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

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#321

Post by cwp » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

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 had that groundhog-day effect for a while too, living in California. Then I moved to Montana. It's impossible not to notice time here. The leaves changed colour, it snowed, it rained, it was hot, and the leaves changed colour again. My daily routine is a bit monotonous, sure, but the world pulls me into it.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#322

Post by dbish » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:08 AM UTC

BSOhealth wrote: post #168

I’m on the opposite side of many folks responding. After spending the quarantine at home through the pandemic, I’m now looking at HCOL cities which headquarter big tech or startups (SF, NYC, Seattle, Austin). I’d love to spend time in a posh office again, meeting new people, getting drinks after work. Now, I have everything I need in one room: computer, weights, instruments, art supplies, dog, etc. TBH, I’m crossing…

Cities are nice even with WFH to me. I don't care that much about the office, though it is easier to form bonds in person imho. I do care about having an active social life which is part of why I live in a city, and I'm very glad people are going out again generally and things are open with events happening (Seattle is where I'm at).

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#323

Post by ashtonkem » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

georgeburdell wrote: post #209

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 interest…

Honestly, given how bad Amazon’s reputation is I’d recommend just searching elsewhere. They were bleeding personnel before RTO became an issue.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

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Post by doopy1 » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

christophilus wrote: post #238

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

What makes a good experience vs. a poor one for you?

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#325

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

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…

Europe only has good public transport in very few selected cities and you have to ignore strikes in France to pretend its working well and is reliable. The city with the best public transport in the world is probably Tokyo in terms of frequency and service reliability but it is constantly over capacity and things are not getting better. Crowded trains are hell.

so no commute is certainly better pretty much just anywhere.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#326

Post by websap » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #294

ducharmdev wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One thing I found helpful was some chill time in virtual rooms periodically. For those who opted in it seemed to work well. For folks who are all business all the time it was fine to opt out. IME different life seasons can bring different preferences. With a young family and project house I don't want to socialize as much with coworkers as I did when I was a single 20 something.

The problems with virtual rooms is that you can't have small breakout conversations naturally. In-person I can walk around a space and talk to small groups of people. On a virtual conference call, if I'm speaking everyone has to listen to me, which makes speaking for some people even harder.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#327

Post by soylentnewsorg » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

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.

Not complaining about the use of a common script for all interviews. A good script would have many avenues where you can ask the person about his specific resume. I've done a lot of emc/netapp/pure storage as an example, but only xiv from ibm. the way amazon handles this is to not ask a single question about storage, for a storage role. this is the wrong way.

well, let me correct myself. for this sr position in storage, i was asked one question about storage. "what is the difference between object storage and file storage."

imagine you are interviewing to work as a mathematician. a sr level one, you walk in, and the ask you no math questions, except "what is the difference between multiplication and derivatives."

here is the issue i take with this completely undeveloped script: it tells you zero about someone's technical skills or abilities. this means the hiring criteria, for highly technical roles, might as well be what color car I drive. if this is what leadership uses to determine who is good during an interview, they're going to have useless, illogical, and bogus criteria for performance. and this means the job will be frustrating and will wear me out. oh look - that's what all the tech employees are saying about amazon on glassdoor.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

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Post by ashtonkem » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #120

roland35 wrote: post #13

I am noticing a lot of the big tech companies are becoming more flexible about remote work, but they are still far away from a true remote friendly option for me at least. It seems the expectation is that they want people to be available to come to the office on demand every once in a while, so you need to be living within at least a 1-2 hour drive from the office. While that is certainly an improvement, it isn't tru…

1-2 hours away from a major city is actually kind of a sweet spot, IMO. Big cities have things like major hospitals and major employers, they have airports, they have baseball stadiums. They've also got social networks -- it's much easier to make friends in a place with 100,000 people your age than 50. Now, escaping to the undeveloped areas is cheap, and many of them have access to things like beautiful mountains or…

You’re right that being close to amenities is good, but you’re building up a false dichotomy between 1-2 hours from the office[0] and “move to the mountains”. You’re ignoring option C “move close to a smaller city”. Often 1-2 hours from the kinds of cities where major offices are located provide an inferior quality of life compared to a smaller city.

1-2 hours away from my old office is basically Burbank, which is still quite expensive and crowded. There are tons of small cities that provide better quality of life than Burbank for cheaper, including the small one I picked (Boise). Also, I can get to nature much easier from where I live.

0 - I’m assuming from context that the “major city” you reference is the one where the office is located.

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

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Post by hellbannedguy » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #313

mym1990 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I loved my commute to work in the Bay. After almost 16 years of not riding a bike, I took a chance on getting one and fell in love with riding around the city. For the first year I also rode BART pretty much every day. It had its downsides but honestly I just learned to have a more positive mindset about it. Obviously this isn't viable solution to many people, and cycling has lots of risks, but its…

Bart is beyond a minor downside, it’s absolutely atrocious public transportation.

Bike & Bart. (Use a bike that you won't care if stolen)

Re: Amazon will allow many employees to work remotely indefinitely

#330

Post by aerosmile » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

plebianRube wrote: post #284

aerosmile wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

Being against anti-union tactics involving privacy and surveillance issues is not the same as being pro union.

Employers won't hold it against you for being against tactics that involve privacy and surveillance issues in general (eg: "I wouldn't want to work at a place that spies on every single Slack message I send to coworkers"), because they give you the benefit of doubt that from their bottom line perspective you will be a net-positive contributor. The minute you include the word U-N-I-O... (eg: I wouldn't want to work at a place that spies on unionization efforts), that benefit of doubt is lost, and now everyone is wondering why that topic is on your mind.

None of this is a reflection of the value of unions from the employees' perspective. But it's important to realize that unions are one of the instances where the employees' and employers' interests are not aligned. So, emailing a recruiter and mentioning unions has only one possible outcome - none.