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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

#211

Post by softwaredoug »

ghaff wrote: post #205
softwaredoug wrote: post #177

Given recent Big Tech behavior -- ie Amazon hiring based on work flexibility , then laying people off, then switching to RTO, who would trust these companies enough to move across the country for a role? In my (40 yo+) peer group people have largely settled down somewhere not near a home office during the pandemic. People have the entire cost structure of home ownership, day care, and commuting built around not needi…

>open more regional branch offices To what end? If most of the people you work with are scattered around different regional branch offices, what's the point of going into the nearest one other than to have basically a company-supplied co-working space?

Yeah you can't entirely cover the globe. But you CAN offer people more affordable areas to live in.

Even if you had a regional office a few hours away, its possible to go in once a week even.

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

#212

Post by innagadadavida »

lapcat wrote: post #121

Jassy said the quiet part out loud and admitted what I've always suspected, that most CEOs don't have original thoughts, instead governing by groupthink: > Other company CEOs helped Jassy make up his mind too. Jassy spoke to "60 to 80 CEOs of other companies over the last 18 months," and "virtually all of them" preferred in-office work, he said. I bet that none of those individual CEOs could empirically prove that re…

Not a fan of executives or management but there literally are two groups - RTO and non-RTO. Employees largely prefer one option and management the other. So effectively you have two group-thinks going on. Are you saying management should change their stance or are there other non-group think options here?

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

#213

Post by BitwiseFool »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #146
Roark66 wrote: post #118

I heard many times Amazon is a pretty bad place to work at. I wonder what percentage of people will decide to leave because of this. As someone who has been 100% remote for 6 years I can say with confidence, there are people that work best remote, and there are these that work best in the office. It is also a function of your seniority level (I'd much prefer to be on site as a trainee/junior). But forcing a one size…

One anecdotal data point: I was contacted last week by an Amazon recruiter. Although I'm unemployed, I didn't pursue that opening because of Amazon's overall reputation. If they still allowed mostly remote work, I would have just told her that I wasn't interested at this time . I.e., if I'm still unemployed in a month, I might suck it up and apply. But the non-WFH policy was the final nail in the coffin. I asked her…

I've heard a lot of developers know that Amazon is a terrible company to work for, but having Amazon on your resume is a career booster. So they'll work there for a year or two just to enhance their future job prospects. Is this still true?

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

#214

Post by jaimebuelta »

SilverBirch wrote: post #176

To be honest I think 3 days a week in the office is a perfectly reasonable requirement. It gives enough opportunity for people to get face to face time and to build the relationships they need to build whilst still offering flexibility. Should it be combined with some flexibility for edge cases? Sure, managers will always turn a blind eye when it makes sense. And part of that is you can only have flexibility if the b…

Well, it depends. They set the policy to say you should go work 3 days a week at the office even if you are a single member of a team in a different country. Something that's not so rare, after the pandemic and the way the teams are configured multi-region.

They claimed that it will make you learn the culture, just by working in the office, but having Chime meetings with your team, etc. And there was not (as much as I know) any interest in trying to "reshuffle" teams to be more geographically closer...

It doesn't really make much sense to me

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

#215

Post by brewdad »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #181
catiopatio wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking salaried employees to spend three days in the office isn’t exploitative, and it’s certainly not equivalent to mass layoffs or termination without cause.

In many cases, asking salaried employees to spend three days in the office is constructive dismissal [0]. Those employees may have moved to places with cheaper housing. They may have multi-hour commutes, kids in new schools, and may have just paid the high fixed costs of a real estate transaction - because they were told they did not need to come into the office. It may be infeasible for them to come back, so they'll…

Those people made a choice to uproot their lives completely of their own volition. Sometimes those choices don't work out and they always come with consequences.

