Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by YokoZar » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:33 PM UTC

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

Productivity growth may be slowing, but it is not "down" in general. It's the highest it's ever been.

Is there a specific reason to believe Amazon would have less productivity than the rest of the economy compared with before?

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

#362

Post by ivraatiems » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:34 PM UTC

A note for engineers looking for jobs, based on this and about a thousand similar posts: If you joined a "remote" company that went remote during the pandemic, no, you didn't.

Look for companies that went full-remote before 2020, or after ~2022. Otherwise, it can't be trusted.

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

#363

Post by doctorpangloss » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:34 PM UTC

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 know. Have you acted any differently? Whom have you employed? Did the money come out of your pocket? What were the rules?

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

#364

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:35 PM UTC

nyxtom wrote: post #56

I'm very close to being completely done with tech. This whole career has been stressful and the ROI is debatable

I've been doing it nearly 20 years, and I'm very done with it. But I need to save for retirement and I don't have anything else I want to do more. So I'm just apathetically collecting a paycheck.

If you focus on the career part, you can increase your network and find a much less stressful position. Last two gigs I've had I wasn't even on call (lol, imagine!), and found remote work. So better opportunities are out there if you work at it.

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

#365

Post by insane_dreamer » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:35 PM UTC

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

> productivity is down

according to which statistics?

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

#366

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:37 PM UTC

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…

How does any worker manage that? Your output is, you're saying, a few hours out of 40 in a week. That's impossible for someone actually doing something -- surely only managers can get away with that.

If a manager thinks someone is doing that, fire them as your belief is that person is not contributing. Do their job yourself in the time you would have spent managing them, get a bonus for cost savings.

>Labor costs have risen

Call us when C-suite wages drop back to the comparative levels they were even 10 years ago.

Workers got a wake-up call. Capitalist still want to shackle them and beat the work out of them whilst they run off with the money.

Massive wealth gaps can't end soon enough.

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

#367

Post by imperfect_light » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:38 PM UTC

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…

Reminds me of the famous Reagan "welfare queen" story about someone showing up in Cadillac to use their food stamps. Did it happen, probably. Is it widespread, it is representative of most people on food stamps. Of course not.

Same situation here. Of course it's happened, some people have taken advantage of remote work. So what's the manager's excuse for not catching this?

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

#368

Post by nvarsj » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:38 PM UTC

I was in the "office is a good thing" camp for a while, but having been forced now to do 3 days, then forced to move to an office an extra 20 minute commute away, I've changed my feelings on the matter. Spending 2-2.5 hrs in commute a day is a terrible experience when trying to balance a high pressure job with the rest of life.

I really miss hybrid with 1-2 days in the office. That was the best compromise all around.

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

#369

Post by idiotsecant » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:39 PM UTC

arunabha wrote: post #359

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…

Yes,revenge(or rather a desire for reversion to the previous norm) might be part of the reason, however there might be another aspect which makes it more urgent for the execs WFH is overwhelmingly popular amongst employees and has the most potential to be a topic tech workers band together on. Tech employees realizing that collective action can work genuinely terrifies execs. Therefore it's imperative to the moneyed…

Yep, the tragedy is that the average tech worker has 'temporarily embaressed rockstar billionare' syndrome, and they've got it bad. They don't need collective action because their beautiful, perfect mind can do much better bargaining by themselves.

Carpenters know that they are labor and labor has value only when it takes it through collective action. Somehow tech workers haven't figured that out yet. When will tech workers catch up to carpenters? Hard to say.

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

#370

Post by JustLurking2022 » Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 9:40 PM UTC

colmmacc wrote: post #190

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 b…

Hate to say it but Amazon was hiring the folks getting laid off from major banks a few years ago. They abandoned hiring only the best a long time ago.