[HN Gopher] Amazon doubling down on return to office
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon doubling down on return to office
Author : ecliptik
Score : 103 points
Date : 2023-03-16 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
| mabbo wrote:
| Every day at 5pm, I do three things:
|
| 1. I turn off my work computer and exit my home office.
|
| 2. I get a big hug from my 1 year old daughter.
|
| 3. I remind myself how glad I am that I left Amazon, because it
| was obvious in 2021 that they'd do this eventually.
|
| Tech survey 2021 showed that most devs preferred remote at least
| half of the time or more. The S-team had those numbers. Then they
| sent out an email saying "we know you all can't wait to be back
| in the office!". They simply don't care what you think or want.
| elforce002 wrote:
| Congrats man. Enjoy your time with your daughter. Time is the
| only currency that matters.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| My guess is that the fairly soon, the tech companies will be in
| a hiring phase again. Amazon has further damaged their
| reputation and will have to pay higher to attract talent.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| All employee surveys are corporate theater. They create the
| illusion that employees and owners/management are equal parties
| in a discussion. They aren't. Corporations are oligarchical in
| nature. The philosopher Elizabeth Anderson calls them "private
| governments" with powers over our lives that would make most
| political theorists squeal.
| raspberry1337 wrote:
| Politics theorists are mostly marxists. Squealing is their
| normal
| cjrp wrote:
| I think the surveys play a role. They help the employer see
| whether the new policy will be easy or slightly tricky to
| implement. Either way it's happening.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| People in tech are among the most advantaged when it comes to
| salary/job conditions negotiation, and the possibility of
| saving up a reasonable reserve cash fund "just in case".
|
| For the opposite, see shop clerks, phone marketers etc. Few
| people want to do such jobs unless in dire straits; there was
| a famous article from the Resident Contrarian about it.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > All employee surveys are corporate theater.
|
| There's a theatrical aspect, but I assure you many companies
| take the surveys seriously; they just don't treat them like a
| "vote" in the way many people seem to expect.
|
| From management's perspective the surveys are trying to read
| the temperature of company and figure out:
|
| 1. Are there unexpected sources of pain?
|
| 2. Approximately how bad will the pain be for new policies?
|
| If some process intended (and thought) to be lightweight and
| cheap is called out as expensive and a major source of pain,
| management will probably take action.
|
| For something like ending remote work, the question is
| "Exactly how badly will enforcing this policy hurt us? Do we
| want to make that tradeoff" my guess is that if 99.9% of the
| company had sad Remote work was non-negotiable to them we
| wouldn't be reading this headline.
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| Good call out. A thing I've noticed is that sometimes the
| surveys are a response to conditions being super toxic and
| terrible. Even when they're undertaken for good reasons
| (e.g., to learn how to fix it) by then so much trust has
| been lost that the responses are worthless.
|
| The best time to plant a "tree" is when things aren't
| fucked. Maybe the second best time isn't now.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| "Tech survey 2021 showed that most devs preferred remote at
| least half of the time or more"
|
| I'm sure the devs would also prefer a salary of a clean million
| a year. What the devs prefer doesn't equate to what a business
| should do.
| mabbo wrote:
| That's fine, but don't turn around and tell me that I want
| something that you know I don't want. Don't pretend I said
| this would make me happy.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Quite the straw man example there considering many Orgs
| didn't have much of a choice in going remote during the worst
| of the pandemic
| simplotek wrote:
| > The S-team had those numbers. Then they sent out an email
| saying "we know you all can't wait to be back in the office!".
| They simply don't care what you think or want.
|
| What baffles me is that forcing all full remote workers to
| return to the office with such short notice and in this time of
| the year is something that's impossible to do without huge
| monetary and human costs for the worker. After all, does Amazon
| expect their workers who have spouses and children to force
| them to abandon their job/school and move back to comutting
| distance to the office without any support?
| WJW wrote:
| Yes, or rather it doesn't really care. If you move together
| with your spouse and children with you or if you move to a
| new place on your own while seeing them only on weekends, it
| doesn't really matter to them as long as you are in the
| office during weekdays.
| spandrew wrote:
| This is how it was before you WFH, so the argument was that
| cost is assumed anyway. This little WFH break was just some
| bonus money you free'd up. I don't agree with WFO mandates --
| they're dumb. WFH or bust.
| simplotek wrote:
| Monetary cost is one thing, but no parent can simply pull
| their kids out of school right now and expect them to have
| a decent transition to another school.
