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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

#231

Post by aerosmile »

plebianRube wrote: post #163
dangerwill wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I replied back to one of these and explained that due to their anti-union actions, and they way they treat employees, I would never be interested in working there, no matter the salary. I thankfully have never received any more of their spam.

To be fair, very few tech companies would hire someone who starts off by expressing their support for unionization. It's certainly a good "unsubscribe" tactic. For example, if you want to get rid of unwanted Linkedin outreach, just put into your title "Go unions!"

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#232

Post by dayvid »

sharkweek wrote: post #70
jorblumesea wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Very similar experience. It was a boring and tedious interview. The behavioral part of the interview felt odd with a focus on tailoring my experiences around Amazon principles which I wasn't aware of until a few days before the interview. The employees seemed nice, though, but not really cheerful and a little standoff-ish. It honestly felt like a more traditional style of interviewing.

I contrast that with another FAANG interview I had, where you had lunch on campus and they tried to leave a positive impression.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#233

Post by NotAnOtter »

As someone on the inside: the title is mostly BS.

They are pushing the decision from the L10+ level to the L7/L8 level. But we all know behind the scenes, L7/L8 will be pushed to behave a certain way. If it was truly their choice, those with a strict policy would bleed engineers to the directors with more lax policies, Amazon would not accidentally create a free market within their own company.

This is a deflection of blame, and nothing else.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#234

Post by drunkpotato »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #202
un_montagnard wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Has this changed recently? My offer from AWS came with 2 weeks of vacation, non-negotiable, and was part of why I rejected it.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#235

Post by Seattle3503 »

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.

You can visit family and take care of them. I could imagine some doing this the entire month of December for the holidays.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#236

Post by soylentnewsorg »

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…

I interviewed w/ Amazon - they contacted me during the pandemic and I though what the hey, ignore the worst reviews of any company on glassdoor, let's see what they're all about.

The interview was, and I hate to use this word, followed a template clearly put together by an MBA who went into middle management without any work experience, The two people to whom I talked showed the enthusiasm of a dead wet beaver while asking the questions. This was for a storage position that I've been doing for 20+ years at some of the biggest accounts all over the planet.

During the 2 hours, I got asked two very basic questions. Then a bunch of weird generic scenarios - what have you done that fits this scenario and how did you handle it.

About half way through the second interview I decided there's not enough money in the world, and decided to have fun with it. I tells ya what - I made up some of the most ridiculous obviously fake stories ever. They sent me a rejection letter, just to ask me to interview for a similar position two months later. I asked their recruiter to read their employee reviews and only contact me again if they offer 7 figures. Been a year now - nothing. Maybe they got the hint.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#237

Post by idiotsecant »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #167
teh_infallible wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recruiter contacted me one for a position at Amazon, and I straight up said I will never work there because of the way they treat their employees. (Probably burned a bridge with that recruiter, but oh well)

I probably burned a bridge with Activision-Blizzard a few years ago. They contacted me about a potential job, and I said "When I was earning my degree, I dreamed of working for Blizzard. But then earlier this year, you announced record profits, and then only a couple days later announced the lay-off of over 800 workers. No thank you." And considering their current controversies, my opinion on working for them has not…

You sure showed that HR drone.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#238

Post by christophilus »

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.…

If you’re going to work from home, do so for a company where WFH is first class. I’ve worked for remote-only companies and for mixed companies. The mixed ones were really terrible WFH experiences. The remote-only / remote-first ones were excellent. It really makes a difference.

/anecdote

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#239

Post by lotsofpulp »

drunkpotato wrote: post #234
lotsofpulp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Has this changed recently? My offer from AWS came with 2 weeks of vacation, non-negotiable, and was part of why I rejected it.

Wow, that is very poor. I don’t know many Amazon people though, but I have read they are stingy. Although, I assumed 3 weeks of vacation was a minimum for white collar employees, especially in finance/law/engineering. I got 3 weeks when I came out of college in mid 2000s.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#240

Post by zz865 »

vesuvianvenus wrote: post #226
zz865 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No other companies pay >250k in NYC.

Plenty pay >$250k remotely and in large cities such as SF and NYC-- For Engineers, Managers/Executives (Eng, Mktg, other), Salespeople, etc. You just have to ask for it. If you're unfamiliar, join TeamBlind.com A company sent me roles at $125k recently. I wrote them back with a polite variation of "heck no, my rate is $250k". I'm currently quite broke-- $5k to my name (too many sabbaticals, plus only recently paid of…

250k I'm on already, its going up from there is the hard part.
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