it that way for a specific reason.
| paxys wrote:
| What did we build exactly? The current model of tech open
| offices originated in the early 2000s. Before that we had
| cubicles, starting around the 60s and 70s. And something else
| before that. Office buildings themselves don't go all that
| far back, maybe a couple hundred years.
|
| None of these is the "right" model. We will continue to
| evolve to what suits the present work culture and
| requirements, and WFH is where we have reached for now.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > What did we build exactly?
|
| A shared workspace with centrally located and maintained
| resources. This allows for greater overall efficiency but
| allows the organization as a whole to quickly dedicate
| resources to new and emergent problems. In theory this
| should save money and allow the company to successfully
| capture and serve more business.
|
| > None of these is the "right" model.
|
| There is no "right" model. Everything is a question of
| compromises. Work from home has some employee benefits, but
| has higher direct and abstract costs for the employer.
|
| > And WFH is where we have reached for now.
|
| This is understandable, companies have not been
| particularly cognizant of sharing the rewards of the above
| configuration with their employees. To me, though, this
| seems like an opportunity wasted to correct this.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > Work from home has some employee benefits, but has
| higher direct and abstract costs for the employer.
|
| Ah come on now. Instead of my employer paying for a space
| for me to sit in central London, the electricity and
| internet connection, I pay for those things myself.
| Instead of wasting time on a train I get a bit of work
| done before most people are online.
|
| The only costs are in the crocodile tears of middle
| management who cannot advance themselves simply by
| growing their headcount.
| finneganscat wrote:
| [dead]
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| I'm not certain about that, but I do think companies believe
| this is a simple way to kill two birds with one stone:
|
| 1. Trim headcount.
|
| 2. Keep the most "loyal" employees (or those who need the job
| the most and will say yes to anything, which is a double-sided
| sword).
| hgsgm wrote:
| 3. Separate the wheat from the chaff. The chaff come to the
| office.
| x86x87 wrote:
| haha. Because loyal == high performing. That is how it works.
| There is absolutely no way that high performing employees
| that can get a job by crossing the street will ever think
| about jumping ship because of the shitty manner they are
| treated.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| These companies have no accurate way of measuring
| performance anyway.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I don't know of you are making a judgement there but I
| think it's important to point out that there is
| practically no useful way of measuring performance in our
| industry; it's not a company problem.
|
| Some of the most useful employees I've met probably
| produced less than the most junior developer in tangible
| assets.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| It's not about being mathematically perfect about
| performance. In any given team, area, organization one
| can easily point out who are the good ones.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Problem is loyal != performant. The most valuable engineers
| want it all, so they will probably leave because they can.
| geodel wrote:
| I mean unless proven otherwise most companies do believe that.
| What happened to that _Vote with your feet / vote with your
| wallet_ thing?
| c4nc3ld wrote:
| [dead]
| patrick451 wrote:
| It's sort of ironic for Amazon to push for a returning to pre-
| pandemic norms, given that the pandemic was such a boon to
| their retail business and stock price.
| exhibitapp wrote:
| this was due to low interest rates and savings/stimmies not
| anything about remote work
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| Really, it had nothing to do with people ordering even more
| online for home delivery than prior to the pandemic? You
| don't think that folks might continue ordering more home
| delivery if they aren't out driving every day? References
| for the other reasons for their growth can be found with
| even the slightest effort.
|
| [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=amazon+pandemic+growth+c
| ause&...
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/technology/amazons-
| profit...
|
| [2] https://fortune.com/2021/10/18/amazon-massive-growth-
| covid-p...
|
| [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/how-amazon-managed-the-
| coron... (non-paywall, yay!)
| ghaff wrote:
| For some things like delivered food, delivery is a
| luxury.
|
| However, I fully expect that during the pandemic people
| discovered a lot of things that they _could have_ picked
| up in the next couple of days in "only" 25 minutes or so
| can actually be ordered from Amazon at competitive
| prices. I ordered from Amazon a lot pre-pandemic but
| added various random stuff instead of going to, say, Home
| Depot.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Anecdata: been doing it since 5/15/2020. With best effort
| "social distancing" up until a few months back.
|
| As a layman, in my unprofessional opinion, people in generally
| good health should not perceive the office as a death trap.
| morelinks wrote:
| Yes. The biggest companies, with the most political power,
| believe just that. I pray smaller companies make themselves
| more competitive by offering WFH but that's yet to be seen.
| x86x87 wrote:
| hah. i have some bad news for them. the cat is out of the
| bag. they may be able to force people to do things in the
| short term but long term they are going to become obsolete.
| throwaway345908 wrote:
| >Do people, in general, believe that we can revert to whatever
| we were doing before the pandemic started?
|
| Why not?
| spacemadness wrote:
| Return to the status quo like the last three years didn't
| happen.
| goostavos wrote:
| All you need are enough people to fall in line.
|
| Amazon is filled with workers on visas. At least from the
| subset I've talked to, this isn't the hill they plan to die on.
| "Come in or fuck off back to {home country}" is a pretty strong
| bargaining chip.