|
| Rental contracts aren't typically reviewed each month, and
| in some places with high demand it's not possible to just
| find an apartment in a couple of weeks.
|
| As Amazon frames their return to office, it's impossible to
| be met by some people.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I suspect that's by design. My gut tells me that Amazon
| wants a bunch of people to quit, to try to avoid another
| embarrassing round of layoffs and so that they don't have
| to pay severance.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| This is just a disguised ad for some paid Medium blog, FYI.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Feels relevant.
|
| Amazon just doesn't want their real estate values to decline even
| more due to everyone working remote now.
|
| https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2022/02/04/amazon-doubled-i...
| thwayunion wrote:
| Not an apologist, but warehouse and data center real estate
| seems inversely correlated with RTO? The article isn't about
| their office space...
| jdlyga wrote:
| Here are some badly thought out reasons to return to the office:
|
| 1). Collaboration: Most of the time this makes no sense since
| teams are much more geographically distributed nowadays since
| Covid. Are you actually talking to people in person, or are you
| on the same zoom meetings all day?
|
| 2). Team Management: There are better ways to monitor if work is
| getting done than by checking if butts are in seats, and that
| doesn't include checking if your Teams bubble is green either.
|
| 3). Productivity: Some people are more focused and productive at
| work, and some people are more focused and productive at home. It
| depends on the way your brain works and what your office is like.
|
| This is not to say returning to the office is a bad idea, but we
| need to be honest and realistic. There are actually good reasons
| for being in the office.
|
| 1). To have lunch with people in your building, or meet up with
| coworkers for happy hour after work.
|
| 2). If your office building is a nice place to work, has perks,
| and you enjoy being there. Are you able to focus and get work
| done, or is it busy and stressful? Does your office have events
| that are _actually_ fun, not just pretend work fun?
|
| 3). To have a separate place to compartmentalize work stress so
| you don't take it home with you. It's much easier to not think
| about work when you're working in a different place than you're
| sleeping.
|
| Bonus: An internet connection with better upload speeds. This
| depends on your ISP, but typically in the U.S. unless you have
| FiOS it's very slow.
| vuln wrote:
| Frick, I hate to see what happens in a few months when Amazon
| _Triple downs_ on RTO.
|
| I really wish journalist would understand that we don't give a
| fuck what Amazon is doing. The only reason this is an "article"
| is because it's Amazon.
|
| Cool, no one gives a shit except maybe Amazon employees and if
| they haven't seen the writing on the wall I doubt this article
| will shine light on what they're missing.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I certainly hope those 30k Amazon workers maybe consider
| unionizing now, after realizing that executive leadership doesn't
| give one single care what they think. Organizing efforts are
| federally protected, and if they're going to get drummed out
| anyway, not much to lose. You won't have a seat at the table
| until you drag it there yourself and bolt it to the ground. Don't
| want to be treated like a disposable cog who can have their work
| arrangement changed at any time? Organize. If people tell you
| "just go get another job", ignore them. You don't want another
| job, you want agency and protections at your job.
|
| I imagine the current administration would be friendly to
| backstopping those efforts via the NLRB [1].
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=nlrb+amazon
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| This feels like a way to layoff people without any of the
| headaches of organizing a layoff. Employees will quit voluntarily
| and your workforce may shrink by 5-10%.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes, it is a great strategy for sociopathic managers
|
| What they don't consider, or don't care about, is that this
| will select-out the best people, the ones who have the most
| readily available options, and it will select-in those who are
| least capable.
|
| This means that the managers really don't GAF about any kind of
| quality, or their real strategy is merely to throw warm bodies
| at their problems and hope they can wrangle some kind of
| productivity from them, evidently while soothing their own egos
| while "managing by walking around" and hovering over everyone's
| cubicles trying to enforce butts-in-seats indicia of work that
| actually have near-zero correlation with actual productivity.
| larrymyers wrote:
| Employees who were hired remote and have no office within a
| reasonable distance should absolutely force Amazon to terminate
| their employment so they can collect unemployment. Amazon is
| the one forcing the significant change in employment terms, so
| employees shouldn't do them a favor and resign if they don't
| have another job lined up yet.
| swader999 wrote:
| Yes! It's called constructive dismissal in Canada, not sure
| about other jurisdictions.
| ghaff wrote:
| But probably requires paying lawyers etc. which may or may
| not be worth it.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| If you have a job lined up no. If you're going to be job
| hunting wouldn't you get backdated unemployment even if
| you had the savings to live without it?
