Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

seattletimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 564 posts

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#111

Post by munificent »

ryandrake wrote: post #54
ashtonkem wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's astonishing how unified the message is, across big tech and smaller tech leaderships. It's like every CEO is reading a script from the same business magazine: "We understand how important it is for employees to return to the office and we can't wait to make this happen! We know that this is the One True Way to work, and that everyone is looking forward to it! We must get Back To Normal and the only way to do it…

I assume most of this is simple survivorship bias. The kind of people who become executive leaders are the those who thrive in that specific office environment, so naturally they will want to preserve it.

It's like asking polar bears what temperature to set the thermostat. They're going to want it like the arctic because that's their home.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#112

Post by xyst »

ashtonkem wrote: post #46
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 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.

I don't know why these companies with massive in-person offices don't just convert them into mini data centers. Maybe have 1 or 2 top level floors reserved for in-person meetings or executives but the rest of the building can be used for housing data centers.

Most businesses wouldn't even need to an entire floor.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#113

Post by noir_lord »

andreilys wrote: post #108
mathverse wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing that some americans can be so picky to give up their many hundred thousand/per year jobs because they dont want to go to the office. I am just envious at how developed your tech scene is.

It’s not about being picky, it’s about knowing your worth. If an employer chooses a ham-fisted approach of forcing everyone to work out of the office, then they will have to pay the consequences of their top talent leaving for companies that are more flexible (and often pay the same or more)

Wasn't amazon but this is exactly what happened, they mandated "back to the office, no exceptions" last summer, I put my notice in and went to work for a company that was 100% remote, within a year I got promoted from lead upwards.

Turns out sometimes not only is the grass greener but it's much better tasting as well.

Ironically the place I left announced a "developers can work from home forever" policy a couple of months ago (after they'd lost 7 out of 9 senior devs off their 9 teams - the attrition rate wasn't much lower for non-seniors).

They are so fucked it's not even funny - literally decades of accumulated domain/business knowledge walked out the door.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#114

Post by rlewkov »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #89
kimbernator wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked at two fairly large companies during the pandemic, and both have publicly stated that their productivity has increased as a result of WFH. I've heard a variety of measures being mentioned such as profitability, hours worked per week, and responsiveness of employees when they are needed outside of normal working hours for production issues - they found people to be much easier to reach when their home offi…

"Ultimately it's as we would expect: executive leadership deciding to pull people back in has little to do with data and more to do with feelings." One of the few things the far left has been right about all along: it is not a meritocracy, it is all about perception and feelings.

From what I see and hear the work-in-the-office rule is, for the most part, cause I (mgt) say so

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#115

Post by Someone1234 »

mathverse wrote: post #100
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…

It is amazing that some americans can be so picky to give up their many hundred thousand/per year jobs because they dont want to go to the office. I am just envious at how developed your tech scene is.

They aren't given up anything. They can walk into multiple other jobs with similar pay and benefits, and that's the problem Amazon has.

It isn't being picky, it is employees having actual worth and choice. Employees can "pick" the pay, conditions, and benefits that suite them best: In this case moving out of one of the highest housing cost areas in the country.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#116

Post by kyleblarson »

Spivak wrote: post #74
bowmessage wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another nail in the coffin for downtown Seattle's recovery?

It's not as doom and gloom as you might think. Without such a huge wealth gap between the people who work for the downtown industry and tertiary business you might get lucky and have a cultural resurgence as artists, musicians, restauranteurs, local retail, etc etc can afford to live and set up shop downtown again. People seem to forget that outside of the supermega metro areas the typical downtown/financial district…

"you might get lucky and have a cultural resurgence as artists, musicians, restauranteurs, local retail, etc etc can afford to live and set up shop downtown again." Or you might get what you have now: boarded up businesses, open air drug markets, rampant unprosecuted crime, needles and human waste everywhere.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#117

Post by ghaff »

Jochim wrote: post #67
QuarterReptile wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know.

It seems that somewhere between you must be butt in seat all day every day and everyone can move to a mountain town or the beach if that's what rocks their boat there probably exist reasonable flexible approaches.

Some will doubtless resent that they can't depend on being able to tap an arbitrary coworker on the shoulder on a given day and others really don't want to live close enough to an office to drive in occasionally. But there seem to be intermediate approaches that make most people happier overall.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#118

Post by wil421 »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #76

I don't know why people say Amazon has a bad reputation as an employee. You have to consider there is a million employees and it most likely depends on department, location, job. I personally know a couple handful Amazon employees who are all most happy and treated well. Some of them have previously been at google and they say Amazon is the better employer period. In some jurisdictions they pay clear above industry s…

Google doesn’t have a massive distribution network. If you take out the distribution and warehouse has jobs there are still many complaints like the hire to fire headcount. Not to mention one must ask themselves do they want to work for a company that doesn’t give lower employees bathroom breaks or fires people based on AI feedback? How long until they use AI feedback to fire SWEs?

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#119

Post by ikiris »

mathverse wrote: post #100
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…

It is amazing that some americans can be so picky to give up their many hundred thousand/per year jobs because they dont want to go to the office. I am just envious at how developed your tech scene is.

You should stop being a crab in a bucket, and go try to improve your own situation instead of being unhappy that others have done so in their own lives.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#120

Post by thehappypm »

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…

1-2 hours away from a major city is actually kind of a sweet spot, IMO.

Big cities have things like major hospitals and major employers, they have airports, they have baseball stadiums. They've also got social networks -- it's much easier to make friends in a place with 100,000 people your age than 50.

Now, escaping to the undeveloped areas is cheap, and many of them have access to things like beautiful mountains or beaches that are either far away from or too crowded near big cities. However, rural areas generally have poor infrastructure that big cities have, and often have extremely bad schools.

Being 1-2 hours away from a big city? That's kind of a sweet spot. You're still close enough to the city for culture and hospitals and the airport. But you're on a big plot of land, and since you're still in a metro, you've probably got reasonably good infrastructure and schools.

The whole "move to the mountains" thing that so many people talk about assumes you don't care about good schools, airports, hospitals, etc.

Post reply on HN