|
| For me, getting fired would mean taking a few months off to
| leisurely reset, then slowly getting back on the leetcode
| grind, and then trying to find a new remote job. Drawing lines
| in the sand is much easier when "uproot your entire life" isn't
| on the table.
| x86x87 wrote:
| I agree. This is where the people that can draw lines in the
| sand are even more important.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I will cancel prime and hit them where it hurts. Who will
| join me?
| x86x87 wrote:
| Cancelled prime eons ago. What else?
| eloop wrote:
| It's a great opportunity for employers to pick off Amazon's best
| developers. Start making them offers!
| dhfbshfbu4u3 wrote:
| It's another layoff really. Just less expensive. Some people will
| leave for whatever reason. Then, when the cycle completes Amazon
| will go full RTO. I'm betting it will happen by the start of Q4.
| brandon272 wrote:
| No one knows what the future holds, but as the dust settles on
| WFH, I think that FAANG will double down on in-office and use
| their leverage as desirable large market cap companies with
| lucrative total comp packages to selectively seek out and retain
| those who are willing to agree to an in-office or hybrid work
| environment. They have identified in-person collaboration as a
| key competitive advantage going forward, want people who agree
| with that philosophy and don't see the need to budge despite
| threats from some of their workers that, without WFH, they will
| quit and the company will wither and die without them.
|
| WFH will continue to proliferate among lower tier companies who
| simply don't have the same levers around prestige and
| compensation to recruit and retain good talent and are more
| strongly incentivized to embrace remote work.
| weard_beard wrote:
| Now replace WFH with 401K and see if it makes sense. Its a
| benefit. To be competitive you offer it. If you don't, bye bye
| talent.
| twblalock wrote:
| FAANG total comp is a lot higher than what most other
| companies will pay. I think the parent poster is right -- the
| smaller companies will pay lower salaries and offer remote
| work, and the larger companies will pay higher salaries and
| require at least 3 days per week in the office.
| whateveracct wrote:
| FAANG total comp is higher, but I think I've made way more
| money/hour off working remotely than I ever would have if I
| stayed at FAANG [1]. So while I have less total money, I
| have made the money I made way more efficiently. Which in
| some ways, makes me richer :)
|
| I sometimes have to remind myself that this level of
| leisure is basically what "traditional retirement" looks
| like (but with like a quarter-mil/year income + benefits)
| and that gives me get a sense of perspective when I'm
| feeling stressed.
|
| [1] A key thing that makes this true is that commute +
| forced office time is like 3-4x the active working time I
| average working from home. So it's not hard to beat the
| Amazon 400k total comp quote when weighted against hours -
| I honestly beat that at my first remote gig years ago as a
| relatively junior dev! And I have the same engineering
| output more or less.
| twblalock wrote:
| The commute angle of the remote work argument always
| seemed weird to me. If you work at a FAANG you can afford
| to live anywhere, including in places that would give you
| a short commute to work.
|
| I feel sorry for people in the service industry who have
| hour-long commutes because they can't afford to live
| closer. But that is not the case for tech workers.
| whateveracct wrote:
| To be fair, I had a 15-20 minute walking commute. But
| that adds on 30-40 minutes to an 8+ hour workday.
|
| Also, you can start bean counting and consider the costs
| of housing with a short commute vs the longer commute and
| realize that the market knows what it's doing and it
| becomes a wash comp-wise.
| weard_beard wrote:
| Contractor total comp is a lot higher than salary. I don't
| see anyone talking about the glamour and prestige, just the
| uncertainty and overhead. Companies that don't offer it
| 100% will be seen as "gig" equivalent. Cheap, manipulative,
| gross sweat shops.
| twblalock wrote:
| Being a contractor means less income security than an
| employee, higher and more complicated taxes, and no
| benefits. There is not much "glamour and prestige"
| either.
|
| Frankly most contractors do not make as much as FAANG
| employees, and even if they did, they would end up
| keeping less of it because of the taxes and paying for
| their own health care etc. Even contractors _contracted
| by FAANG companies_ make less money than full-time
| employees at those companies.
| alright_scowl wrote:
| Smaller salary to be able to live in much cheaper cities
| where your general quality of life will also be massively
| improved?
|
| Sounds like a win-win to me. Especially considering that
| the decrease in cost of living probably far surpasses de
| decrease in salary.
| twblalock wrote:
| If you do the math that doesn't always work out.
|
| The main thing that is cheaper in cheaper cities is
| housing. Most of the other stuff people buy costs the
| same everywhere. If you move to a cheaper place and have
| a lower income, your non-housing expenses will become a
| larger portion of your spending.
|
| Once you've worked in tech for several years in the Bay
| Area or Seattle you will generally be well off enough to
| buy a home in a nice area and still be able to save or
| invest a large amount every year. Housing will feel
| expensive but everything else will feel cheap -- even new
| luxury cars will cost a fraction of your income. Early
| retirement will be a definite possibility if you have a
| basic amount of self control over your spending. And if
| you have children, they will have access to all the
| opportunities that some of the country's largest
| metropolitan areas offer.