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

#216

Post by martinald »

offbyone wrote: post #158

If you want my cynical take, here's the real reason that Amazon and other big companies are all-in on RTO: the commercial real estate collapse that may (will?) happen if downtown office districts don't repopulate: https://wapo.st/3QXHpFT I think the reason that Amazon leadership isn't bringing data to support RTO is that not only are they aware of the "Urban Doom Loop” that this article is referring to, but I'd bet y…

This doesn't make sense to me. Firstly I'd be surprised if Amazon execs thought it was a good idea to get massively into CRE even pre pandemic given that Amazon/ecom was really starting to bite into CRE values with the shift to online shopping. A lot of retail space was starting to tank well before the pandemic hit.

Secondly, even if you did have a load of CRE investments, you are likely to have more in AMZN stock itself. Surely you'd prioritise AMZN over one of your investments if you were an exec?

Finally, commercial real estate is a large but niche asset class, typically held by pension funds wanting very long term income sources. I believe in the US there are lot of tax advantages you can take too, but they only apply to people that are primarily active in real estate, which would be a pretty hard push with the IRS if you were a c-suite amazon exec.

My view (being remote first/only for many many years) is that WFH can work really well with the right team and culture, but hybrid doesn't. It's hard to get everyone on the same page when some are remote and some are WFH, plus it means doing loads of calls in the office when you are there with WFH people - which there aren't enough meeting rooms for. It's a mess.

So, given most CEOs of large companies aren't going to commit to remote-only, which is too scary for them, in office will continue. I personally expect 4 days to become the norm in most companies (it was already moving that way pre covid, at least in London, with a lot of people WFH on Fridays).

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

#217

Post by Civil7598 »

bluefishinit wrote: post #198
SilverBirch wrote: post #176

To be honest I think 3 days a week in the office is a perfectly reasonable requirement. It gives enough opportunity for people to get face to face time and to build the relationships they need to build whilst still offering flexibility. Should it be combined with some flexibility for edge cases? Sure, managers will always turn a blind eye when it makes sense. And part of that is you can only have flexibility if the b…

> To be honest I think 3 days a week in the office is a perfectly reasonable requirement. It's not reasonable because it means you have to live within commuting distance of the office.

yeah, it's not a big deal for people that are already there or were already commuting, maybe. But there were so many people hired, told they can work remote, and now are told they must uproot their and their family's life or be without a job.

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

#218

Post by martinald »

rco8786 wrote: post #183
offbyone wrote: post #158

If you want my cynical take, here's the real reason that Amazon and other big companies are all-in on RTO: the commercial real estate collapse that may (will?) happen if downtown office districts don't repopulate: https://wapo.st/3QXHpFT I think the reason that Amazon leadership isn't bringing data to support RTO is that not only are they aware of the "Urban Doom Loop” that this article is referring to, but I'd bet y…

> C-suite (S-team) has a significant investment in commercial real estate. Amazon itself is holding ~$92B worth of buildings on its balance sheet, you can imagine a large chunk of that is commercial.

But Amazon could liquidate it all and make enormous cost savings going remote only if they wanted to. I'm sure any loss they would take would be recouped by reduction in office costs and access to cheaper workforces outside of Seattle etc very quickly. It doesn't make sense.

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

#219

Post by dangerlibrary »

brewdad wrote: post #215
dangerlibrary wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases, asking salaried employees to spend three days in the office is constructive dismissal [0]. Those employees may have moved to places with cheaper housing. They may have multi-hour commutes, kids in new schools, and may have just paid the high fixed costs of a real estate transaction - because they were told they did not need to come into the office. It may be infeasible for them to come back, so they'll…

Those people made a choice to uproot their lives completely of their own volition. Sometimes those choices don't work out and they always come with consequences.

It's not obvious to me why you made this comment in this thread. Are you under the impression I would disagree?

Making choices based on the best information you have, because your employer provided it to you, and then having your life unilaterally uprooted by that same employer seems like a bad thing. It also seems like something that an employer should probably explain / justify with a business reason other than "vibes" and "everyone else is doing it." If the employer doesn't do the bare minimum to even explain the decision to the employee, people are gonna use words like "exploitative behavior" and "kinda fucked up" and I'm going to agree with them.

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