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Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

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Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How disorganised does a team need to be that they need to call meetings so involved they can only be done in-person with less than 24 hour’s notice? This isn’t a genuine business requirement, it’s just management wanting to remind everyone that they’re on a leash which can be yanked whenever they like.

> How disorganised does a team need to be that they need to call meetings so involved they can only be done in-person with less than 24 hour’s notice? I've put similar bounds on WFH hires before. Not because we were calling short-notice meetings frequently, but because it prevents single, long-distance employees from dominating all of the scheduling requirements. Once you have someone on your team who needs a lot of…

I think this is putting the cart in front of the horse.

The thing you should be optimizing for is not geo-location, but time zone. The latter is only weakly related to the former. It doesn't matter if someone is within driving distance of the office so long as they are in (or willing to work in) the time zone that the office works at. Rejecting someone in Los Angeles because they're not within driving distance of Seattle would be penny wise and pound foolish.

> Once you have someone on your team who needs a lot of notice to attend any meeting, you are now planning every single meeting around their schedule.

This doesn't sound like you're actually running a "WFH" team then. You just can't demand short notice in person meetings with a remote team; that's an unreasonable ask. Hold remote meetings and schedule in-person meetups far in advance, or don't call it a "WFH" team.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#42

One of the things that's been missed is that remote working has been a big part of counteracting the massive inflation that's been caused by covid. Making people go into the office is a effectively a pay cut with all the price increases. Start forcing people in and salary expectations will rise accordingly.. .

Productivity has also appeared to increase with remote work (at least at my job), yet I keep seeing articles from high-profile CEOs on how remote work is bad for business. I'm not quite sure where all the resistance to remote work is coming from.

Curious, what makes you think productivity has increased at your job? Like how are you measuring that?

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#43

I live in Seattle and thus a notable percentage of my social circle works at Amazon. The folks I know who work there were almost entirely all prepared to quit if the company forced their initial "everyone back in the office" requirement, especially in this current job market. It feels rare to see Amazon ever make a change to such a publicly stated policy like this, I can only imagine that the groundswell of feedback…

Many employees voted with their feet. From the outside it seems like Amazon has already suffered significant brain drain, they are likely trying to stop the bleeding at this point. In addition to their poor reputation as an employer, seems like they've backed themselves into a corner.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How disorganised does a team need to be that they need to call meetings so involved they can only be done in-person with less than 24 hour’s notice? This isn’t a genuine business requirement, it’s just management wanting to remind everyone that they’re on a leash which can be yanked whenever they like.

> How disorganised does a team need to be that they need to call meetings so involved they can only be done in-person with less than 24 hour’s notice? I've put similar bounds on WFH hires before. Not because we were calling short-notice meetings frequently, but because it prevents single, long-distance employees from dominating all of the scheduling requirements. Once you have someone on your team who needs a lot of…

Or, just host fully remote meetings. Which, if your employer is large enough, you have to do anyways because there’s an office in Europe or India or someplace else.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#45
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not I who is spoiled. It is old school boomer management who have become spoiled and exploitative.

We are very fortunate to be paid as much as we are for sitting at home and working on a computer. Compared to 99% of other adults around the world, we are spoiled.

I don't fully agree. Instead, what I think, is that the stock holders of the company I work for are very fortunate that I work for them.

Are we better off compared to service workers? Oh yeah, definitely.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#46

One of the things that's been missed is that remote working has been a big part of counteracting the massive inflation that's been caused by covid. Making people go into the office is a effectively a pay cut with all the price increases. Start forcing people in and salary expectations will rise accordingly.. .

Productivity has also appeared to increase with remote work (at least at my job), yet I keep seeing articles from high-profile CEOs on how remote work is bad for business. I'm not quite sure where all the resistance to remote work is coming from.

I think you'll find that it makes sense if you begin imagining non-productivity reasons why execs want workers back. Sunk cost fallacy over an expensive office is a regular guess, personally I suspect that it's got to be quite a rush to see hundreds of people working at your direction in an office and remote work cannot replace that.

That or bad management techniques work better in person.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#48
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat related: I wonder how many companies are seeing profit increase because of reduced costs associated with on-site workers? I wonder if the increase in costs as folks return to the office is being factored in their stock prices?

Conversely in Amazon's case, they finished building multiple huge buildings in downtown Seattle right before COVID-19, which have been mostly empty since March 2020.

As much as it may frustrate them not to use the buildings, it is still strictly costing them less given the lower maintenance and utility costs.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#49
post #12

From the blog post > At this stage, we want most of our people close enough to their core team that they can easily travel to the office for a meeting within a day’s notice. We also know that many people have found the ability to work remotely from a different location for a few weeks at a time inspiring and reenergizing. We want to support this flexibility and will continue to offer those corporate employees, who ca…

>> work up to four weeks per year fully remote Wow, that's really something. Personally, having spent a pandemic working fully remote I wouldn't even consider working for a company that didn't offer that as an unquestionable human right, didn't frown upon it, didn't consider it to be "a way to refresh my sense of duty" and didn't think of it as a privilege. I'm never going back to the open landscape of hell.

This is the most privileged, special snowflake and tech bubble thing I've ever read on this site.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#50
post #40
post #23

Does Amazon still insist on that draconian vesting schedule? They always had 5/15/40/40% for years 1/2/3/4. I ask because I’m curious how far employee pressure goes as that’s so much worse than other FAANG companies.

In my experience, they offset the first 2 years of vesting with cash. So all 4 of my first years were equivalent with RSUs/Cash with the first 2 years cash heavy, and the final 2 years RSU only.

There must be a bonus that's not properly represented on levels.fyi, because Amazon's cash compensation is pretty poor compared even to some non-FAANG companies.
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