| alright_scowl wrote:
| > If you do the math that doesn't always work out.
|
| I disagree. But it depends on how less the remote
| companies pay. Are we talking about 80% of the salary of
| a RTO company? 60%? 30%?
|
| The close it gets, the better the math works out for
| remote companies. Moving away from metropolitan areas
| incurs in a huge decrease of expenses, and a huge
| increase in quality of life. But of course, it depends on
| the salary you'd make working remote.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You pay more for many products and services in cities but
| have more choice. You are also taxed at a lower rate,
| qualify for different rebates.
| mjr00 wrote:
| 401K is unambiguously a benefit to every employee. Remote-
| first or remote-only is not unambiguously a benefit; some
| people actually _prefer_ to be in the office and interact
| with people face-to-face. Yes, even some talented ones.
|
| If remote work was all it took, Gitlab (remote only since
| 2014) would have sucked up every talented engineer on the
| planet. Yet somehow they're still a very distant second to
| Github in their space.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Gitlab is somehow in the conversation with github and a
| huge reason for that is talented engineers. There hiring
| process is not the best, the ego level is higher than it
| should be and management isn't the sharpest or most
| creative.
|
| Without wfh you wouldn't be talking about gitlabs.
|
| They have access to a greater pool of talent but they still
| have to have a solid business plan / sales / some luck..
| And they have to pick the right talent from that greater
| pool
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| The problem is that interaction face-to-face takes at least
| two people. You may like it and you would do it any day of
| the week, but the person in front of you may hate it. So,
| obviously the win-win scenario is to be flexible and let
| the people decide where they want to work from. Only then
| you can be sure that the person in front of you really want
| to see your face that close... it was their choice.
| weard_beard wrote:
| I prefer to microwave fish for lunch. Leave your
| preferences that make me ill at home. Where you belong.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| I've always thought about this being the settling point at the
| end of the day.
|
| Putting aside the debate between what people like/is effective.
|
| FAANG companies have a lot of political leverage when they have
| in office employees.
|
| Amazon specifically in Seattle, wouldn't surprise me if some of
| the reason they're doing this is so they can continue to work
| their way into city's politics.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| All it takes is 1 faang to say screw it you can wfh, then they
| have the recruiting advantage over the old dinosaur style
| businesses.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Netflix is remote for everyone, but they already had the
| highest comp. They hire significantly less than other faangs
| though.
| criddell wrote:
| And that ultimately is what WFH is all about.
|
| These companies have generous vacation policies and health
| insurance benefits not for reasons of productivity, but
| because that's part of what it takes to attract talented
| workers. People love to argue about WFH for reasons of
| productivity, but in the end that flexibility is another
| benefit that these companies may start to compete on.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| You don't think it might have something to do with the billion
| dollar campuses FAANG companies had built?
| thwayunion wrote:
| Count the number of management layers and the percent of MBAs
| in roles managing non-analysts. That tells you everything you
| need to know.
|
| You can abstract away from FAANG and generally observe that
| companies with "professional manager culture" have less work
| from home, while companies with "founder culture" or "SME
| culture" have more remote/hybrid work.
|
| You see this even in "never were work from home" fields like
| Medicine -- plenty of MDs I know will be WFH doing zoom apts
| for more days/week than SWEs at Amazon, which is kind of
| hilarious.
| ipaddr wrote:
| FAANG want you to come back for their real estate valuations.
| You get to sit on zoom and pretend you are doing this to
| increase face to face.
| shuckles wrote:
| This is one of the most strange recurring theories. Companies
| are valued based on the recurring cashflows they generate
| from operating activities. A large technology company could
| have a _huge_ one-time write down of their real estate
| assets, and (assuming it does not make the company illiquid)
| not have its valuation materially impacted. Nobody is buying
| these companies because of their skill at investing in real
| estate.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It's many aspects.
|
| More employees in one location, more political power,
| bigger tax breaks can finance billion dollar campuses.
|
| People buy these companies because of hype and asset vs
| profits. Real estate is a part of their assets and it
| increases their balance sheets
|
| Look at Google making 7 billion dollar investment in 2021.
| They need to make that payoff. https://www.google.com/amp/s
| /www.architecturaldigest.com/sto...
| twblalock wrote:
| Nobody is seriously looking at the real estate portfolio
| of a FAANG when they value the stock. They care about
| future earnings projections.
|
| 7 billion dollars for Google is a tiny amount. They make
| almost 300 billion per year. Nobody gives a crap about
| the value of their office buildings.
| caoilte wrote:
| The FAANG key competitive advantage is cartel/monopoly status.
| Getting employees into the office is just middle management ego
| stroking, it won't actually help them.
|
| The degree to which they maintain market dominance over the
| next 5-10 years will depend on how well they time buying out
| startups which threaten their dominance (and which will no
| doubt be built by more productive WFH employees).
