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Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

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Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#61

Post by dividefuel »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #29

Isn’t there anyone that can steelman the WFH situation? Twitter, Amazon, Zoom, others are all ending or limiting their WFH programs. Doesn’t that tell anyone that there MIGHT be facts or at least good research on this that it isn’t producing good work for the money? I get that “corporations are bad maaaan” and all the good people are dreamy socialists… but what if you are wrong and it isn’t more effective?

Shouldn't that burden be on the company? If they're shifting the working model, which is a major upheaval for those affected, shouldn't they cite some clear facts or research on why? It seems like all I've seen is platitudes about the magic of working together face-to-face, rather than hard data.

I would think the steelman for WFH is the significant number of employees who clearly prefer it.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#62

Post by unforeseen9991 »

sokoloff wrote: post #18
grepfru_it wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants to say they got fired from Amazon. If the writing is on the wall, a silent majority will jump ship.

Of all the major tech companies, telling someone I was fired from Amazon would be the least embarrassing/most understandable company to say I was fired from. Especially if the story was "I lived 125 miles away from the Amazon office where my team was and they implemented a return-to-office mandate."

As a hiring manager I'd be curious what was wrong with you to work there in the first place

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#63

Post by GoodJokes »

reilly3000 wrote: post #30
hinkley wrote: post #5

> Jassy reportedly said his decision to have employees return to the office was a “judgment call” and that employees can leave if they don’t want to comply. Amazon is having trouble scouting warehouse labor. Looks like they're trying to add skilled labor to the set of problems.

I think it already is. Their culture issues have made attracting fresh talent hard more expensive. I think this direction will haunt them, especially as they find themselves in 4th place at best in AI spend, which is likely the biggest incremental IT budget driver in this decade. It’s the wrong time to scare off good talent with bad edicts. You would have to at least double my salary for me to consider working at Ama…

[dead]

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#64

Post by unforeseen9991 »

oldoracle wrote: post #25

Hilarious to me Oracle has no issue with remote work while Apple, Amazon, Google, all flip out Deals they cut, whether it’s leases or tax breaks, are not my responsibility. Aside from Apple, the only thing the anti-remote places have is brand recognition. The knowledge they possess is worker knowledge. They’re having a hard time justifying valuations since their real social value is corralling workers who are then to…

I wonder how much real estate Oracle owns compared to the others?

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#65

Post by hot_gril »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #8

I don't know the origins of the "disagree and commit" philosophy, but Jassy's use seems like a self-serving perversion of what is an attempt at dealing with decision deadlock. ... that is, disagree-and-commit transactionally seems like it ought to be between peers. Disagree-and-commit when applied between superiors and reports could be rewritten as just "shut up and follow orders."

It's similar to "lead, follow, or get out of the way," but I prefer that version cause it's less confusing and doesn't sound like technical jargon.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#66

Post by hot_gril »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #43
taurath wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just disagreeing and committing is the new “just following orders”

That’s a ridiculous comparison. “just following orders” is very much shorthand for following morally heinous decisions because you were asked to. In that case you disagree and quit. If you’re braver than most people you blow a whistle, etc. Just following orders is not about working arrangements in a corporation. And if you do find working arrangements morally heinous then you disagree and quit.

It's assumed that you follow orders up to a certain point. You'll be told every day to do something you don't totally agree with (but isn't criminal), and you should do it anyway without dwelling on it too much, which maybe sounds obvious but some people really dwell.

Except, moving cities isn't a small decision you accept without considering quitting.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#68

Post by fnordpiglet »

hinkley wrote: post #6
sokoloff wrote: post #2

#disagree-and-commute

I have yet to work at a place where 'disagree and commit' did not devolve into 'shut up and code'. It seems to be one of those things that looks good on paper and is rotten in practice.

To be fair Amazon really does encourage disagreement. But at some point a decisions is made and they want people to lean into it. Sometimes it can feel like shut up and code, but that’s not the rule.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#69

Post by jaktet »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #29

Isn’t there anyone that can steelman the WFH situation? Twitter, Amazon, Zoom, others are all ending or limiting their WFH programs. Doesn’t that tell anyone that there MIGHT be facts or at least good research on this that it isn’t producing good work for the money? I get that “corporations are bad maaaan” and all the good people are dreamy socialists… but what if you are wrong and it isn’t more effective?

I think it will be difficult to find supporting data that mandates all employees across every team are required to be in office 3 days a week. Given the related news about downtown areas where the offices are facing issues with lack of consumer foot traffic and increased issues with crime and social issues, it’s seems more likely at this time the decision is being made because of pressure from local governments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/118ihq1/seattle_ma...

https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/02/25/cities-cant-rely-o...

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-mayo...

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-27/nordstro...

Additionally managers have typically been empowered to evaluate the effectiveness of their teams and their performance, but now an external metric is being forced on them without much visibility into the metrics themselves (e.g. badge in counts for their reports, how WFH while sick but not taking a sick day affects the metric, or various other circumstances). In my experience and prior to the pandemic, whether you were in the office or not was up to whatever discussions you’ve had with your manager, and it some cases there were employees that were allowed to work from home (or other states) based on the needs for that team.

So to me this isn’t returning back to how things used to be, it’s setting a new mandate that drastically impacts an agreement and expectations between the organization that hired the employee and the employee themselves without any data supporting the decision or consideration for what a team actually needs.

Re: Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out

#70

Post by sokoloff »

dekhn wrote: post #51
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #8

I don't know the origins of the "disagree and commit" philosophy, but Jassy's use seems like a self-serving perversion of what is an attempt at dealing with decision deadlock. ... that is, disagree-and-commit transactionally seems like it ought to be between peers. Disagree-and-commit when applied between superiors and reports could be rewritten as just "shut up and follow orders."

I don't do disagree and commit. If I disagree and get asked to commit to something I don't agree with, I start my search for a new role immediately. This has been an option throughout my career, and I think many people simply don't have that option, especially early in their career.

Tabs vs spaces, braces on the line above or a line by themselves, allowing implicit true/false vs requiring a leading 0 != in c/c++, function naming conventions, documentation system conventions, etc., etc. Sure, you could quit every time you disagreed with any of those decisions, but that seems like a lot of wasted effort and time. For all of those, I could disagree and commit to working collaboratively on the team that had made a decision other than the one I preferred.
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