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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

#371

Post by oceanplexian »

hot_gril wrote: post #65
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.

It’s got a good ring to it, but it sounds incredibly boneheaded.

In any business endeavor there is no leader or follower, there are a number of stakeholders with varying interests and proficiencies. Is “lead follow or get out of the way” something you would be embarrassed to tell a customer? An investor? Because customers and investors are stakeholders as well. The real world doesn’t look like an infantry boot camp.

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

#372

Post by ryaneager »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Y’all gonna unionize or what? It has to get old listening to edicts from the folks who filter up to the top. Could also investigate a constructive dismissal class action in the interim if you can find someone willing to take it on.

This has been what I’ve been hoping for. Can be make forming a union a SaaS product? Build a unionize social network that helps people assemble.

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

#373

Post by nielsbot »

skinnymuch wrote: post #353
toomuchtodo wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In contrast to "Socialism" (Big S), democratic socialism seems to be possible and provides evidence of effectiveness, with the Nordic Model being the reference example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

That’s Social Democracy which is just capitalism.

Surely "capitalism" and "socialism" aren't binary choices. You can have well-regulated capitalism where excess profits are channeled to help those who would otherwise be left to fend for themselves due to "not winning at capitalism"

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

#374

Post by nielsbot »

lr1970 wrote: post #336
jtode wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am incredibly in favour of unions in all industries, but this one I have serious doubts it will ever happen. I'm gonna be un-PC and reach for a metaphor involving slavery - not because I am comparing tech workers, of which I am one, to slaves, but because I think it's the best real-world example of how oppression is distributed by hubristic figureheads of feudalistic systems. If you ever saw Spike Lee's "Malcolm X"…

> If you want a just world, be a Socialist. Read Marx for real. And join the rest of the historically frustrated who will die watching humanity flagellate itself. If there's hope, it's in the proles. Socialism and Marxism were tried in 20-th century several times -- Russia, China, "Socialist Block" of East European countries under Soviet control, Cuba, etc. Somehow every attempt at creating a decent non-capitalist so…

Nobody (I don't think) is advocating for absolute socialism and the abolishment of capitalism. And I hope nobody is advocating for the opposite: absolute capitalism. Both leave lots of people in misery. Pointing to the failed examples of socialism and saying it can never work is not a serious argument.

Socialism has worked as intended in many places. Look at the nordic countries (as others have mentioned). Features of socialism are good and we should implemented the best parts.

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

#375

Post by polishdude20 »

GreenJon wrote: post #17
riscy wrote: post #7

> In July, leaked messages seen by Insider suggested that Amazon would force a “voluntary resignation” on employees [...] Is Amazon trying to avoid firing people to screw them out of unemployment benefits? No way a forced resignation is not the same as firing.

Reads exactly like that. Tighten the screws on the original benefits of working for them (either remote first or having transitioned to remote) and if the employee doesn’t leave you win because they’re in office. If they do, well, it doesn’t look as bad as another notch in the layoff tally because they jumped first.

At that point, why not just refuse to leave and continue from home until they are forced to fire you?

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

#376

Post by stilwelldotdev »

freilanzer wrote: post #361
stilwelldotdev wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, that's obviously true. There are a lot of companies out there that don't treat their employees like cattle who are eager to be driven from field to field. Impressively callous reply, though. Top notch heartlessness.

People don't seem to get sarcasm anymore.

You have to add a /s or something. There are too many people on the Internet who are broken like this.

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

#377

Post by P_I_Staker »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #128

I find the push for "back to the office" one of the most astonishing things to come out of corporate America. We've basically been moving to a model where people can work from home for a few decades. We're reached a point where it's not only feasible, but it's senseless to do otherwise for many positions. And then, suddenly and out of the blue, a lot of CEOs and upper management started demanding that employees go ba…

> I find the push for "back to the office" one of the most astonishing things to come out of corporate America.

Really? Because this was obvious to me from the beginning and ever since. When we were hearing "remote working is going so well" there was also a white hot labor market and companies wanted to keep employees on board. That an everyone was doing remote.

Now that full remote is less common they can do more and more. Executives were not happy with this from the beginning. Even team/department leads would often prefer commute themselves so they can see their team being good worker bees for them and see "who the lazy ones are".

Also, I haven't seen this mentioned much, but it gives them more power to claim someone is a bad worker. They can see them not at their desk, or write them up for not making it in, being late, etc.

There may be many companies that would never be this direct: you were late once, so here's a write-up, especially while other employees get a pass. In any case it gives a much better position to negotiate these things, however the employer chooses.

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

#378

Post by P_I_Staker »

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 get that “corporations are bad maaaan” and all the good people are dreamy socialists…

I have to object to your tone. In addition to the arguments you typically hear about uprooting people's lives, this is an extremely deadly policy.

What do you have to say for the people that are going to die because of this? There will be more cancer and disease. The planet will be further damaged. We will be killed, maimed, torn to shreds, and/or burned to death en masse.

This is not a small issue. This is slaughter for the aggrandizement of a few privileged individuals egos.

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

#379

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

nmhancoc wrote: post #370
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Of all the “highly intellectual” people here, you were one of the only to partially attempt a steelman. You know how I know that WFH side isn’t saying using the whole truth? They never look bad. No one ever says “I’m definitely only working half time, but they’re getting enough work from me so it’s fine” or “I’m being paid more and work less, they’re so clueless they have no idea” , or ”I know a lot of people…

> You know how I know that WFH side isn’t saying using the whole truth? They never look bad. I think this is a fair criticism but has an understandable explanation. What counts as abuse is not clear cut. 1. With respect to people working half time, you’re going to get push back that people do that in the office as well (inflate estimates and slack or whatever), they just then occupy themselves chatting with coworkers…

I would say working another job is abuse sometimes. My job, and my employees think about the work in our off time. It’s a small team and we have big goals. If any of us had time for another job, we wouldn’t be giving this one our all.

Some companies and people are fine with that. Over-employment is worth consideration.

But I think something that is overlooked here is that if you aren’t doing good work, or going all in on everything you do - do something else.

I see no one arguing that. Just “I deserve to work from home because I want to” without any possible consideration to either objectivity of their time /output, reality that a LOT of people scam, or empathy with what these same people would do/think if it was them calling the shots.

WFH people never look bad. Look at this entire thread to find one person that bucks that trend.

If one side is always right, and the other side is always wrong - that just sounds like game to me.

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

#380

Post by cmpbl »

vagab0nd wrote: post #89
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."

The Amazon LPs has to be the most blatant corporate brain-washing tool ever invented. Put aside the contradicting nature between the LPs themselves, they are almost exclusively used for the benefit of the company and at the expense of the employees. It's also served as a hiring filter, and probably a very good one at that.

(Former Amazon) Tenets in general, including the LPs, are valuable as a common decision-making framework. Amazon is a leader in laying those out there for all to read (including on their public website). People would frequently refer to the LPs in resolving difficult debates, and I valued them.

Amazon is Amazon because it gets things done. Certainly many at Amazon circa 2000s thought AWS was an incredible boondoggle and risk. "We sell books, why the hell would we sink capital into renting servers." Surely those same people disagreed and committed. Others have probably disagreed and committed to ideas that did prove to be terrible. But you increase your success rate by increasing your attempt rate... and nothing interesting happens at a stand still.

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