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

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#241

Post by rodgerd » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #78

ryandrake wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What alternative hypotheses have you considered and dismissed to explain why so many CEOs agree on this approach?

There exists an area of study emerging in economics covering the effect of companies being directed by a small number of shareholders - for example, if the key stakeholders of all US airlines are (for the sake of the argument) Black Rock, then what effect does that have on the companies? If they same shareholder selects the same sort of execs for all their airlines in their portfolio, how does that affect the strategies for each company? If Delta loses share but United gains it and you've got a similar shareholding in both, what difference does it make.

If significant investors have heavy positions in commercial and residential real estate in particular locations, and also has a significant position in companies who employ workers in those locations, how might that change the perception of how your employer does business? Will support a CEO taking a position that tanks their real estate positions?

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#242

Post by oblio » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #115

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 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.

I think you misread his comment. He's saying that what you're describing is a privilege developers in many other countries don't enjoy.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#243

Post by ghaff » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #201

kodah wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was just in Seattle for the first time in about 5 years. The situation was... not good. And this from someone who has spent a lot of time in SF and always had a not totally positive take on Seattle with respect to the grunge factor compared to other PNW cities.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#244

Post by ducharmdev » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

smashem wrote: post #206

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…

This is so accurate, especially the 3rd bullet. When WFH, all interactions are centered around your immediate work responsibilities; although minimizing social interactions at work sounds great for some, it can make it much harder to gauge where you stand in relation to all the people you work with.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#245

Post by oblio » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #196

munificent wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side is that many feel an intense pressure to do whatever it takes to get the most lucrative job they can find because the US has much less of a social safety net than many European countries.

Once you get beyond a certain threshold that's not really true. Or it's a story they tell themselves because they care more about money than other considerations.

Have you ever had a 1 month long holiday? Not sabbatical, just regular PTO.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#246

Post by Arainach » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #129

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…

> Before working in tech I lived in mostly small and medium sized cities. How long ago? If you compare downtown Seattle to downtown Seattle 10 years ago, it was much better back then. Things changed quickly this decade, I wouldn't be surprised if the places you left packed are struggling today. Seattle in general isn't struggling at all, it grew 25% this decade and the housing market...but downtown has a huge hill to…

When was downtown the fun evening getaway? I've been here 15 years, and unless you're looking for a Frat Bro party in Belltown, Fremont/Cap Hill/Ballard were always where the real social life was. They're all doing just fine now - you wouldn't know there was a pandemic on.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#247

Post by munificent » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #147

munificent wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're oversimplified and over-regimenting. Cities are like organisms. A healthy city needs a large number of different kinds of organs and systems all working in concert. Some may not be entirely essential —you can live without an appendix and give up a kidney—but almost all of them need to be in place to have something someone would call a thriving city.

Can you be more specific about what you're arguing? I can't really tell.

I'm saying artists and musicians aren't a bonus. A city without them might be functional, but no one would love it and few would call it thriving. No part of a city is really inessential.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#248

Post by ghaff » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #245

ghaff wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you get beyond a certain threshold that's not really true. Or it's a story they tell themselves because they care more about money than other considerations.

Have you ever had a 1 month long holiday? Not sabbatical, just regular PTO.

Yes, multiple times--most recently a few years ago was close to that just pre-pandemic. Another probably 4x in the 3 week to 4 week range in previous job. Pretty standard tech industry jobs. More recently have had many other multi-week holidays that were a combination of tech events and pure PTO.

I realize a fair number of people can't do that or, commonly in my experience, feel that they can't do that but it's not actually impossible if that's what you prioritize.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#249

Post by barry-cotter » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

1270018080 wrote: post #124

cle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

If they can turn someone into a backend engineer in nine months they can hire forever even with a lot of turnover.

> Lambda School to Launch New Backend Engineering Program, Jointly Developed with Amazon

https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/lambda-school-launches-...

> Inspiration for the new backend program came from Amazon Technical Academy, which trains current, non-technical Amazon employees for software development engineering roles within the company. Amazon Technical Academy’s curriculum is based on the critical knowledge, skills, and attributes required to succeed as a software development engineer at Amazon, which Lambda’s program will cover in their entirety. Amazon Technical Academy is part of Amazon’s commitment to upskill 100,000 of its own employees by 2025.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#250

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

smashem wrote: post #206

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…

All that stuff can be ameliorated somewhat imo with a cultural change. At my job (admittedly a much smaller group of a few dozen, nothing on amazons scale), we initially had a ton of zoom meetings but have cut out most of them since people want to have uninterrupted days of productivity, with room to schedule their own submeetings with peers when it comes time to collaborate with specific people. We all still live in the area so we've gotten together in a park and do potlucks and stuff like that after we got our vaccines. For the lack of commute thing, I find it helpful to build in a morning routine rather than wake up > work. I tend to my garden in the mornings, workout, and usually do a walk around my neighborhood to serve as a faux commute before I make my cup of coffee and begin the workday. Sometimes I head out to the golf course early in the morning and get back home before 9. Other coworkers surf at dawn. If I had to commute it would be tough to fit in gardening and working out or golf without waking up indescribably early to make it all work.