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Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

seattletimes.com

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Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#111

Post by aksss »

Madmallard wrote: post #71
beoberha wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t true at all and paints a dangerously dystopian view of things. You could easily buy a home in Seattle or the neighboring area after 5 years of senior level employment at most publicly traded companies. It’s not going to be an amazing home and there certainly will be some sticker shock when comparing that price tag to most other cities, but it’s totally feasible. The idea that you need to have a “top positi…

5 years at senior level means 8 plus years in industry and you actually have to be promoted to seniority and it has to be at a company that actually pays well. It is far beyond reasonable considering the value that developers provide. So yeah, I think you're completely wrong.

I have to laugh at all of you expecting to buy a house right out of school. Where you got that sense of entitlement I shall never know.

Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#112

Post by petre »

jojobas wrote: post #82
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #49

I'm always surprised to see this much desire to work from home all the time. The way I see it. Given a few years, every work from home job will be outsource to some country where the pay is less. Companies are all about cutting costs. If a job can be done at home then it can be done from anywhere in the world. Why not hire the least expensive workforce?

Try working with a team composed of people from Bangalore, Philippines, Russia and Brazil and let us know how you went. Besides, the most capable and industrious people from these countries have already moved to better places, so you'll have to wait for the next crop (and hope they don't move to countries with better pay).

Especially Russia since you can't even pay them due to the sanctions and you also risk your guy getting drafted.

Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#113

Post by MattGaiser »

pretendgeneer wrote: post #79
idlewords wrote: post #13

The danger of any walkout is that you won't be allowed to walk back in. The time for useful collective action was back when tech companies couldn't hire fast enough, and tech employees enjoyed unusual leverage. After 27,000 layoffs, a performative walkout without a defined goal is just making it easier for Amazon management as they plan the next round of cuts.

Funny how now is never the right time. It's always just gone or some time soon .

The problem is that the right time for something is usually a sacrifice in a time of abundance. So nobody wants to think about such a negative during good times and thus no action is taken.

Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#114

Post by idlewords »

sleepybrett wrote: post #47
idlewords wrote: post #13

The danger of any walkout is that you won't be allowed to walk back in. The time for useful collective action was back when tech companies couldn't hire fast enough, and tech employees enjoyed unusual leverage. After 27,000 layoffs, a performative walkout without a defined goal is just making it easier for Amazon management as they plan the next round of cuts.

If the number is a large enough percentage they couldn't do a lockout. While it may be an industry-wide supply side problem for employees you can't just fire a huge portion of the staff and hire new people and expect things to just keep on truckin', losing that much institutional knowledge would be suicide.

That's certainly the theory behind collective action. But the problem is you can't go from nothing/online venting to organizing multi-thousand-employee walkouts, any more than you can get up after years of bedrest and run a marathon. The capacity to effectively organize white collar tech workers at Amazon (or anywhere else) was never built up, and now it's too late.

Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#115

Post by chadcmulligan »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #95
chadcmulligan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many people that stand to lose if a fully remote work force came to pass. Building management, HR, middle managers, property investors, they're the ones you're hearing I'd guess. Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely, it's not like we spend all day talking to people any way.

Amazon has a reputation of being frugal to the point of stupidity (e.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-use-frupidi... ) so that tired conspiracy theory especially doesn't hold water for them. Amazon wouldn't give a hoot about the opinions of "building management, HR, middle managers", etc. if anyone there could make a solid business case that increasing WFH would significantly improve their bottom l…

Who are the people saying stop wfh? Who are the people who have fought to have a bunch of people under them? Who are the people who lose if they don't have stacks of people to organise and watch over. They are the same people afaics

Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#116

Post by dumpsterdiver »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #90
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production Typical software jobs absolutely do not "hold the means of production". The aforementioned "means of production" likely includes years of work from an entire sales team in order to land paying customers in the first place. What good are the "means of production" when no one is buying your product? Cool, you built a useful pi…

You have a good point but software that exists with no one to sell it is more valuable than salesman with nothing to sell. Unless you are just trying to grift people, which a disappointingly large percentage of the tech/Silicon Valley/startup crowd are totally cool with.

> You have a good point but software that exists with no one to sell it is more valuable than salesman with nothing to sell.

I would argue that software that exists with no one to sell it is actually MUCH less valuable than a salesman with nothing to sell, because someone has poured countless hours of blood, sweat and tears into that code, and without a salesperson that developer will receive a terrible return on their investment.

A salesperson with nothing to sell on the other hand is simply a salesperson looking for a job. They have not expended the hours creating a product that will never sell.

Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#117

Post by ajkjk »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #35
btbuildem wrote: post #18

Wow, the pro-corp tone in some of the comments is surprising. Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production -- and can withhold them to our leverage. These folks are walking out for the right reasons -- big f-off to RTO, and even if a bit late, the layoffs.

There are so many people that stand to lose if a fully remote work force came to pass. Building management, HR, middle managers, property investors, they're the ones you're hearing I'd guess. Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely, it's not like we spend all day talking to people any way.

It's so annoying that the vocal commenters on here assume that every engineer agrees with them that working from home is preferable to having an office. Nothing against other people working from home but please keep in mind that people's can differ greatly from your own.

Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#118

Post by idlewords »

ok_dad wrote: post #72
idlewords wrote: post #13

The danger of any walkout is that you won't be allowed to walk back in. The time for useful collective action was back when tech companies couldn't hire fast enough, and tech employees enjoyed unusual leverage. After 27,000 layoffs, a performative walkout without a defined goal is just making it easier for Amazon management as they plan the next round of cuts.

Yea they know that. Even in the face of that they are walking out. Must mean they’re seriously pissed off. I would be more worried if I were the employer depending on this office and I would be trying to make these people happy so all my projects wouldn’t go into the shit bin for several months while I tried to rebuild my team.

It is extremely important in these situations to distinguish between talk and action. So far you have a bunch of people talking about walking out, which is very different from doing it.

Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#119

Post by Thermosetty »

coin wrote: post #15
mbgerring wrote: post #10

This is long overdue. It is well past time for tech workers to organize and demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs.

Getting FAANG salary isn’t enough?

It's all relative isn't it? To some 250k+ is a dream salary. To others it's just a start.

Re: Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

#120

Post by clipsy »

clipsy wrote: post #34
coin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting FAANG salary isn’t enough?

Is a FAANG salary enough for Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk?

It would be lovely if some of the folks downvoting this could explain precisely why it is that I should accept my FAANG salary as "enough" while tech billionaires apparently shouldn't, rather than just trying to make this post disappear. It's a perfectly reasonable question -- the ownership class has never considered (and will never consider) any amount of money to be "enough," so why on earth should any of the rest of us?
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