| ghaff wrote:
| For context, depending on the state, unemployment can be
| a few hundred dollars per week. So you might cover the
| costs of your lawyer. No idea of the answer to your
| question as there's also an assumption you're looking for
| employment while unemployed and may be ongoing
| documentation requirements.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Depending on your state, hiring a lawyer might not be
| necessary. In at least one state, the employment division
| takes violations of employment contracts very seriously
| and will go to court on your behalf if the violation is
| egregious enough.
|
| And in all states, you don't have to have a lawyer to
| bring a case. These are civil cases, and you can
| represent yourself. You're trading time for money in that
| situation, of course, and there's a learning curve you
| need to mount.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Employees who were hired remote can remain remote. Not all
| employees hired during covid were classified as such.
| Employees were also able to request exemption from the return
| to office policy.
| dangwhy wrote:
| > Employees who were hired remote can remain remote.
|
| Where did you get this from though?
| notyourwork wrote:
| I work at Amazon.
| throwawayamzbto wrote:
| I work at Amazon. I have a full remote contract. My SDM
| askordered me to go to the office. He said he can't force
| me to go to the office, but I have to go to the office.
| He is fully aware I have a full remote contract.
| alistairSH wrote:
| So glad I bailed on Amazon. I interviewed during COVID and
| got weird vibes about BTO plans. I live near some existing
| AWS offices, but nobody would/could give me any assurance
| that I could remain remote, or work from those offices (vs
| those offices being colidated into the HQ2 in Arlington
| VA). It was all pretty silly as the VP was in Seattle and
| the rest of my peers would have been scattered (though I
| would have hired a "local" team, maybe).
| macinjosh wrote:
| I am curious where this is coming from because TFA implies
| that this policy applies to people who were hired remote.
| What is the actual distinction between those who have to
| RTO and those that do not?
|
| > Many employees accepted offers from Amazon with the
| understanding that their position will be full remote.
| shmatt wrote:
| Gergely Orosz is a hack. He can show a scan of a contract
| with personal information redacted if he'd like to. He
| creates "facts" by using vague words like that
|
| Employees either had a remote contract or they didn't.
| Their income taxes were paid accordingly. This really
| isn't or shouldn't be a surprise to anyone
| notyourwork wrote:
| Some employees hired during covid were explicitly
| classified as virtual. Some were given a location and
| said you don't have to come to office but if you did have
| an office it would be in <city>.
|
| It's made very clear when hired so anyone saying
| otherwise missed a subtle detail.
| [deleted]
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > It's made very clear when hired so anyone saying
| otherwise missed a subtle detail.
|
| That's an oxymoron, either it was made very clear or it
| was subtle and therefore not very clear at all.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Employees were hired with a specific location or they
| weren't. There isn't an in-between. However, employees
| during covid were also hired and told to remain out of
| office until guidance changes.
|
| Some chose to interpret that as WFH forever, some chose
| to buy homes hours away from their assigned office
| location. Now some are acting confused and feel slighted
| when in reality, they ignored or conflated the hiring and
| the WFH-covid guidance into a single thing.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Thank you for this much needed clarification.
| dcow wrote:
| Not really. People also willingly overlook things hoping
| for a different reality. It's a pretty human thing to do.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Yes, but that's not the point I was arguing with. Either
| it was made very clear (and people choose to overlook it
| despite it being hard to miss) or it was a subtle detail
| (that people easily missed, quite possibly
| unintentionally). Both can't be true at the same time.
| Shish2k wrote:
| > Yes, but that's not the point I was arguing with
|
| I believe the commenter you're replying to is willingly
| overlooking things hoping for a different reality. It's a
| pretty human thing to do ;)
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >with the understanding
|
| If you want something to be true, get it in writing.
|
| 'Yeah, we're technically based in Seattle, but everyone
| is working from home anyway' is _not_ a legal contract.
|
| Sucks and the employees aren't to blame, just warning
| anyone else out there.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Ah ok, so I have an extended family member who was hired
| by AWS during the pandemic. This person was explicitly
| hired as remote so I assume that they do not have to RTO
| since it is in writing. I can't really ask them for
| complicated family reasons also seems kinda rude to just
| ask haha. But I have been curious. I am glad to know they
| won't have to move across the country again.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This can't be overstated.
