Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 185 posts

Re: Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

#91

Post by coliveira »

mamonster wrote: post #13

> "Staffers who posted in the Slack channel said they were caught off guard by the announcement. Many expressed frustration that they’d have to find arrangements for child care, caregivers for aging parents, or potentially move in order to be within commuting distance of the office. One worker said they’d recently leased a car with an annual limit of 16,000 miles assuming remote work was still an option; if they’re r…

The big question is: will Amazon afford to pay those people Silicon Valley wages? Because the bar moved from 2019 to now. In the past the salary paid by Amazon could cover the high expenses, not anymore. Especially because their stock is dropping like a rock, and a large part of their compensation is stock based. Amazon compensation was already known to be on the lower scale compared to other FAANG. People will even accept working for a bad company if they're making enough money. But they will hardly do this if the salary makes no sense.

Re: Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

#92

Post by ShrimpHawk »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #27

Studies have found that employees thrive when they spend 23-40% of their time in the office.[1] This also is a very personal thing dependong on living conditions (also on personality type like introvert/extrovert, ADHD etc.). People with kids, small homes etc. will probably enjoy returning to the office. I valued my office workplace very much as long as we lived in a single-bedroom apartment but started hating going…

The study[1] was based on starting from 100% Office randomizing the amount of days people worked from home and was measured by email quantity, quality, and manager performance reviews. A better wording would be "employees send more and better emails when working from home 60-77% of the time". To fully understand the problem you need to study going from WFH to RTO and productivity. Multiple studies have shown the benefits of 100% WFH[2]. Hybrid and RTO is being pushed primarily by management not employees.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4068741 [2] https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivi...

Re: Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

#93

Post by sundaeofshock »

Adraghast wrote: post #63
xwdv wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because developers in those regions can tolerate less salary due to their lower expenses, as a competitive advantage.

What if the dev in Boise and the dev in Seattle and the dev in Butte got together and agreed none of them would work for less than a certain salary?

That would require forming a union and tech workers tend to be somewhat hostile towards unions.

Re: Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

#94

Post by selfmodruntime »

ppg677 wrote: post #47
ddalex wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because salary is not determined by how much profit you make but by the demand of your labour in the market.

Newsflash-- the "market" is becoming less constrained by geography.

Once US employers give up on the idea of office work entirely and start looking into cheap east European developers, you‘ll be in for a world of hurt.

I can‘t deny their expertise and quality of work, and they‘re starting to constantly outbid anyone on work for hire platforms

Re: Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

#95

Post by eternalban »

knorker wrote: post #21
mamonster wrote: post #13

> "Staffers who posted in the Slack channel said they were caught off guard by the announcement. Many expressed frustration that they’d have to find arrangements for child care, caregivers for aging parents, or potentially move in order to be within commuting distance of the office. One worker said they’d recently leased a car with an annual limit of 16,000 miles assuming remote work was still an option; if they’re r…

"what do you mean i can't collect silicon valley salary while working from Montana?"

The value extracted from a worker is not a function of their location. SV salaries are for technical ability and competence. And I like Montana so no offense to you folks out there, but sure, pay provincial salaries and get provincial work quality.

Re: Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

#97

Post by pxlpshr »

mabbo wrote: post #64

I said this in another thread on this topic, but this was one of the key reasons I left Amazon in 2021. I knew this was coming. It was clear from tech survey (company-wide very long survey on all topics) that devs did not want to be in the office. Yet there was an email from leadership that said "We know you all can't wait to be back in the office". This bizarre dichotomy where we know they know we don't want this, b…

I'm sorry but there's no correlation to AMZN's stock price reaching all-time highs. 1) The entire world was caught in a two-year pandemic and caused e-commerce to exceed retail spending virtually overnight (See: SHOP, BIGC, etc)... and 2) The fed printed an asinine amount of money that dislocated the market from reality.

Your work-from-home team had nothing to do with either of those two massive tailwinds.

Re: Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

#98

Post by dgb23 »

mabbo wrote: post #64

I said this in another thread on this topic, but this was one of the key reasons I left Amazon in 2021. I knew this was coming. It was clear from tech survey (company-wide very long survey on all topics) that devs did not want to be in the office. Yet there was an email from leadership that said "We know you all can't wait to be back in the office". This bizarre dichotomy where we know they know we don't want this, b…

> The stock was reaching new heights every day; things were going great; the was no reason to change back at all. Amazon senior leadership were taking their culture of data-driven-everything and ignoring it because they like it better that way.

Why is the real reason for this? It's not clear to me from reading the articles.

There is one mention about how innovation happens more often when people are in the office. I very much doubt that, specifically because if it were so, they would mention numbers/data that this is based on.

I personally work from home 2-3days/week. When I have a good idea I just write it down in our wiki, mention it in slack, maybe grab the phone or just wait until the next meeting to explain it. The best ideas typically need some back and forth, some thinking time, a discussion here or there etc. until they really start to materialize.

Re: Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

#99

Post by selfmodruntime »

mardifoufs wrote: post #65
hotpotamus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems I've always had with remote work is how do you justify large differences in pay between the US, Europe, and Asia if the location of an employee is not supposed to matter?

Some people have convinced themselves that they are amongst best simply because they are paid a lot, which obviously means that they deserve the pay no matter where they are. So they can just work remotely, because it doesn't change the value they produce, right? And look I'm all for extracting maximum pay from employers, but it's a bit delusional to not realize that it was mostly because they were in silicon valley/…

Paying people obscene wages in SV really makes them overestimate their own abilities by a large margin.

Re: Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy

#100

Post by anoonmoose »

Adraghast wrote: post #63
xwdv wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because developers in those regions can tolerate less salary due to their lower expenses, as a competitive advantage.

What if the dev in Boise and the dev in Seattle and the dev in Butte got together and agreed none of them would work for less than a certain salary?

Sure, I'll grab the catnip and you put the leashes on, I'm sure this will work out great.
Post reply on HN