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Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

seattletimes.com

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Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#61

Post by kimbernator »

roland35 wrote: post #13

I am noticing a lot of the big tech companies are becoming more flexible about remote work, but they are still far away from a true remote friendly option for me at least. It seems the expectation is that they want people to be available to come to the office on demand every once in a while, so you need to be living within at least a 1-2 hour drive from the office. While that is certainly an improvement, it isn't tru…

As someone working for a company I like while living in a place that I'd rather not, there's no more annoying thing for me to dwell on than the fact that the only thing standing between me and moving is the fact that my employer expects me to be in the office 2 days/month.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#62

Post by rzanella »

jorblumesea wrote: post #39
sharkweek wrote: post #6

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…

The other thing to add on is that Amazon is having a hard time recruiting, at least anecdotally from friends who work there. Between their reputation as a company and hot job market, filling some senior level eng roles has become near impossible.

I interviewed for Amazon Brazil once, it felt like I was being questioned by the police as if in a movie:

- 4 straight hours inside a room

- every hour the interviewer changed

- got asked the same questions over and over again

I was quite upset that I didn't pass... couple weeks later I was not, what a shitty experience it was.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#63

Post by wonder_er »

taurath wrote: post #7
KallDrexx wrote: post #2

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…

Really curious why only within country? Security reasons? Also why 4 weeks? Just to be available for meetings? I find it funny that this is the American version of a nice holiday - go pay money to rent an Airbnb so you can work in a different environment.

It's likely that this is the Official Policy, but then people will just not mention to HR where they happen to be traveling to.

> Hey [team], I'll be in [foreign country] for the next 3 weeks!

and no one outside of that team ever knows anything except someone's zoom background has changed.

If it gets mentioned once in a press release, and HR forgets to work hard to implement this in an ongoing way, it becomes a non-rule.

Useful for lawyers and when talking to compliance people, but not a meaningful barrier for anyone actually going anywhere.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#64

Post by filomeno »

lolsal wrote: post #27
kreeben wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you must think of it as a privilege. And I shall not work for you.

I understand and that's fine. I don't actually care about where you work in this context. Human Rights are special things. They aren't preferences. The more you conflate the two, the more you erode your position and the term 'human right' in general. I would urge you to stop doing that.

Well, at least the right to life is a human right. It turned out that having to work in a crowded space with many others can be a real threat for your life.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#65

Post by thereare5lights »

> “We’re intentionally not prescribing how many days or which days — this is for Directors to determine with their senior leaders and teams.”

This reminds me of what George said to Jerry in The Deal on Seinfeld:

> Jerry: Spending the night. Optional.

> George: No, you see? You got greedy.

Making the policy discretionary will ultimately make it like an "unlimited vacation" policy where it actually doesn't happen but the company gets to say that it's their policy.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#66

Post by josiahsiegel »

ripper1138 wrote: post #42
josiahsiegel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not an exact science, but based on our team's velocity which is tracked in Jira, we appear to complete more units of work while remote...but of course there are likely numerous factors to consider.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#67

Post by Jochim »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #14
comprev wrote: post #4

16 days per annum remote is nothing but a small token.

As someone with zero remote days, I strongly disagree.

Why do you disagree?

I hate these kinds of half-compromises because they feel really disingenuous. The company knows a significant proportion of their engineers want to work from home permanently and rather than giving a straight yes or no they try to weasel their way out with a solution that sucks for almost everyone.

People that want to WFH permanently are forced into the office, with the restrictions on commuting that entails.

People that want to work in the office are frustrated that people aren't in when they want to speak to them.

Hybrid solutions genuinely look like the absolute worst of both worlds from the perspective of all parties involved.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#68

Post by tdeck »

roland35 wrote: post #13

I am noticing a lot of the big tech companies are becoming more flexible about remote work, but they are still far away from a true remote friendly option for me at least. It seems the expectation is that they want people to be available to come to the office on demand every once in a while, so you need to be living within at least a 1-2 hour drive from the office. While that is certainly an improvement, it isn't tru…

Dropbox has gone "remote first" and sold off some of their offices, so I assume that means you don't need to live near one. Perhaps folks who work there can correct me.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#69

Post by harshaw »

jdhn wrote: post #53
josiahsiegel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 that part of the resistance is that if you have people who work remote, the bonds you build with the company and your coworkers can potentially be less strong than if you were there in person. This may make it easier for employees to job hop. Another reason could be real estate related. If you signed a long term commercial lease right before covid hit, you want to make sure that you're getting your moneys wor…

Yes, as a hiring manager I have seen this. There is certainly less friction to moving jobs when all you do is show up on a different video call the next monday. However, I would argue that there is certainly something lost in the personal interaction. While we've been individually productive during the pandemic, more complicated design/brainstorming has been slower.

Also, part of the human experience is that bond. fellowship with your team if you will.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#70

Post by sharkweek »

jorblumesea wrote: post #39
sharkweek wrote: post #6

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…

The other thing to add on is that Amazon is having a hard time recruiting, at least anecdotally from friends who work there. Between their reputation as a company and hot job market, filling some senior level eng roles has become near impossible.

I have shared this story on here before, but my first "real interview" out of college was at Amazon and to this day it is still one of the worst experiences of my career.

The recruiter was great, super nice, got me all organized for a full-day loop. They gave me some things to prepare, so I did. Admittedly, I was under-qualified for the job as a fresh grad but was assured that'd be fine.

Still, the entire team made it abundantly clear how much I was apparently wasting their time even being in the room with each of them as they took turns throughout the day talking to me.

Felt so unbelievably toxic, and even though this was in the early 00s, I have never even considered working there since.

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