|
| If it's not in writing, it doesn't exist. What you were
| told verbally means nothing. (Yes, technically a verbal
| contract is a binding contract, but if you can't prove in
| court that something was said, it doesn't matter.)
|
| I assume that remote workers had an employment contract,
| though, and surely where and when they are expected to
| work was included in that.
| patmcc wrote:
| If this happens to anyone - look up the laws of your
| jurisdiction in regards to "constructive dismissal". Being
| required to go back into an office after being fully remote for
| 3 years may well qualify, and then (as far as employment law is
| concerned) you were fired, you didn't quit.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Doesn't this effectively target all the best employees? Those
| that can walk away like that.
|
| This would reinforce my suspicion that big tech companies don't
| really believe in the concept of engineer quality. They just
| hire quantity and convince them all that they're exceptional.
| thwayunion wrote:
| _> Doesn't this effectively target all the best employees?_
|
| No, because a huge percentage of the best employees are on
| H1Bs and have no choice but to stay.
|
| Big tech might have some issues when the carpet gets pulled
| on H1B rules XOR H1B allocations during the next
| administration. I'm like 99.9% sure that the status quo will
| end one way or the other (I'm hoping it'll be rules but
| scared that it'll be allocations).
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Oh right. Good point about the H1B capture.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Amazon does not, as I understand it, worry all that much
| about high employee attrition. It's also probably not a
| coincidence that they're doing this when a lot of other big
| tech employers are having layoffs, since it probably makes
| this factor, if not zero, at least less than it otherwise
| would be.
| bastard_op wrote:
| Exactly what I was thinking, it's a win/win for Amazon.
| Attrition through policy the half-steppers, with automatic
| self-culling enabled.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| An awful person on a contract I'm on was ordered back into the
| office. She quit. I'm confident that was the goal.
| GoToRO wrote:
| And no severance.
| buildbot wrote:
| How is this not constructive dismissal? If you signed a contract
| stating that you work remotely, does Amazon have the power to
| unilaterally change that?
| ralph84 wrote:
| In at-will employment the terms of employment can be changed at
| any time. As long as the terms weren't changed because of
| membership in a protected class it's completely legal in the
| US.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Unless you have a contract. Contracts cannot be unilaterally
| changed.
| eftychis wrote:
| Employers unfortunately think otherwise. From experience
| when the time comes, most people cower and accept the new
| status quo.
|
| Again from unfortunate experience. Feel free to take it as
| an anecdotal point.
|
| Employers do it because it works and employees don't have
| the knowledge or means to protect their rights.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Well, it doesn't matter what the employers think. It
| matters what the court thinks.
|
| Of course, it takes time and effort to sue and I imagine
| a lot of people would just let it go.
| zamalek wrote:
| Not all states are at-will for what it's worth.
| jedberg wrote:
| While you are technically correct, it's not really
| relevant. There is _one_ state that isn 't at-will
| (Montana) and as far as I know there aren't a lot of people
| that work there in tech.
| jldugger wrote:
| I suspect it is, but done in such a way as to avoid some of the
| larger lawsuits from layoffs. Sure you can enjoy the peanuts
| unemployment gives you by claiming it, but I imagine its
| somewhat harder to file a discrimination claim?
|
| edit: and i doubt amazon made any promises about remote work
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >How is this not constructive dismissal
|
| Companies move offices all the time and require you to go to
| that new office (even if it's inconvenient for your commute/you
| have to move cities).
| WJW wrote:
| That is literally grounds for constructive dismissal though.
| See Reynolds v. Innopac Inc., 1998 for example, a change in
| location of work that required a substantially greater travel
| time would change the way the employee carried out job
| duties. You have the right to refuse that as an employee.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Oh, sorry, classic HN US-centrism (though TBF, Amazon is
| primarily a US company).
|
| Sure, in Canada it maybe different.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Even if it is constructive dismissal, so what? Amazon won't owe
| you severance or anything like that. So you'd get some money
| from your state's unemployment office and that's about it.
| patmcc wrote:
| This will depend a lot on your contract (if you have one) and
| your local employment laws. If Amazon tries this with.
| workers in Vancouver (Canada), for example, severance would
| likely be required.
