So they are fine with worst in class vesting schedule, pressure cooker, stack ranking, PIP good engineers, disconnected middle managers culture. As long as they can do it from home
Nevermind the arduous conditions they subject warehouse workers to.
Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
171–180 of 351 posts
Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Pure speculation, but my guess is that he’s invested in the commercial real estate market and hoping for a turnaround. I don’t think it’s some profound or insane ideology he has, I think he’s just trying to prop up CRE like he does with crypto. We should assume any public statements on morality from powerful people out of the blue are motivated by a secondary factor.
You don't even need that rule of thumb here. I believe Elon's very public tantrums on and regarding Twitter have shown that he lacks even basic integrity. The gall that he would discuss what is or is not moral from that position.
Elon has shown us all how to make a small fortune in social media. It’s not his fault that we don’t have 40 billion to burn buying a 20 billion business with a 13 billion mortgage
Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
#173I still think out of all the...unique... things Elon has said... work from home is morally wrong has to take the cake. I try to spend time looking at things as radically as I can. I think it's helpful to accept folks views as widely as possible, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OHFt8QyiU I was on a bicycle ride listening to this intervie…
Farhad Manjoo wrote: "Office Workers Don’t Hate the Office. They Hate the Commute." That's true for a decent number of people...but definitely not all. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/opinion/elon-musk-remote-... And another thing -- the "morally wrong" is remarkably selective. Musk is clearly saying that it's "morally wrong" for white collar workers to be remote while insisting that blue collar workers be fully p…
I hate the office. Shitty equipment, loud distracting environment, uncomfortable, need to keep appearances up, notion of ass-in-seat rather than creating output that matters.
Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
#174I still think out of all the...unique... things Elon has said... work from home is morally wrong has to take the cake. I try to spend time looking at things as radically as I can. I think it's helpful to accept folks views as widely as possible, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OHFt8QyiU I was on a bicycle ride listening to this intervie…
Farhad Manjoo wrote: "Office Workers Don’t Hate the Office. They Hate the Commute." That's true for a decent number of people...but definitely not all. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/opinion/elon-musk-remote-... And another thing -- the "morally wrong" is remarkably selective. Musk is clearly saying that it's "morally wrong" for white collar workers to be remote while insisting that blue collar workers be fully p…
> Musk is clearly saying that it's "morally wrong" for white collar workers to be remote while insisting that blue collar workers be fully present.
If that is his justification then it's just as silly. Does Musk think it's morally wrong that white collar workers live in bigger homes than blue collar workers? That they send more of their kids to private school? Has Musk gone full communist?
Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
#175I still think out of all the...unique... things Elon has said... work from home is morally wrong has to take the cake. I try to spend time looking at things as radically as I can. I think it's helpful to accept folks views as widely as possible, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OHFt8QyiU I was on a bicycle ride listening to this intervie…
My two cents on this is that he is saying "working from home is morally wrong" - for his companies... but he left out the for his companies part.
He owns a car company and a space ship company - both of which have assembly lines with tons of workers. A majority of his employees will need to be working in a factory or with physical equipment/prototypes. Therefore they must be at the office or at the plant.
In that environment - allowing a small percentage of people to have the flexibility to work from home all the time, actually can seem amoral as that will create two classes of workers - the in-office class and the laptop WFH class - within the same company.
Friction could be generated if for instance the laptop class is making decisions/mistakes from the comfort of their PJs which negatively impacts the production line class. Its much easier to just make that 8% laptop class of the company RTO and experience the impact of their decisions.
Similar issues would be apparent at Amazon (distribution center workers versus AWS staff) and possibly Apple (i.e. HW Apple engineers have to be in office, but iCloud workers can WFH).
I think it'd be hard/impossible that a small cloud first company or small remote only startup like GitLabs would be amoral for being WFH.
Twitter could probably be WFH, but in order to make statement that would not possibly be construed as hypocritical he unfortunately can't make such a distinction.
Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
#176I still think out of all the...unique... things Elon has said... work from home is morally wrong has to take the cake. I try to spend time looking at things as radically as I can. I think it's helpful to accept folks views as widely as possible, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OHFt8QyiU I was on a bicycle ride listening to this intervie…
It's pretty textbook behaviour for narcissistic manipulators.
Harm the victim in some way, when victim complains about it, turn it around so as to frame it as the victim doing the wrong thing all along, and the victim should feel like a bad person.
Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
#177Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
#178Nobody felt entitled to WFH pre-2020. Not sure why a virus changes things
Likely two factors: The pandemic demonstrated that WFH works. The pandemic made people realize how bad America's world life balance is.
> The pandemic demonstrated that WFH works.
Can work.
“Works” isn’t correct as it’s obvious that it doesn’t just work. Some people don’t work well remotely. Collaboration is much harder remotely.
If you have clear work outlined working from home for some* people can be great cos they can focus well and get shit done and be super productive.
Other people cannot focus as well in a non work environment no matter how worky you make it. Being in the office gives them more focus.
Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
#179I still think out of all the...unique... things Elon has said... work from home is morally wrong has to take the cake. I try to spend time looking at things as radically as I can. I think it's helpful to accept folks views as widely as possible, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OHFt8QyiU I was on a bicycle ride listening to this intervie…
> when he said it and I literally pulled my bike over and sat for a half hour or so thinking Meta comment, but seriously? A comment from Elon made you pause your commute for 30 minutes? I can't imagine ever being this affected by a podcast.
Your response is interesting in its own right.
Half the fun of this life is exploring and questioning new ideas and podcasts are a great way to do that.
I don't think I pulled over, I've definitely spent some time sitting and thinking once I get to my destination
Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
#180I’m so proud of these workers uniting and fighting back on RTO mandates. It has been proven that knowledge workers can work productively and efficiently without being required to be in the office a set number of days.
Yeah fighting back, by walking out during lunch only if a thousand people sign the petition. So brave.
My good-faith two cents: one step is better than zero here, even if this isn’t, as you plainly state, much more than a hollow gesture. I doubt Amazon senior leadership are thrilled that this has been in the headlines since this past weekend.