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| I think startups that work in-office have an advantage
| because of the potential for early velocity of execution and
| social cohesion -- if they can find and retain local talent
| in this market. But I think the ship sailed for the BigCorps
| a long time ago.
|
| And on top of that the round of layoffs they just did are
| killing morale. And the status that came with their titles is
| sinking or has sunk.
|
| Their only advantage now is compensation rates, and those are
| dropping too, by their own efforts and by the drop in their
| stock values.
|
| Finally, I'd say the problem with startups that are doing in-
| office, is that so many of them continue to insist on the Bay
| Area as their locus, which limits their talent pool and also
| diversity of ideas of their workforce. It can work for some
| companies but not all.
| wwweston wrote:
| > They have identified in-person collaboration as a key
| competitive advantage
|
| That's an interesting statement about the relative value
| proposition of a lot of the technology many in this sector make
| their money selling firsthand or secondhand.
| shmatt wrote:
| The thing is, this becomes theater of working. Imagine commuting
| to the office 60-90 minutes each direction just to sit in a
| stuffy room and zoom
|
| Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if a
| company bans zoom for office days (but none will)
|
| And im not even going to start on the complete waste of time of
| people in an open space talking non stop about their fantasy
| football draft. I haven't heard those words in 3 years, it was
| nice that way
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Amazon is somewhat infamous for their willingness to make
| workers spend unpaid time getting ready to work. They're the
| folks that took "we don't want to pay our employees to stand in
| long security lines to get into or out of our warehouse" to the
| Supreme Court and won. Employees who stayed with Amazon after
| that because it was only being done to lower paid employees
| enjoy little of my sympathy.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if a
| company bans zoom for office days
|
| I like this idea. It supports the ostensible goal and removes a
| real annoyance. If I have to come then I sure has hell
| shouldn't have to be on a call.
| posguy wrote:
| *Amazon Chime, not Zoom :D
| nixass wrote:
| _Press pound key_
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| PS?
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| > Imagine commuting to the office 60-90 minutes each direction
|
| Assuming 240 work days per year. A one-hour roundtrip commute
| means you're spending 10 *WHOLE* days in your commute per year.
| Two-hour roundtrip? That's 20 whole days. Three-hour roundtrip?
| One whole month.
| dahfizz wrote:
| [flagged]
| whynaut wrote:
| Yes, let's trivialize people's very real commutes with your
| made up number, cmon, I'm sure you've got more
| IlliOnato wrote:
| Three-hour roundtrip in congested cities like Boston or Los
| Angeles is not made-up or even rare occurrence.
| [deleted]
| potatolicious wrote:
| > _" Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if
| a company bans zoom for office days (but none will)"_
|
| This wouldn't even be practicable - pretty much every BigTech
| company has offices spread all over the country, if not the
| world, and the odds are you work day-to-day with someone who
| sits nowhere near you.
|
| If you are forced to come in _and_ you weren 't allowed
| teleconferencing, you'd literally get nothing done.
|
| The idea that you can staff whole teams of people (and their
| dependencies!) in a way that they're all guaranteed to sit
| within a short walk of each other is straight-up madness.
| Beyond a certain scale this is quite impossible.
|
| Heck, even in the same _city_ this isn 't practicable. When I
| worked at Google we frequently had teams and their dependencies
| spread across building all over campus. Even if _everyone
| involved_ sat in Mountain View, in an office, you still can 't
| get away from teleconferencing since it takes half an hour for
| someone to commute from their building to yours!
| darth_avocado wrote:
| So you're saying, being remote is okay as long as that remote
| in another office?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| "It's okay as long as you willingly participate in the
| theater and power dynamic."
|
| The problem isn't really remote as much as employers having
| the ability to grossly change working conditions on a whim
| with no worker recourse. C-level doesn't have any proof on
| site is a superior operating model, they _feel_ it is, and
| they believe that 's good enough to call the plebs back.
|
| Who was the last person you knew who gave up substantial
| power willingly?
| potatolicious wrote:
| Hah, that _does_ seem to be what the companies are saying,
| which is entirely silly.
|
| My personal take is that RTO mandates are sorely misguided.
| Let the people who want an office work in them, and let the
| people who want to be remote be remote! The net difference
| is pretty close to nil, especially at large companies where
| meetings are teleconferencing-by-default!
|
| If anything productivity has _increased_ in the remote era.
| You no longer burn the first 5 minutes of every meeting
| kicking the previous person out of the conference room. And
| then another 5 minutes to wait for someone who had to
| sprint from halfway across campus to make it to the meeting
| room from their _previous_ meeting room. Plus the mad dash
| scramble to claim meeting rooms since there obviously aren
| 't enough for everyone.
|
| In the remote-first world I just... click a button to hang
| up. And click another button to join the next call.
| Everyone is on time, meetings start and end on time. People
| are more inclined to take minutes and notes. It just seems
| to... work better.
|
| [edit] Also, again, to be clear: people who like working
| from offices should be allowed to do so! There is nothing
| wrong with making friends with your coworkers, going to
| lunch with them, grabbing beers after work, or anything
| like that.