| brailsafe wrote:
| If for whatever reason you'd like to backup a slack conversation
| and you don't have export privileges, check out SlackDump. Used
| it yesterday to back up a private conversation. Though it
| probably wouldn't be useful in a vast majority of cases, your
| employer would probably prefer you didn't have an external record
| of any messages exchanged. Also imap-backup for when you get an
| alert in the middle of the night that you're suddenly having
| email syncing issues.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Is that why the Twitch CEO is leaving
| angarg12 wrote:
| > I consistently pay attention to what Amazon does, as the
| company has read the market well for the past decades: both from
| a business perspective, and also from how to attract and retain
| software engineers - doing this in a frugal way.
|
| I've been in Amazon for several years, and I couldn't disagree
| more.
|
| Amazon has always been terrible at attracting, and particularly
| retaining talent. It's compensation philosophy is bad at
| rewarding tenured employees and high performers. The saving grace
| was that stock grew insanely during the bull market of the 2010s.
| Many people made lots of money and it acted as very effective
| golden handcuffs.
|
| However the situation is very different now. Stock has been flat
| for over 2 years, so the singular most important reason to stay
| is gone. It's going to be interesting to see how the market
| evolves during the next 1-1.5 years.
|
| I definitely agree it's interesting to pay attention to what
| Amazon does. Whether it's to copy or avoid it, remains to be
| seen.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Would love to see an engineering union form from this
| dopylitty wrote:
| Here's a good recent podcast episode on countering some of the
| common anti union rhetoric that you might get in response[0].
|
| It would be great to unionize tech workers to fight for an end
| to abusive practices like on-call, uncompensated overtime,
| abuse of foreign workers, unhealthy work environments, and poor
| wages (remember the vast majority of tech workers aren't at
| FAANGS on the coasts).
|
| 0: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-177-popular-
| anti-...
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| Heck no, as long as human minds are corruptible, unions will
| decimate the group they are designed to protect.
| dtjb wrote:
| My understanding of US history is that almost all meaningful
| worker protections were fought for and seized by labor
| unions. Things like the 40 hour work week, paid leave,
| overtime pay, etc.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| What have they produced since 1940?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| [flagged]
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Human minds being corruptible, applied to management and
| shareholders, does a good job of explaining why unions are
| necessary in the first place.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| People are so anti-union but don't realize how much they could
| help with other problems:
|
| 1. Companies rampantly abusing the H1B system 2. Wild
| discrepancy in the skills and quality of software engineers 3.
| "top tier" companies acting as a cabal to reduce comp +
| benefits of employees. 4. Companies abusing the use of
| "contractors" to get around full time hiring.
|
| I see so many people including on HN decrying the pay engineers
| get. Wait till you see how much money companies make off your
| labor.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| If I was a sadistic type and in a position of authority at
| Amazon, I'd just say that WFH is entirely optional, but may be a
| factor in employee evaluations. Perhaps I'd set up some board
| that displays how many days each person is in the office vs home.
| vuln wrote:
| What do you think they do with _unlimited_ Paid Time Off usage
| numbers?
|
| Boss at review time "well Bob only took 5 days off last year,
| you're at 15... Do you think maybe you could be a better team
| player? It's not fair that you're taking triple of what your
| team members are. Think of them and the stress they have when
| you're on PTO."
|
| Excerpt from one of my actual reviews. I quit a week later.
|
| Edit: I joined the second week of January 2 weeks after
| unlimited PTO went into affect. Before unlimited <5 years got
| 15 days PTO.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Was Bob 22 years old, single, and addicted to Adderall?
| robryan wrote:
| Such a silly policy, if they have a number in mind for
| acceptable annual leave just make that the policy.
| vuln wrote:
| Well how are you going to attract new young talent you must
| ply them with free stuff and gimmicks like unlimited PTO.
|
| Hell, mobile network providers have been using the word
| _unlimited_ with a cap without any reprocussions for what
| decades?
|
| I think companies that offer _unlimited_ PTO should set a
| minimal baseline of 10-15 days per year.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| You know, some of the other staff are wearing 20 pieces of
| flair...
| shmatt wrote:
| I don't understand G.O's obsession with Amazon RTO and not the
| rest of the industry. No, it's not "unprecedented pushback",
| Apple employees fought much harder, executives publicly quit, and
| employees went to the media with names publicly exposed. And yet
| they went back to the office (those who didn't quit, which might
| of been intentional on Apples part)
|
| Now back to G.O, I really really don't understand the hype
| surrounding him in the industry as if his words mean anything.
|
| He was a line manager at Uber 2017-2020. And left the industry.
