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

151–160 of 564 posts

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#151

Post by Cookingboy »

kimbernator wrote: post #56
ripper1138 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

>such as profitability, hours worked per week, and responsiveness of employees when they are needed outside of normal working hours for production issues

I'm sorry none of those are direct indication of productivity per se, even profitability, which is a long lagging indicator of productivity.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#152

Post by dangerwill »

Jyaif wrote: post #145
1270018080 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With stack ranking, many engineers blacklisting Amazon, and the sheer size of their engineering department, they must be close to literally running out of engineers to hire in America, right? At least if they stuck to in person work and limited their hiring pool geographically.

I know that they are hiring across the world for their Vancouver office.

Yep can confirm, got multiple Amazon Vancouver specific recruiters in my inbox last month, and I'm in Ireland

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#153

Post by acchow »

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 giving up anything. They’ll just switch to working at another company offering them hundreds of thousands. Those jobs are plentiful.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#154

Post by mxmel »

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…

After reading the article it’s not clear why this is a change to such a publicly stated policy. The only thing that has changed is that the directors have discretion to choose how many days in the office will be required for teams. The headline is extremely misleading.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#155

Post by kodah »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #148
kodah wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two I'm thinking of are in Texas and they're doing well. If I'm reading it right, the problem you're calling out is that it is unaffordable to live in a downtown metro after it reaches a certain density. People still think they can hack together solutions by subsidizing housing, rent control, applying grants, etc but I'm more of the mind that there's probably a max size to a city, where once you hit a threshold i…

> the problem you're calling out is that it is unaffordable to live in a downtown metro after it reaches a certain density. I don't know where you got that. Affordability downtown isn't really what is keeping people away (and it is not like rental buildings have lots of vacancies, nor are close to downtown condos, towhomes, and SFHs difficult to sell), but retail and restaurant choices have been decimated over the la…

Ah, retail and restaurants are low-margin businesses, so I usually associate their decline with a rise in cost (labor + real estate). Usually restaurants don't just go away, they're replaced by fewer-in-number but more-expensive options that people don't want or can't eat at regularly. Cost also correlates with density, but I think that's more abstractly. Eg: more businesses show up, more workers are needed, more houses are needed, supply and demand flip flops as inventory in a relatively-fixed area shrinks or becomes a rental market instead of buyers market.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#156

Post by kodah »

asdff wrote: post #149
kodah wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People seem to forget that outside of the supermega metro areas the typical downtown/financial districts are basically dead. Before working in tech I lived in mostly small and medium sized cities. The downtowns were always packed, and usually the artists were local, but as much as I hear "artists and musicians" brought up with respect to a cities value, they don't lure people in. It's just a bonus. What does is goo…

I'm surprised that's your experience to be fair. Mid sized cities like Columbus or St. Louis's downtown effectively shuts down at 5pm in my experience. All those tall buildings are offices, most of the restaurants around them serve business people and don't offer dinner service and close after the workday. Night life is in other neighborhoods adjacent, but not in downtown.

St Louis and Columbus are much bigger than the towns I'm thinking of. The two towns are basically suburbs with a downtown area. I was able to bike to both of them from my house. In my favorite of the two there were two restaurants that offered dinner service and were owned by locals. Everything else was chain restaurants and they all offered dinner and late night/bar services.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#157

Post by natalyarostova »

cle wrote: post #43
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…

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.

They stopped being able to hire seniors easily. So I quit, because working with 8 people 1 year out of college, and myself with 7 years exp, was awful.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#158

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

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.

Do you really mean "give up" here? You're strongly implying that you're not in America, so there's a decent chance English is not your first language, so maybe you don't mean "give up" in the way it usually means in English.

To be explicit, there's nothing being sacrificed. People leaving their jobs because they don't want to go to an office are finding new jobs that pay the same amount or even more. They're not giving up anything.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#159

Post by asdff »

jedberg wrote: post #77

> as long as they are able to commute to the office when necessary This is they key right here. Basically you still have to live within a few hours drive of Seattle or Palo Alto, or even less depending on your patience. Still better than five days a week in the office though!

I'd be looking hard at housing along regional rail lines. If the commute is going to be an hour or more, I'd much rather do that occasional trek in a commuter train with wifi and my laptop than in a car when I'm still half asleep in the morning. Eventually with cal HSR you will have the choice of living like a 23 year old in a tiny bay area apartment or living like an emperor in fresno or bakersfield for as much money.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#160

Post by haswell »

acchow wrote: post #153
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.

They aren’t giving up anything. They’ll just switch to working at another company offering them hundreds of thousands. Those jobs are plentiful.

The way I read the parent comment, it's not that people are "giving up" the ability to make hundreds of thousands, but rather they're able to give up their role at a company paying that much because the market allows them to make that money elsewhere.

This is not possible everywhere.

Post reply on HN