Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#201

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #155

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 hou…

Retail has declined due to online commerce. Seattle ironically lost its downtown Bon Marche/Macy's to become more office space for Amazon.

The homeless factor can't be understated in Seattle, especially with all the encampments downtown. I worked at 3rd and Pine McDonalds in the mid-90s, and for as bad as it was back then, it is ten times worse today.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#202

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

un_montagnard wrote: post #171

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 is amazing that some Americans are so picky about going to the office instead of actual vacations with all your corporate access disabled.

These types of jobs have 4+ weeks of vacation anyway.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#203

Post by anonporridge » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #189

I quit Amazon 3 weeks ago after nearly a decade. Work from home was one of the biggest reasons. In my view, the personality traits that are conducive to promotion up the Amazon leadership ladder are strongly aligned with loving work-from-office. Most people L10 and higher not only don't understand the desire for permanent work from home, I think maybe they cannot understand it. It's just too foreign to many of them.…

It's the circle of life.

Success leads to ossification, which creates opportunity for new life to exploit untapped potential.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#204

Post by ghaff » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

docflabby wrote: post #9

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.. .

The cost situation varies a lot. For some who already have an office in a house some commute from a company office, WFH financially saves a lot of commute costs which can be substantial. For someone who lives in a city, want to live there, and no longer have the option to work in a company office (which is admittedly mostly not a common situation if they haven't changed jobs), their costs have probably just risen substantially.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#205

Post by adolph » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #174

bluedino wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can hire new grads every year Getting expensive to move to Seattle though

Running a giant company with nothing but new grads is really asking for every project management problem ever discovered.

Every problem is a solution in the waiting. Imagine a "every project management problem ever" as a service for enterprise customers of AWS. Every year there could be an almanac of recently discovered screwups. Amazon Studios would have a long run reality TV series.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#206

Post by smashem » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #189

I quit Amazon 3 weeks ago after nearly a decade. Work from home was one of the biggest reasons. In my view, the personality traits that are conducive to promotion up the Amazon leadership ladder are strongly aligned with loving work-from-office. Most people L10 and higher not only don't understand the desire for permanent work from home, I think maybe they cannot understand it. It's just too foreign to many of them.…

Funny, I left Amazon two weeks ago because WFH burned me out. I'm currently taking a sabbatical.

* Zoom fatigue is real.

* I find it much harder to collaborate with peers.

* I feel like less of a part of the company. Not being in the office, so I'm no longer seeing that busy bee activity on the floors, not able to mingle with other people from other teams, not seeing new faces, no team activities, and no desk with my name on it. It's a very isolated feeling.

* I find it even more Groundhog Day. To wake up from bed, walk a few steps to my desk, and start plugging away. Yeah, commuting can suck, but at least there's more stimulation and "life" to it.

* Deadlines, at least from my perspective, got even more ridiculous since WFH started.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#207

Post by morelandjs » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

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.

They also sort of shoot themself in the foot with their interview process. I recommended the absolute best person I know for a position he was exceedingly qualified for. Amazon would have been lucky to have him.

They blitzed him with leadership questions and were “not inclined”. Incredibly dumb given their current situation. He’s not even bad on those dimensions, they just can’t get pretty off topic imo.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#208

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #101

kimbernator wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those maintenance and utility costs are then passed on to the employee and reduce the take home pay, which is frustrating to workers. There’s also more uncompensated time spent on duties a janitor, office manager or IT person would perform, like unloading the dishwasher, preparing coffee or being on the phone with an ISP during an internet outage.

Might want to consider moving if your internet connection is bad enough to result in material time being spent getting it fixed. And maybe drink less coffee if there is material time being spent on making it and rinsing the cup and putting it in the dishwasher.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#209

Post by georgeburdell » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

Since they're having problems with retention, I wonder if they'll also get rid of that 6 month rejection cooldown? I had an Amazon recruiter cold e-mail me 2 months ago and me, being off the market for 8 years, had no idea software engineering interviewing was its own skillset, and subsequently bombed the online assessment. 2 months later, I've "grinded Leetcode" and passed a few phone interviews, but I'd be interested in circling back to Amazon. I will probably find another job before that 6 month cooldown is up, so as it is, Amazon basically is missing out on someone who is otherwise qualified just because they reached out to me first.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#210

Post by rootusrootus » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:06 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #137

rootusrootus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Facebook and Amazon have contacted me recently, and in both cases it was a senior manager doing the recruiting. Maybe just a new strategy in general, or perhaps it's because both companies struggle with reputation.

If they were contacting you with a specific interesting position, that would be something. If they were contacting you with a generic position they just needed to fill...that sounds like a lot of cringe.

I have only actually talked with the guy from Facebook. All he did was talk about how great his teams are, how super intelligent his engineers are, etc. While he politely listened to what I had to say, he was definitely on a mission to market his little slice of Instagram and get me interested in running the Facebook interview gauntlet.

He even suggested that it would be totally okay if I was one of those people that wanted to study for a month or two before interviewing. Study?! For a job interview?

It was a weird experience. I normally shun recruiters, but I was just curious enough to hear what this guy had to say. His LinkedIn profile didn't indicate any past involvement with recruiting, so I wanted to know why a senior manager would spend time recruiting random people -- he must spend every waking hour on these calls.