| He writes as if he had held multiple SVP positions analyzing how
| and why engineering orgs do things. He writes about Uber once in
| a while, in such a generic way, as if in a 30,000 person org all
| teams have the same ways of working
|
| His writing in clueless, its 90% "I have been told", "people in
| the company are telling me", its basically a mix of DJT's ex-
| twitter feed and Blind.
|
| His latest "trick" was scanning LinkedIn to show that in the past
| 45 days Google's engineering org grew by 6%. I really doubt that
| happened, Googlers I know really doubt that happened, and using
| LinkedIn which doesn't verify employment is a very poor way of
| analyzing data
| lisasays wrote:
| Yeah, it's very strange when people think of LinkedIn "data" as
| some finely calibrate scientific instrument.
|
| At best, it produces "anecdata at scale" (biased heavily
| towards people who or of a certain personality type that enjoys
| spending time on LinkedIn).
| Sebb767 wrote:
| In fact, this data could actually indicate the opposite
| effect as well, with the LinkedIn org growing because people
| update their profile to start looking for jobs.
| playingalong wrote:
| He claims (or at least implies) to have a lot of contacts in
| the industry, especially among the cool known brands. If true,
| relatively few people can claim so.
| rippercushions wrote:
| For anybody else wondering what/who "G.O" is, it's the author
| of the article, Gergely Orosz.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Yes - he is referring to me.
| dnissley wrote:
| He's a journalist now, therefore he does what journalists have
| always been incentivized to do: write clickbait articles.
| Amazon RTO is a hot topic, simple as that.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| A lot of Google subcontractors represent themselves as Google
| employees on LinkedIn etc.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Hi! The G.O. here who you refer to.
|
| To reply to some of the factually incorrect parts of this
| comment:
|
| On why I don't cover other companies' RTO? But I do! You asked
| about Apple: wrote about them and RTO last month [1]. Other
| companies doing this - also [2]. You can find my articles on my
| blog [3] and I really try not to "obsess" about any one
| company.
|
| I am a bit puzzled on the comment about writing about Uber in
| "such a generic way." Here's a deepdive that happens to be
| about Uber's data center history, just from two weeks ago [4].
| I am not aware of these pretty specific - and not that easy to
| track down - details shared before.
|
| [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-scoop-apple-rto/
|
| [2] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-scoop-rto/
|
| [3] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/
|
| [4] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/uber-move-to-
| clou...
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| jlongr wrote:
| "We believe that employees are much more likely to understand our
| unique culture and become part of it if they are surrounded by
| other Amazonians in person"
|
| This statement strikes me as dishonest. 'Culture', a nebulous and
| immeasurable term, is clearly being used to lasso people back to
| the office for an ulterior motive. Are there truly no reasons for
| RTO more firm and factual than absorbing culture, whatever that
| may be?
|
| The author asserts that Amazon could be trying to increase
| attrition, but is this really the reason? Maintaining office
| buildings and bringing people into them just so that some of them
| might quit?
| thwayunion wrote:
| _> "We believe that employees are much more likely to
| understand our unique culture and become part of it if they are
| surrounded by other Amazonians in person"_
|
| Sounds like a cult.
| julienreszka wrote:
| This is an easy way to lose your best workers
| rybosworld wrote:
| Amazon, a company famous for poor treatment of employees, is
| treating employees poorly once again.
|
| Shocked pickachu face
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| imagine you're the one person on your team in a different
| location, driving to the office just to sit by yourself with non
| dedicated seating with no monitors/keyboard/mouse
| saos wrote:
| Amazon and big corp will win this. Probably best for these
| engineers to move on and find a company that will allow 100%
| working. Good luck
|
| > The same engineers upset about the RTO policy here to stay are
| also talking about canceling their Prime memberships or
| boycotting Amazon.
|
| ohhh scary
|
| > At the same time, looking at the market, it's hard not to ask
| the question: if people want to leave, where will they leave to?
| Meta just announced more cuts - and closing all 5,000 open
| positions. Dozens of tech companies have put similar, 3-day
| return to office policies in place starting from December,
|
| I've been saying this for ages. Big corp were always going to go
| BACK to hybrid working which was in place pre-pandemic. BAU
| kps wrote:
| > Probably best for these engineers to move on and find a
| company that will allow 100% working.
|
| I felt the same way about open-office distractions.
| morelisp wrote:
| "Programmers already hated the changes to their working
| environment made in the past 15 years" but they nonetheless
| happened; it seems to me strong evidence they'll also return
| to office.
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