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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

#71

Post by SoftTalker »

Shekelphile wrote: post #52
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?

> 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'd wager that most people are just as productive or more productive when WFH, but there will always be unethical people who will abuse the privilege when given the chance. There are tons of anecdotes of people just being straight up lazy, defeating naive monitoring solutions with mo…

I'd take the other side of that wager. I think most people who can WFH are doing as little as possible.

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

#72

Post by oldoracle »

unforeseen9991 wrote: post #64
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?

US list is online: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/contact/field-offices.html

I never went to one of their offices. Probably boring office park vibes. Unlike the space donut and amusement parks it sounds like Apple and Google workers require to crank leetcode

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

#73

Post by sokoloff »

dividefuel wrote: post #61
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.

Is it good for the employee and good for the company, good for the employee and neutral for the company, or good for the employee and bad for the company?

In all those cases, I'd expect employees to prefer it, but I can see the company having quite different views across the various scenarios.

For myself, I thought I'd absolutely hate working from home full-time. It turns out I love it. I don't think it's obviously good for the company, but I'm not sure how bad vs neutral vs epsilon-positive it is.

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

#74

Post by dekhn »

sokoloff wrote: post #70
dekhn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Disagree and commit isn't about minor style guide details.

It's about making major strategic decisions that affect lots of people.

(I should have thought this would be obvious from context)

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

#75

Post by The_Fox »

hot_gril wrote: post #23

Near the end of 2022, I got an offer at Amazon for a remote SWE role. The negotiations afterwards gave me the idea that eventual RTO was their goal. They said they had plenty of remote-friendly teams and started setting up manager interviews. Then one by one, they called back to say that team was either no longer hiring remotely or outright frozen. Even the ones that said they had team members all over the world. A f…

I had a similar experience for an SDM role at about the same time. Through all the interviews it was a remote role, then after letting me think about the offer for the weekend, they change the offer to onsite. "Do you want 6 months to move to Vancouver?" they said. Um, thanks but no thanks. I told my kids we'd feel like we have less money in the end if we had to live in Vancouver.

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

The_Fox wrote: post #75
hot_gril wrote: post #23

Near the end of 2022, I got an offer at Amazon for a remote SWE role. The negotiations afterwards gave me the idea that eventual RTO was their goal. They said they had plenty of remote-friendly teams and started setting up manager interviews. Then one by one, they called back to say that team was either no longer hiring remotely or outright frozen. Even the ones that said they had team members all over the world. A f…

I had a similar experience for an SDM role at about the same time. Through all the interviews it was a remote role, then after letting me think about the offer for the weekend, they change the offer to onsite. "Do you want 6 months to move to Vancouver?" they said. Um, thanks but no thanks. I told my kids we'd feel like we have less money in the end if we had to live in Vancouver.

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by sokoloff »

dekhn wrote: post #74
sokoloff wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Disagree and commit isn't about minor style guide details. It's about making major strategic decisions that affect lots of people. (I should have thought this would be obvious from context)

Disagree and commit is ideally suited for something like the tabs vs spaces or other style guide debates where there's no obviously/universally best answer. It's more important that all devs in a given file (at least) are using the same convention and people have different opinions about it. Have the discussion (the time to disagree), make and publish a decision, expect everyone to commit to the made decision.

Every time the style guide says something that you didn't like, that you argued against, and you vigorously comply anyway, you've just disagreed and committed. Like you're supposed to as a professional in minor matters.

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

#79

Post by fnordpiglet »

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?

They can’t point to evidence of any improvement in productivity. I know from my sitting in the senior megacorp meetings planning these things there is no data backing the decisions. It’s almost entirely based on an emotional feeling that the corporate culture they grew up in won’t exist any more in a remote first culture. They’re likely right. But there’s no evidence it’ll impact productivity and there’s lots of evidence it’ll improve profits as real estate expenses and facilities are significant percentages of employee compensation.

On the other hand we had plenty of convincing data that when employees can choose their work style they perform much better individually and as a team.

My theory is that in five years when emotions have cooled and “culture” hand waving is a bit tired, and tax breaks have expired, cold hard money will win the argument and we will be in a “Bring Your Own Office” world.

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

#80

Post by oldoracle »

gumballindie wrote: post #32
ggm wrote: post #16

You think Amazon legals aren't all over this? It would be silly to assume the NLRB has a lay down misere here. I would be thinking they were in from the start. I would love this to wind up as a driver for Unionisation but in this context I can't believe no legal input has been made to the CEOs office about consequences for his words, if truly as reported.

What consequences? Elon Musk demonstrated quite clearly there are none and that software engineers are just workers. There is no bargaining power. If people dare speak against the new status quo the controlled media proceeds with threats of ai replacement. This is the new norm.

Xitter ditched thousands of devs and it still runs as a technical thing. The market for devs is over-saturated with boot campers and band wagoners due to the money printer bubble.

AI that can replace basic frontend work is not far off. AI that can generate 3D worlds is not far (I’m working on a version myself to later open source). AI may get facts in language wrong and never be AGI, but the color gradients and geometry we find makes acceptable UI is a finite set and deal with human UI glitches all the time.

Government and big tech are facing a prisoners dilemma with AI and trying to slow down the inevitable by disrupting progress. They’ll project memes that sound reasonable relative to spoken traditions in business and government, largely due to having no idea what else to do/say.

I say we all quit and focus on open source AI, let Jassy and Bezos work the warehouse. But I have enough years behind me to have just enough to have FU money. It’s easy for me to say that.

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