|
| I just shouldn't be forced to do these things with you! I
| have a family I want to get back to! I resent being forced
| to have parasocial relationships with colleagues so they
| can fulfill their need for social contact! They should find
| other people who want to do that with them, because forcing
| me to be there just so I can fulfill someone else's
| parasocial need is honestly pretty twisted.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| I feel ya!
|
| At this point I just don't see how it's anything other
| than control or sunk cost of office space.
| aerhardt wrote:
| > The idea that you can staff whole teams of people (and
| their dependencies!) in a way that they're all guaranteed to
| sit within a short walk of each other is straight-up madness.
| Beyond a certain scale this is quite impossible.
|
| If the world has been mostly remote well before the pandemic,
| what does this say about the idea that outstanding results
| can only be produced by the serendipity and (alleged)
| increased efficiency of in-person collaboration?
| potatolicious wrote:
| Oh I have _many_ thoughts about that, especially because I
| ran a team that was spread over 4 cities pre-pandemic and
| we made it work!
|
| There is IMO well-justified use cases for in-person
| collaboration. As much as technology has reduced the
| effects of distance, the penalty is non-zero for some
| things. It's unfortunately still a lot easier to do some
| things remotely.
|
| The trick IMO is that there's a big gap between "sometimes
| we feel the need to be in-person" and "we should be in-
| person all the time/most of the time". I think the latter
| statement is incredibly poorly substantiated.
|
| The answer to all of the above is pretty straightforward:
| scheduled, reserved in-person time where the entire team
| meets. You kind of have to do this anyway! If you have
| developers in New York and Chicago and San Francisco and
| Tokyo who are all in-office, you still need to do meetups!
|
| Have a travel budget, set up in-person sprints on a cadence
| that works for your team!
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| In Amazon's case, it might not be theater.
|
| Amazon owns around a dozen skyscrapers in downtown Seattle.
| Amazon has a massive number of employees in downtown Seattle,
| and whether those people are downtown or not makes a
| significant difference to the real estate values in downtown
| Seattle. Making their employees come into the office may in
| fact mean a significant financial reward to Amazon, but not
| because the employees are doing better work.
|
| Also, Andrew Jassy specifically has a number of personal
| financial interests in the Seattle area, including the local
| hockey team and the nearby Key Arena. Keeping downtown
| expensive and full of people is in his personal interests.
| brianjking wrote:
| I don't work for Amazon, but used to live right down the
| street from the Amazon balls and the rest of the crap
| downtown.
|
| I have since moved a bit out of the city and do work in tech.
| However, I can say that I would not care one iota about what
| financial interests Andrew Jassy or any other CEO has about
| their own interests.
|
| They do not care about my mental health, time, cost of
| commuting. Why should I care about theirs?
| atonse wrote:
| I don't think anyone's asking you to care. It's more about
| explaining the real reasons why Jassy and others are
| pushing for it.
| otikik wrote:
| Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go. I owe my
| soul to the company store
| paxys wrote:
| And don't forget that downtown businesses and real estate
| developers are putting pressure on local governments, who in
| turn are putting pressure on big employers to mandate that
| employees commute daily and spend money in the city.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Mayor Adams in NYC is already having to walk it back.
|
| https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-remote-work-
| eric-a...
|
| > He pulled the plug on the idea of remote work for city
| employees in 2022, saying early during his tenure as mayor:
| "One thing that can't happen -- you can't stay home in your
| pajamas all day. That's not who we are as a city." But now
| it seems Adams has evolved on the subject, acknowledging
| this week that "we are saying to our agencies come up with
| creative ways of having flexibility."
|
| > Kathryn Wylde, of the pro-business Partnership for New
| York City, said the numbers tell the story. "Fewer than 10
| percent of office workers are back five days a week," she
| said. "I think the mayor is getting the message the world
| has changed." Wylde added that unless an employer --
| including City Hall -- offers a work from home option, the
| job vacancies may remain unfilled. "We are going to have to
| work with employees, they are driving the bus here," said
| Wylde.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| " _just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom_ " this is exactly it;
| for a few months prior to quitting Google at the end of 2021 I
| made an effort to go into the office because my morale (and
| productivity) at home had sunk to desperate levels. I wanted
| RTO to be the solution for that, but when I got into the office
| it was just... nobody else there, or at least not reliably so,
| and needed to VC with everyone anyways.
|
| And then that got piled in with commute and parking woes, which
| got worse ever year... why even bother? I quit, instead. Have a
| fully remote gig now, and while I miss in-person work - - and
| the Google $$ I was getting -- I don't miss spending 2 hours of
| my life driving.
|
| I'm sure things have improved some with more people returning
| to office, but the dynamic is forever changed as a result of
| COVID. There's a whole generation of hires who started during
| remote work.
|
| I don't like WFH, but I dislike commuting to torture-zone
| deadsville even more.
| jonas21 wrote:
| > just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom
|
| Presumably, that's what the return to office plan is trying to
| fix. Right now, if you go into the office, you're spending a
| lot of time in zoom calls because half the people in every
| meeting aren't there. If everyone's in the office, you can just
| meet in person.
