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Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

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Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#301

Post by ashtonkem »

nkingsy wrote: post #81
ashtonkem wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be a bonus that's not properly represented on levels.fyi, because Amazon's cash compensation is pretty poor compared even to some non-FAANG companies.

Off-topic, but is levels.fyi... on the level? I ask because I'm hearing about all sorts of 350k-500k offers for senior engineers, but they're not showing up there. My current salary seems right about "in band" on there, but people in my network who I talk to seem to think I'm way underpaid.

Matches up with the numbers I have access to, but I’m not at a FAANG.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#302

Post by wildrhythms »

felipellrocha wrote: post #283
smashem wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Deadlines, at least from my perspective, got even more ridiculous since WFH started. This. People keep talking how much more time they have for work now that they don’t have to commute, and don’t realize how terrible that is for them. For me, the dealbreaker is the groundhog day effect that working from home has. Never heard anyone one describe it that way, but it’s so true, i will probably steal it. It’s the prima…

I get the feeling that a lot of discontent related to the archaic 8-hour work day. I have personally interacted with at least a dozen other engineers at my workplace who openly admit they "actually" work maybe 2 hours a day. The rest of the day is spent idly feeling burned out forced to sit at their workstation for the next meeting or instant message to reply to. I personally suffer burnout from this.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#303

Post by refurb »

baby wrote: post #276
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.…

I have this theory that one of the contributing factors to the "I don't want to go to the office" trend in the US (which I'm part of), is that cities are also not made for commuting. Coming from Europe, where public transport is really practical, and cities are built for density, your commute is often much less cumbersome AND you can enjoy some social life after work since you're in the city. Here (the bay) it was ju…

Obviously it's a personal preference, but most people I know who have easy commutes (It might be nice for a change of pace of a specific purpose (i.e. planning meeting that is just easier in-person).

If I want to go downtown and socialize with coworkers, I can do that after work (and have while WFH).

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#304

Post by mgkimsal »

Steltek wrote: post #295
baby wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this theory that one of the contributing factors to the "I don't want to go to the office" trend in the US (which I'm part of), is that cities are also not made for commuting. Coming from Europe, where public transport is really practical, and cities are built for density, your commute is often much less cumbersome AND you can enjoy some social life after work since you're in the city. Here (the bay) it was ju…

Boston is often compared to a European city. I also think I fit your observation pretty well, as I can't wait to be back in our downtown office. I'm looking forward to a 25 minute bike commute and being in a lively area packed with things to do. The routine gives me a little bit of everything (exercise, people, fresh air, and amenities) and it's conveniently built right into the work day.

I see the 'European' connection moreso than some other cities here in the US. I've visited Boston twice - once just a few weeks ago - and I could definitely see some attraction of living/working there. It seemed way too expensive to actually live in for my budget, but I may have just gotten too accustomed to a LCOL area. I enjoyed the breadth and depth of the city, and have some family living there at the moment, so I expect I'll get to enjoy a bit more of it next year.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#305

Post by katbyte »

MattGaiser wrote: post #255
Jyaif wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At least according to Levels, the Vancouver office pay sucks. Lots of equivalent paying companies in Canada now, yet alone USA.

I’m in Vancouver and get multiple recruiters contacting from Amazon weekly it seems? I’ve engaged a couple times out of curiosity and their offers were always hilariously low.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#306

Post by dilyevsky »

adolph wrote: post #205
whatshisface wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Big co manager api from aws sounds fantastic! You send promo request, they send that less than stellar feedback from 360 review three years ago and your “consistently exceeds (needs more impact)” response.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#307

Post by tdeck »

belval wrote: post #279
soylentnewsorg wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For what it's worth, the Amazon interview experience is modelled that way for fairness. We are pretty much told that we can't deviate too much from the script because by doing so we might advantage a candidate over another. There are exception with more senior employees that tend to disregard that advice but overall it's pretty well followed. Sorry about your bad experience though.

One option might be to add this explanation to the script so the candidate understands why the process seems so alienating.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#308

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#309

Post by comp_throw7 »

zz865 wrote: post #177
ferdowsi wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should back up and ask why you are limiting your search to those four/five companies?

No other companies pay >250k in NYC.

Um? https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&r...

Excluding finance, there's Spotify, Doordash, Salesforce, Square, Twitter (incl. remote), Coinbase (remote), Palantir, Roku, Affirm, Robinhood... and that's just the publicly-traded companies that explicitly have offices in New York. You have even more options looking at companies that are either remote-friendly, or are late-stage startups with competitive equity grants (i.e. Stripe, Instacart, etc), or both (there's a lot of overlap between those two categories).

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#310

Post by Ozzie_osman »

baby wrote: post #276
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.…

I have this theory that one of the contributing factors to the "I don't want to go to the office" trend in the US (which I'm part of), is that cities are also not made for commuting. Coming from Europe, where public transport is really practical, and cities are built for density, your commute is often much less cumbersome AND you can enjoy some social life after work since you're in the city. Here (the bay) it was ju…

> cities are also not made for commuting. Coming from Europe...

I moved from the Middle East to the US. Cairo was a shit city for commuting. But that didn't stop socializing, because the other big difference between the US and many other countries is how individualistic and work-based society is. Back home, I had relatives, child-hood friends, etc that I was not only able to see, but often EXPECTED to see (even when I didn't want to).

In other countries, life was much more social, and work was just a tiny part of your social life. In the US, everything is individualistic (and nuclear family oriented) and people rely on the office for socialization.

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