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Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

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Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#311

Post by shard »

andsoitis wrote: post #308
scott_w wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to the dictionary, morality is simply “ principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.” Right/wrong in this case are meant in the sense of "it's wrong to murder people" as opposed to "saying 2 + 2 = 5 is wrong." The former is a statement of morality, the latter is a statement of correctness. This does not link productivity / morality. > Some would say that choosing…

> This is different from choosing a path you prefer, that happens to be less productive. In the context of one's life, I agree fully. However, once you choose to work in a collective, choosing to be less productive without a positive tradeoff to the system, harms the ones around you.

The positive tradeoff to the system is that the employee who prefers to WFH is happier and less stressed, which leads to increased productivity and retention. Now whether this offsets the decreased productivity from not being there in person, that's what's being argued over.

Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#312

Post by shard »

smeej wrote: post #280
danjac wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt there are that many Boomers left in tech management - almost all that age cohort are in retirement or semi-retired, they're enjoying their Saga cruises and golf courses (or if they're unlucky, their Walmart greeter jobs). I suspect there are managers panicking about losing relevance in a post-office world, but those will be middle-managers, not CEOs. Much of the panic is from owners of commercial real estate…

I'm specifically talking about the middle managers. They're the ones who need to be seen "doing things," so when it's time to surface any ideas for how to fix the problem, especially when it's their butts on the line, this is what comes out. But I also refer to the boards and investors. We'd love to think it's all a young person's VC game, but behind all that money is still, more often than not, someone who panics in…

Baby Boomer generation is 1946-1964, which would make them 59-77. I expect only the younger range is likely to still be middle managers.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the use of "boomer" as a derogative to be reductionist and ageist, not to mention most of the time incorrect, as I've seen it applied all the way to Millennials.

Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#313

Post by danaris »

cortesoft wrote: post #163
kcplate wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s my opinion that people feel like they are more productive at WFH, but it’s a bit of a hard metric to actually measure. I get the sense that the freedom and flexibility might create a feeling of personal productivity to accomplish many things (not just career related) they couldn’t before WFH, but as for job productivity…I bet it’s probably a wash overall. I say this as a remote worker who wouldn’t want to RTO—be…

I have been WFH since the pandemic, and I have grown used to it. My company doesn’t even have offices anymore. However, last week we had a happy hour to all meet in person, and I had a 20 minute conversation with someone about a work topic, and it was amazing how much productive information we were able to share with each other in such a short time. It was just easier to work through things in person than on slack or…

But this is not a universal thing.

I have absolutely no problem shooting the shit over text, voice, or video chat, and since I went mostly-remote, I have had a number of highly productive conversations over Zoom that looked a lot like a typical casual interaction resulting in good brainstorming. In fact, some of those times, it was even easier to communicate what we needed because one or another of us could share our screens (which is fine in person when you happen to be at someone's desk, or carrying your laptop with you, but if you just run into each other at the water cooler, it often requires a "hey, I'll send you that thing when I get back to my desk and we can continue this over email" or whatever).

I think the biggest thing that far too many RTO proponents fail to understand is that different people work differently, have different experiences, and need different environments to be most effective. This has been hidden to a large extent by the fact that (nearly) everyone has been required to work in an office, but now that we've all experienced something different, many of us have seen firsthand that we can do just as well or even so much better if we're not forced into a particular box.

Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#314

Post by TheCoelacanth »

andsoitis wrote: post #293
scott_w wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billionaires own the most widely circulated print media in the U.K. so it doesn’t seem impossible that this agenda is being influenced. Especially when those exact papers spilt a lot of ink telling people to “get back to work” despite the fact those people were always working during the pandemic.

> Billionaires own the most widely circulated print media in the U.K. It seems natural that whoever owns the “most widely circulated print media” would be rich, no?

Certainly, and there is nothing wrong with pointing out that a publication is biased is favor of its owner's interests.

Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#315

Post by s1artibartfast »

rayiner wrote: post #301
klipklop wrote: post #199

The amount of class warfare here is hilarious. Will you really parrot elite coined phrases like “laptop class?” What even is the laptop class? It’s a meaningless term created so it’s easier to dehumanize a group of people that have a massive salary range. There are WFH making $50k. They are not all vest and resters. Do we really need to make the conversation be about the upper middle class being “lazy” and completely…

The laptop class’s interests are closely intertwined with those of the billionaires. When billionaires offshored jobs to China, there was an army of laptop class people who helped them do it. And they collectively benefit very much from the economic changes that have fueled billionaires’ fortunes. The top 10% have an annual income of over $6 trillion. The total income of all US billionaires is less than half a trilli…

This is only half the story. Government share of GDP and real dollar Revenue has also vastly increased since the 1970s. Redistributive policies and spending have had a massive increase.

Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#316

Post by whimsicalism »

flagrant_taco wrote: post #283
sacnoradhq wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writers gonna artist. I wouldn't take it as anything but a colorful metaphor. The strata who should be rightfully derided are the chauffeured-and-business-jet-class who have an embarrassingly-low tax rate while concentrating and keeping vast amounts of profits. Nearly 60% of the post-pandemic inflation was due to the profit price spiral. The "wage spiral" is a delusion and layoffs aren't actually necessary. They're b…

> Nearly 60% of the post-pandemic inflation was due to the profit price spiral. Any chance you have a source for this? I haven't seen that stat before and an not quite sure how we'd know that, or if the profit spiral was itself a side effect of monetary policy throwing new money into the system.

It's BS, "wage profit spiral"

Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#317

Post by seattle_spring »

postalrat wrote: post #299
seattle_spring wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire sentence could be interpreted a dozen different ways. I'd like to know precisely what you mean without having to assume.

People working from home can be as productive and efficient as they were in the office but the majority of them choose not to be.

What non-anecdotal evidence of that being a widespread truth do you have?

Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#318

Post by smeej »

shard wrote: post #312
smeej wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm specifically talking about the middle managers. They're the ones who need to be seen "doing things," so when it's time to surface any ideas for how to fix the problem, especially when it's their butts on the line, this is what comes out. But I also refer to the boards and investors. We'd love to think it's all a young person's VC game, but behind all that money is still, more often than not, someone who panics in…

Baby Boomer generation is 1946-1964, which would make them 59-77. I expect only the younger range is likely to still be middle managers. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the use of "boomer" as a derogative to be reductionist and ageist, not to mention most of the time incorrect, as I've seen it applied all the way to Millennials.

They've been criticizing my generation for receiving the "participation trophies" they gave us as kids, as well as screwing over our entire economy with shortsighted self-protectionism, so I definitely mean it in a derogatory way against people their age.

To be fair, I criticize them for the shit they did when they were my age too, so I'm criticizing them as a cohort, not because of their current age.

Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#319

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

scott_w wrote: post #260
somethoughts wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

But those aren’t moral issues, they’re productivity issues. My younger brother used to do his computer job from the office because it was attached to the factory. It meant he could talk directly with the people manufacturing the steel frames he specified in the building dressing to get the right thing built quickly. This was a USP of the company vs other design shops. This could be true for Tesla, there’s no morality…

> those aren’t moral issues

I think you may have missed the issues they intended to bring up. The moral issues I see could be that you might have one class of worker ("knowledge worker") who is able to work from home and another class of worker who is unable to work from home. It's along the lines of the difference between paid catering for the executive suite but not the rest of the office.

Re: Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies

#320

Post by postalrat »

seattle_spring wrote: post #317
postalrat wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People working from home can be as productive and efficient as they were in the office but the majority of them choose not to be.

What non-anecdotal evidence of that being a widespread truth do you have?

What non-anecdotal evidence of the original claim being a widespread truth do you have?
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