| paxys wrote:
| > If everyone were in the office, you could just meet in
| person.
|
| How many people in tech nowadays do day-to-day work only with
| people in the same city as them? At my company at least that
| number is close to 0. Return to office doesn't mean you can
| stop collaborating with employees in another part of the
| country or the world. It will just be all that much more
| painful to do because now you'll have to hunt for empty
| meeting rooms all day to take calls from.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Basically small early stage startups and not always even
| then.
| Ntrails wrote:
| _really_? There are only multinational corporations and
| early stage startups?
|
| There are multitudes of single office corps and even more
| where the predominant collaboration is with people
| located in the same office.
| ejvincent wrote:
| This is my personal take, given that I work at Amazon. Here's
| the landscape of people I interact with:
|
| * Supply Chain - Bellevue, Vancouver, Austin
|
| * AWS / other businesses - Seattle, occasionally elsewhere
| (NYC, Boston, HQ2)
|
| * Foreign business teams - Luxembourg (EU), occasionally
| elsewhere (India)
|
| * Team members on my team - Bellevue, Seattle, Vancouver, and
| elsewhere
|
| Tell me how we're going to get all of these groups together
| for "hallway talk". At best, you can get a team in one
| locality, but even that is difficult with immigration
| challenges.
| gambiting wrote:
| Yeah except half of my team is in an office in a different
| part of the country. How are they meant to participate, if
| not by calling in? Even if literally everyone across the
| entire company came back to their offices tomorrow majority
| of my meetings would still be online and in conference rooms.
| shadowfox wrote:
| This assumes that everyone you are working with is in the
| same office and conveniently clustered together.
|
| This is highly unlikely to be the case with a massive company
| like Amazon. Teams have been pretty distributed across
| buildings/offices/location even prior to the pandemic in many
| many companies.
|
| So I am not sure it will be as simple as you make it.
| utexaspunk wrote:
| My company mandated everyone back in the office but everyone
| still meets via Teams, even when we have offices next door to
| each other. Making people come is just dumb. Imagine the
| environmental benefits, traffic reduction and inflation hedge
| that would result from outlawing return-to-office mandates
| for jobs that can be performed remotely. Of course, that will
| never happen because commercial real estate would tank.
| thfuran wrote:
| But that makes the room twice as stuffy.
| modoc wrote:
| None of my team is in the same state as me. In fact I haven't
| interacted with anyone based in my state so far.
| microtherion wrote:
| Yes, but at FAANG scale, it's near impossible to have all the
| people in a meeting located in the same place. Apple might
| have been the company that held out the longest, but even
| they have now officially gone multi-site for their
| engineering (And de facto, even when most people were in
| Cupertino, meetings could still sometimes involve
| impracticable amounts of travel to be held physically).
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Hard to believe that 100% of the teams have members that live
| all in the same city. In all the companies I've worked for
| that wasn't the case (and I have worked for small and medium
| size ones )
| rwmj wrote:
| Everyone I work with barr one person lives in a different
| country, and it would be impossible (for visa reasons,
| mainly) for us to move to one place. So if I was in an
| office, I'd still be videoconferencing as much as ever.
| makoz wrote:
| Disclaimer work in Amazon.
|
| That at least doesn't work at all in my situation. I'm based
| in Seattle and I collaborate regularly with folks in probably
| 3-4 other geographic locations, ironically no one actually in
| Seattle.
|
| If anything getting the video conferencing to work in a
| meeting room is more of a hassle/friction and a poorer
| experience when you still have to accommodate someone remote.
| filoleg wrote:
| I am not at Amazon, but at another FAANG, also am in
| Seattle, and it is the same thing for us. If we were hit
| with RTO, it would make exactly zero sense for my team/org.
|
| Out of people I work with, one of them is also in Seattle,
| another one is in Toronto area, the team lead is in SF, the
| manager is in SD, and the skip level manager is in MTV. I
| am not even gonna talk about people on the partner teams
| that we gotta work with, as they are all spread out all
| over the place. RTO would be an absolute net negative for
| every single person on my team, as we aren't going to see
| the people we work with in our local offices regardless.
|
| And don't even get me started on trying to find available
| meeting rooms in the office for meetings that were not
| scheduled way ahead of time. If someone wants to hop on a
| call with me for a debugging session or has anything to
| discuss impromptu, being available for that in the office
| is rather difficult. All while I can hop on a meeting call
| on a minute's notice when WFH.
| taf2 wrote:
| We ended this long time ago our 70 ~ folks come into the
| office Tuesday- Thursday and work remote Monday and Friday.
| Specifically because early on we noticed when we let people
| choose their days we ended up in shitty half zoom half not .
| My feeling is the time in the office is to bond with co
| workers and collaboration on new ideas. It's worked really
| well for our team as even just by chance bumping into someone
| on another team and talking shop has fixed dozens of bugs and
| resulted in at least one or two great features
| Quikinterp wrote:
| Does amazon ensure that team members are all based on a
| physical office location? At my work for instance we have a
| few members on my team from a different country, so forcing
| us to go in office wouldn't end zoom calls.
