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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

#331

Post by AviationAtom »

spacemadness wrote: post #285

I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode. Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their workers pushing for remote and having the leverage to do so. Now that interest rates have wrecked the employment market they are wasting no time going scorched earth on their current remote employees. The narratives they keep shoving down peoples throats are insultin…

I think it's more the few bad apples that spoil the bunch.

Have you heard of over-employment? There are people working 2-3 full-time jobs, pulling over $500k, while actually putting in only a few hours worth of work each week.

There are a ton more that are working one job, but likewise giving very little output. It's harder to catch those folks in the act when they don't physically have to be present in the office.

While in office can be less productive in a fair amount of aspects it can also be more so in others. It isn't always some sinister plan from above.

Labor costs have risen greatly post-lockdowns, so companies expect to see a return on their money, more so in a rapidly tightening labor market.

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

#332

Post by vineyardlabs »

cosmic_quanta wrote: post #73

Usually I would think these are shadow-layoffs, but employees were already required to be in-office 3d/week, which means that employees were at least proximate to their office.

I wouldn't be so sure. Proximate for 5 days in office and 3 days in office might be two different things. I got an offer from Amazon last year (ended up declining) and the HM at the time talked about how a sizable portion of the team were commuting extreme distances to work there (including by plane) on the pretense that they only had to be in office 3 days a week.

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

#333

Post by MuffinFlavored »

neofrommatrix wrote: post #144
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…

It's not worth working there as a L5/L6 level engineer. The money is absolutely not worth it. Unless, your team is working on an absolutely new product. The only engineers,IMO, that like it there are those adept at finding new bootstrapped teams and designing and writing the product from scratch and releasing the MVP. They then hand over the crappy MVP to other engineers to support and move on to other new products.…

I've never worked at a company where total compensation for engineers was more than $250k

To see "it's not worth it to make $420k as an L6 Amazon engineer" is super interesting

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en...

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

#335

Post by DiggyJohnson »

spacemadness wrote: post #285

I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode. Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their workers pushing for remote and having the leverage to do so. Now that interest rates have wrecked the employment market they are wasting no time going scorched earth on their current remote employees. The narratives they keep shoving down peoples throats are insultin…

> I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode

Doesn’t this sound like tribal, us-versus-them, reductive explanation for the behavior of those you disagree with?

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

#336

Post by hashtag-til »

fhdsgbbcaA wrote: post #310
spacemadness wrote: post #285

I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode. Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their workers pushing for remote and having the leverage to do so. Now that interest rates have wrecked the employment market they are wasting no time going scorched earth on their current remote employees. The narratives they keep shoving down peoples throats are insultin…

Imagine being a billionaire CEO and still having to bend over backwards to give “perks” to entitled engineers! Think of those years and years of suffering that must put a CEO through! To be at the top of the mountain - and still beholden to little people! That is the worst kind of injustice. And the joy - the relief! - of finally being able to treat the engineers with the same contempt you feel for your customers. It…

Sadly, other CEOs will be quick to follow for more days in the office or full time in office.

Much quickier than they followed for salary raises, obviously.

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

#337

Post by xinayder »

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…

My company did a survey on this. Comparing 2021 to 2023, WFH had 15-20% more supporters than WFO, as per last year's results. They simply ignored this statistic and mandated a return to office anyways.

98% of the people responded negatively to the change in our remote work flexibility when we heard about it. Higher management continues to ignore that 98% of its productive workforce is not happy and the good engineers WILL leave the company.

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

#338

Post by pydry »

tschellenbach wrote: post #330
spacemadness wrote: post #285

I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode. Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their workers pushing for remote and having the leverage to do so. Now that interest rates have wrecked the employment market they are wasting no time going scorched earth on their current remote employees. The narratives they keep shoving down peoples throats are insultin…

I don't like this us vs them mentality. Nothing stops you from starting your own business and being on the "manager" side of things. Cost of capital is up, productivity is down. So all companies have to work through options to increase productivity, and/or reduce costs. Companies will take different approaches to this

This idea needs to die.

Gone are the days when you can start the next google in your garage. You need capital to compete.

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

#339

Post by vasilipupkin »

AviationAtom wrote: post #331
spacemadness wrote: post #285

I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode. Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their workers pushing for remote and having the leverage to do so. Now that interest rates have wrecked the employment market they are wasting no time going scorched earth on their current remote employees. The narratives they keep shoving down peoples throats are insultin…

I think it's more the few bad apples that spoil the bunch. Have you heard of over-employment? There are people working 2-3 full-time jobs, pulling over $500k, while actually putting in only a few hours worth of work each week. There are a ton more that are working one job, but likewise giving very little output. It's harder to catch those folks in the act when they don't physically have to be present in the office. W…

they had a 3 days a week in office policy, that should be sufficient to catch the people you are talking abut

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

#340

Post by techjamie »

AviationAtom wrote: post #331
spacemadness wrote: post #285

I feel like Big Tech management is simply in revenge mode. Managers and executives felt a tiny bit less powerful for a small amount of time due to their workers pushing for remote and having the leverage to do so. Now that interest rates have wrecked the employment market they are wasting no time going scorched earth on their current remote employees. The narratives they keep shoving down peoples throats are insultin…

I think it's more the few bad apples that spoil the bunch. Have you heard of over-employment? There are people working 2-3 full-time jobs, pulling over $500k, while actually putting in only a few hours worth of work each week. There are a ton more that are working one job, but likewise giving very little output. It's harder to catch those folks in the act when they don't physically have to be present in the office. W…

That sounds like a management problem to me. If they can't tell that someone's output is that low, then clearly they need to switch their goals for what they consider "productive."
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