Demanding that folks work in the office 5 days a week does not make sense.
Might be an extreme take but, I think engineers have some onus to stop agreeing to work there, lest the amazon corporate culture spreads further.
Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
221–230 of 1001 posts
Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
#222So any time Amazon make any noise about doing something "for the environment" you can basically just point out they are full of shit. It probably takes a dozen electric cars to offset the carbon saving of just not going into the office.
That's a really difficult comparison to nail down and is heavily dependent on assumptions you make of the alternate reality you compare against.
Does Amazon shutdown all of their office buildings completely? Do employees still leave home and work out of shared office spaces that they prefer to home or the Amazon campus? How do you factor in things like HVAC costs for individual home offices versus a main campus building? For electric cars as the unit of measure, are they new? How do you account for production costs? What power source is charging the cars?
Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
#223Reducing the number of managers is an interesting decision. I briefly worked at Amazon, and the only way for managers to get promoted is by hiring more people under them. There isn’t any other way to get promoted, which incentivizes managers to grow their teams and sometimes add features that may not make sense. Any opinions from ex-Amazonians?
Headcount based promos is the most backwards system out there. But Amazon is too dysfunctional to change.
It can make sense when done right. If the team grows organically in response to the work, rather than work increasing to grow the team, it can make sense to reorg the team and often internal promotions can make that transition more smooth.
Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
#224Genuine 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 b…
Yours is a heartfelt, sincere take on a successful 21st century career in tech, but I feel it is so one-sided.
Yes, you seem to have benefitted greatly, but your examples of efficiency and availability are flawed. For example:
"apps on phones that can know my tastes and preferences": I don't see any benefits. When Youtube recommends for the billionth time a stupid soccer short because I previously watched one soccer short, I want to scream. Also, privacy or lack thereof.
"hailing a cab virtually": made possible due to full-time workers who have none of the benefits of full-time workers, in other words, exploitation.
"a bonkers level of selection of goods to all consumers": One word that encapsulates the other side of your "bonkers level of selection"--Temu.
"low friction same-day delivery": Made possible due to our reliance on fossil fuels
"far greater access to online services including education and financing": I'm not sure about the financing part. Education? Yeah, if I want to learn about something like video-editing. But I could've bought a book on that in the past and probably learned it much more in depth. If I wanted to learn something like German Idealism, not so much.
I think your pocket book has benefitted immensely, but all of the other benefits don't seem like benefits to me on a macro level. But kudos to you for doing so well and believing the world partakes in your good fortune.
Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
#225Why don’t they mandate 6 day work week to compete even more…
Spot on based on my work experience at Amazon. Working Saturdays from home was much better because at least I did not have to interact with those psychopaths from Retail.
Same, I've been able to focus best when finishing up something either during the weekend or when I allotted more OOTO time than I actually needed, I think it's just being in that (slightly) more de-pressurized state and no overhead of Slack pings and meetings.
Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
#226"Everyone I know at Amazon is over-worked and stressed out" is the biggest myth.
Practically the majority of middle management I knew at AMZN didn't do anything.
Source: ex-AWS
Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
#227I left Amazon a few years back because this ending was the inevitable outcome. Amazon had a chance to reinvent themselves as the scrappy startup that they claim to want, but instead they went full IBM.
Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
#228This is not a good way to hire or develop the best. The best are going to go elsewhere.
Where? If FAANG starts being bad, where else to go?
Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
#229Genuine 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…
For one person's anecdotes on the culture, read Exit Interview by Kristi Coulter. Amazing read IMO, and it explained a lot of how I've felt at Microsoft and Google.
Re: Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
#230What's the remote policy at other FAANGs?