| quest88 wrote:
| Yes in theory you could. I've found it different in practice.
| Not everyone sits in the same building or on the same floor,
| and meeting rooms are limited. So you still end up on zoom
| calls, but now you've commuted.
|
| I sometimes wonder if execs forget what it's like not to have
| an assistant, or if they've forgotten the power they have so
| that people _want_ to be in the same room as them. Or maybe
| they simply like seeing on the peons that work for them.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Except that now teams are divided across sites, so not even
| sure you can make the statement that if everyone showed up in
| person that it wouldn't still be a Teams call.
| bradgessler wrote:
| This is what I don't understand about return-to-office mandates
| for global software/services companies. Even 10 years ago when
| I'd visit Google HQ, I'd always end up on a conference room on
| a Google Meet with other Googler's from around the world. What
| is the point of going to an office to be on video calls all
| day?
| utexaspunk wrote:
| Maintaining the value of commercial real estate?
| elAhmo wrote:
| > Let's see if a company bans zoom for office days (but none
| will)
|
| This is such a good angle and comment!
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Kind of think people not being able to return to the office is
| the goal. It lets them reduce head count without the need for
| severance. Kind of like in office space when they just stopped
| paying the guy.
|
| I did laugh at the part about being the world's best employer.
| Pretty hard to do with mandatory pips and firing warehouse
| employees via algorithms.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Constructive dismissal is still a layoff.
| User23 wrote:
| I'm all for remote work in tech, but I also think it might be
| difficult to convince a court that "please come to work" is
| creating a hostile work environment.
| uberduper wrote:
| I have numerous emails and messages from agents
| (recruiters) of the company assuring me that positions were
| fully remote. I was sent plenty of job descriptions that
| specifically stated they were fully remote positions.
|
| Maybe that means I would have been rif'd in one of the
| "okay we have to call it a layoff" layoffs before this
| policy tho.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| adoxyz wrote:
| I guess it depends on the circumstances. Like if they were
| told they could go full remote, and the employee moved out
| of state and settled down somewhere where there is no
| office, now to be told j/k get back in here, seems like a
| case could be made.
| elil17 wrote:
| There is no case to be made in the US unless the
| constructive dismissal was discriminatory in nature. It
| is legal to get people to quit by making working
| conditions worse, as long as you don't break any
| employment laws by doing so.
|
| Say that I want you some of my employees to quit. I say
| you are only allowed to have meetings while doing
| handstands, but I provide reasonable accommodation for
| disabled people who can't do handstands. If I fire you
| for not doing a handstand or if you quit because you
| don't want to do handstands, I have done nothing illegal
| under US law.
|
| Doesn't mean it's a good system. But that is the system
| we have.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Constructive dismissal is legal. The point is that if an
| employee can show that you changed the rules to make them
| quit, they get unemployment benefits.
| chartpath wrote:
| Especially if they were hired with remote in their
| original agreement. Changing the location of work would
| necessitate some additional consideration and a new
| agreement.
| [deleted]
| sam0x17 wrote:
| "Please come to work where we can better surveil you for
| 100% of the day, penalize you based on sensitive activity
| signals and metrics, and better take away your privacy
| (spyware) and civil (going to the bathroom) rights."
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Significant changes in job location absolutely do count.
| Forcing people to work from home would probably be enough
| to count, actually - If the employee objected. Forcing an
| employee who had promises about WFH availability to come
| into an office is going to be a slam dunk, for essentially
| zero gain - The damages will generally be too small to be
| worth it, at least in the US with at-will employment. But
| as a matter of labor law, it should be classified as a
| layoff.
| [deleted]
| photon12 wrote:
| Welllll, when you are a cloud for the world's governments and
| systemically important financial institutions, you have
| operating functions that keep you being able to retain those
| customers. AWS has had issues in the past with employee
| retention in those types of departments.
|
| If there is a theory of RTTO as a form of soft layoffs, it
| still seems like we have a lot to learn about how that impacts
| the compliance and security capabilities of companies using
| such tactics.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Re _" AWS has had issues in the past with employee retention
| in those types of departments."_ Amazon as a whole is the
| only first tier tech company where people I know wanted to
| get jobs, and later decided to leave because the work
| environment was bad.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I've always thought of Amazon as a step into Faang. You get
| a job there, it pays really well. It sucks. You maybe
| survive 2 years and leave or don't and get a nice
| severance. Now you have faang on your resume and can go
| somewhere else. Never thought of it as a long term type
| place as you are very much not a person but a line item or
| even worse a hire to fire.
| l33t233372 wrote:
| Isn't most of FANG/MAMMAA like like that?
| sam0x17 wrote:
| > when you are a cloud for the world's governments and
| systemically important financial institutions, you have
| operating functions
|
| You can do all of that and still have plenty of money left
| over. Don't forget all the wasted money amazon has sunk into
| Alexa (recent news is the whole division is failing to turn a
| profit) and their attempts to dip their toes in video games
| (New World) which failed spectacularly. Yeah they can afford
| to do a lot of things better, and it's all a write-off for
| them either way.
