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Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

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Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#181

Post by strivingtobe »

> We want to operate like the world’s largest startup

It's always amusing when a multi-decade-old, multi-hundred-billion-dollar company says stuff like this. You're not a startup. You never will be.

And if you were, you probably would actually offer perks in your offices that might actually encourage people to be there. Instead, the only perk that Amazon has is that you get one free coffee per day, and even that they have tried to remove multiple times.

I've never seen a company where it seemed more like the leadership of the company actively despises the employees that worked for them. Between stuff like this and the incessant pushing of Amazon Q against everyone's will, it's really apparent that Amazon execs think that having to employ humans as SDE is a defect they're trying to get rid of ASAP.

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#182

Post by BeetleB »

Xeronate wrote: post #151
pknomad wrote: post #117

Genuine question for the folks over at Amazon: What is the value of working at Amazon (or even just AWS) these days? Every now and then I get a ring from a recruiter gauging my interest and sometimes I get the itch to just to go through the process so that I can have a FAANG in my resume. I've heard from others that Amazon could be an amazing place to work, citing fantastic colleagues and work opportunities. But then…

i worked there for a couple years. wasn’t terrible, money was fair, and people i meet always seem impressed when i mention i used to work at amazon music which is kind of nice. i’ve got recruiters saying i can go back without a real interview because i left less than a year ago and i might go back. it’s really not any different than any other programming job i’ve had.

How did you like their benefits? For me, PTO is the main reason I avoid Amazon. I get 20 days a year, not counting sick days. I think Amazon is still stuck at 15 days[1], and almost no sick leave.

[1] 10 days for the first year

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#183

Post by hiddencost »

wwarner wrote: post #150
pelagic_sky wrote: post #99

I see Mayor Bruce Harrell rubbing his hands together as he slowly nods in approval of all this. Hopefully where I work doesn't try to pull this off. At least my manager would not like it one bit seeing as their commute is already 50 min one way 2 to 3 times a week. But who am I kidding, it will probably happen and then I get to sit on video calls in the office with all the people I collaborate with across the states…

well, without people working downtown, it will be abandoned to drug addicts in a spiral of insufficient public safety resources and declining revenue. so i don’t blame him.

Or maybe all of the ridiculous pressure from sky high salaries and no affordable housing led to the homeless population...

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#184

Post by dymk »

indigodaddy wrote: post #102
obnauticus wrote: post #94

At least they get to keep their two days of WFH. New policy - five days RTO, two days WFH, per week.

I chuckle but this may not be far off?

I've had a disturbingly large number of friends cancel on weekend or late evening plans because something at Amazon broke, and they had to drive into a downtown office to fix it.

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#185

Post by wojciii »

Plasmoid wrote: post #68

I wonder if engineers are going to start refusing to do on-call. "Sorry, it's going to take me an hour to get to the office because I'm not allowed to work remotely".

On call? I never had to do any kind of support of any of the software products that I worked on. Why would you waste eng time on something as trivial as support?

Is this an American corporate thing?

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#186

Post by rty32 »

snapcaster wrote: post #87

I have yet to see metrics cited by any of these announcements. Do people think that's because: a). They don't have metrics, and all the cynics are right about this being vibes based b). They actually do have the data, and it's very grim for how poorly people on average perform when WFH but don't want to share it due to sensitivity or something Like, i'm actually pro Work From Office (don't yell at me, i joined a comp…

c) They don't have metrics and will never have, because the only thing they have is "of course the real intent is to quietly forcing people to quit. what else do you think is happening here?"

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#187

Post by malfist »

adabyron wrote: post #167

The irony here... "On the first topic, we’ve always sought to hire very smart, high judgment, inventive, delivery-focused, and missionary teammates. And, we have always wanted the people doing the actual detailed work to have high ownership." Then shortly later.. "We are also going to bring back assigned desk arrangements" So they hire smart people with great judgement who have high ownership but also treat them like…

Butts in seats as a KPI is the definition of "Day 2 culture"

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#188

Post by irrational »

tdeck wrote: post #135
pknomad wrote: post #117

Genuine question for the folks over at Amazon: What is the value of working at Amazon (or even just AWS) these days? Every now and then I get a ring from a recruiter gauging my interest and sometimes I get the itch to just to go through the process so that I can have a FAANG in my resume. I've heard from others that Amazon could be an amazing place to work, citing fantastic colleagues and work opportunities. But then…

If you work in Seattle it's one of only a few options. A lot of folks in the Bay Area (including former me) don't understand how much of a monoculture this place is. There are really only 2 major places to work as a software engineer and very few startups or small companies. Nearly every SWE I meet works at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Meta (the last 2 have smaller offices here).

Not as much of a monoculture as Portland. Portland has Intel (where they are in the process of laying off tens of thousands of people), Nike (where they just went through layoffs and aren't hiring), and... not much else.

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#189

Post by strivingtobe »

pknomad wrote: post #117

Genuine question for the folks over at Amazon: What is the value of working at Amazon (or even just AWS) these days? Every now and then I get a ring from a recruiter gauging my interest and sometimes I get the itch to just to go through the process so that I can have a FAANG in my resume. I've heard from others that Amazon could be an amazing place to work, citing fantastic colleagues and work opportunities. But then…

Money, mostly.

But also: working at AWS is genuinely really interesting at a technical level. Very few companies operate at the scale that AWS does, and being able to have technical documentation about the underlying workings of EC2 or IAM at your fingertips, or even just listen in on root cause discussions or technical analysis of incidents, or read the technical details of a new design in a service that saves hundreds of millions of dollars per month or day, is something that really scratches my engineer itch.

Amazon and AWS really have the potential to be a great place to work, but leadership just squanders it. That's what makes announcements like this even more painful.

Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week

#190

Post by colmmacc »

pknomad wrote: post #117

Genuine question for the folks over at Amazon: What is the value of working at Amazon (or even just AWS) these days? Every now and then I get a ring from a recruiter gauging my interest and sometimes I get the itch to just to go through the process so that I can have a FAANG in my resume. I've heard from others that Amazon could be an amazing place to work, citing fantastic colleagues and work opportunities. But then…

I've worked at Amazon (and AWS) for over 16 years and have made many friends, and it's how I met my wife. What's always kept me here is that it's been fun the whole time, with meaningful problems and opportunities that move the needle for so many customers.

So many modern experiences that are built into our improved quality of lives; apps on phones that can know my tastes and preferences, hailing a cab virtually, a bonkers level of selection of goods to all consumers, low friction same-day delivery, far greater access to online services including education and financing, just wouldn't exist (or at least not as quickly) if weren't able to cut down so many old-school structures and replace them with much more efficient and available alternatives. Getting to create a transformation in digital infrastructure and logistics at that level is just nuts. And there's still plenty to do. The money is great too; a far better result for me financially than the startups I worked at.

But all that said; Amazon isn't for everyone. It's probably not for most people. I don't mean that in the "Amazon only hires the best" sense. That's true, but so do the other big tech companies. It's more that you have to be a particular combination of driven and outcome focused with a relentless tolerance or even insatiable need for urgency, hard work, and trade-offs.

If that resonated, and you have an opportunity to join Amazon towards the middle or advanced stages of your career; definitely try to do it. I interviewed several times at Amazon to get in. But if you are at the earlier stages of your career; choose your team and manager very carefully and care a bit less about the company you join. That will make a bigger difference.

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