| photon12 wrote:
| Money doesn't matter if you can't attract and retain
| talent, which is my main point. IDK exactly what you are
| getting at.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I remember am article a while ago where Amazon execs were
| expressing concern about blowing through all of the
| available warehouse talent around their large warehouses
| because they hired and fired so quickly.
| gavin_gee wrote:
| Andy likes people in the office. For team based creation its
| critical for productivity - sorry but its true. But Alas I fear
| that this is also an HR tactic to lay off people without paying
| severance.
|
| Whats missing from the current media narrative is the deals done
| per manager. Nothing is really ever "company wide". people worked
| from home before covid. based on manager discretion
| betaby wrote:
| I mean, according levels.fyi AMZ pays 400K+ total compensation. I
| don't think that would be too hard to fill up the office with the
| willing office.
| ptkanchi wrote:
| Let me preface this by saying I don't have much of an opinion for
| or against RTO, but I feel like there's too much emotion attached
| to companies mandating RTO by tech employees. I'm at a company
| that is mandating RTO and for the past couple months there has
| been tons of whining and moaning in public slack channels, team
| Q&As, company wide Q&As, HR Q&As, being passive aggressive etc.
| All this behavior has reeked of immense entitlement, leaving a
| bad taste in my mouth.
|
| The fact remains that a company exists to make money. When a
| company mandates RTO, generally it's doing so because it believes
| that's the best way to get the maximum output of it's resources
| against whatever metrics they are measuring against.
|
| Employees should feel like the relationship between them and
| their employer is mutually beneficial, if that's no longer the
| case, pursue external opportunities.
|
| We are incredibly lucky we are in a field that has a high demand
| for strong engineers, so you should be able to find what you are
| looking for.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| The opposite is true. Employees are the ones ultimately doing
| the work and know what value they add. As they see it, they'd
| have to make outsized sacrifices to return to the office.
| Businesses have not provided any compelling reason to come back
| to the office, the actual workers doing the work know how
| little value it adds to their own stand-alone job. Raising the
| subject of maintaining remote work rather than pursuing
| opportunities elsewhere is collaboration, ironically the
| argument they put forward for RTO. It's a small concession from
| the company for the benefit of increased productivity, if
| that's not the reason then the company should explain it and
| sure as hell, it will need to be a compelling one.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| [dead]
| Brystephor wrote:
| I understand what you're saying about entitlement. It can be
| tiresome to hear the same topics brought up repeatedly. With
| the constant negativity that surrounds it, it gets exhausting
| to listen to.
|
| At the same time, most of those complaints are coming from
| generally reasonable people. If a company promised no RTO and
| then went back on it, that'd be frustrating for them. If a
| company can't state why they want to go RTO, then I'd be
| frustrated with needing to change my life for the reason of
| "because I said so". If the company has grown a significant
| amount and been able to manage the growth and whatnot while
| working remotely, then it also brings up the question of "why
| is there a RTO mandate?" I think more people are frustrated
| with the lack of reasoning and justification beyond some hand-
| wavey "collaboration" answer that companies are giving.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| > beyond some hand-wavey "collaboration" answer that
| companies are giving
|
| I'm confused what the alternative is that you would like. I'm
| sure they can link a bunch of studies that show its more
| productive to work in office, and I'm guessing those that
| want to stay remote will show a bunch of other studies that
| say its not; which continues ad nauseam.
| tomdell wrote:
| I strongly disagree that companies mandating RTO are doing so
| to improve their bottom line - it seems like it's largely done
| out of a sense of tradition, to placate management's anxieties,
| or to justify sunk costs in office real estate. Remote work has
| worked fantastically for my company, and my observation in
| working as both a manager and an IC since moving to remote is
| that both I and other employees are in general both more
| productive and happier. My company has set the remote vs.
| hybrid vs. in-person decision to be on the department level,
| and in general it seems like the departments mandating fully
| in-person have elderly, out-of-touch management who rarely come
| into the office themselves.
|
| Employees are justified in complaining about mandatory RTO - it
| presents a significant impediment to work-life balance and
| demands extra time, money, and energy from employees while
| giving almost nothing of value in return and providing
| questionable value to the company.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > All this behavior has reeked of immense entitlement
|
| > Employees should feel like the relationship between them and
| their employer is mutually beneficial, if that's no longer the
| case, pursue external opportunities.
|
| I'm not following between the two. If the relation is supposed
| to be mutually beneficial, shouldn't the employee feel entitled
| to complain and express their grievances?
|
| If your point is they should leave instead of complaining, look
| at it from the other side: should companies just fire with
| severance employee that don't feel happy returning to office ?
|
| If that whining and moaning doesn't represent enough of an
| issue for the companies to act on it, why would you push
| individual employees you take radical action instead ?
| onemoresoop wrote:
| > We are incredibly lucky we are in a field that has a high
| demand for strong engineers, so you should be able to find what
| you are looking for.
|
| And we should play our cards well while we have some leverage.
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