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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

#471

Post by zeptian »

fortylove wrote: post #227

I 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.

Being ex-IBM, i can relate.

Basically, the management class despises SDE worker class, and thinks of them as overhead. Recent statements by the aws head about chatGPT replacing SDEs is along the same lines.

SDEs are tools that just do what mgmt tells them. mgmt holds the decision-making and all the cards.

periodically there is a whipping (pipping) in the form of a layoff to keep the troops in fear.

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

#474

Post by bit_logic »

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…

Amazon already openly stated that there is no data to support RTO:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-re...

https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-offic...

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

#475

Post by zeptian »

benjiweber wrote: post #175

The irony of setting up a '“Bureaucracy Mailbox” for any examples any of you see where we might have bureaucracy' while announcing an edict enforced by centralised control to replace autonomous decision making about where & how to work.

this memo is one for the ages. filled with management speak.

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

#476

Post by dudul »

op00to wrote: post #468

I am not looking forward to the influx of ex-Amazon folks in the industry at large. The ones I have worked with have been difficult to work with, having no interest in opinions outside of their own.

I never hire any former Amazon or Facebook. I've worked with some when I was an IC, I even hired a few before I knew better. Never had a positive experience.

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

#477

Post by hughesjj »

jay-barronville wrote: post #405
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

https://code-cwa.org/organize

This might be an unpopular take here, but from my perspective, the downsides of introducing unions in tech for software engineers far outweigh the benefits. I understand why unions can work for certain industries, but I just don’t see how they’d be a net positive for tech. For startups especially, hiring unionized software engineers would be disastrous: - You’ll go from having tight-knit and motivated teams building…

Why would a startup have a Union?

Unions aren't like the bar association, it's not obligatory across the industry, or even the same company. Literally today Boeing is on strike in WA but not in South Carolina, exactly because only the WA employees are union.

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

#478

Post by op00to »

guywithahat wrote: post #416
xyst wrote: post #384

What sucks is that other companies will follow Amazon because “Amazon did it”. Other company I worked at went to a “hybrid model” to be followed at the end of last year. Ended up “silent quitting” by using up all of my PTO and sick time which allowed enough time to get my bonus and find a new job. Of course I was put on a PIP but by that time I was already gone, lol.

Silent quitting is a great way to permanently ruin your reputation. Even if you never get a job there again, you could never ask your coworkers or management for a job. Silent quitting is indistinguishable from being a bad employee. From my experience though WFH just doesn’t work. People aren’t as invested in the company and they produce worse results. If companies could figure out how to keep productivity and qualit…

I’m plenty invested in my company’s success and have worked both in office and for the last 15 years remotely. This is hogwash. Hire shitty people, get shitty results. All you get from being in the office is more opportunities to play hallway politics.

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

#479

Post by goostavos »

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".

I hear a fair amount of this sentiment floating around. Not so much "I won't do oncall" but more so a deflation of moral -- if you want clock punchers, we can be clock punchers.

Setting a SEV2 to "pending" does prevent you from getting re-paged during the weekend when you're at home (where work, as I understand it, does not get done).

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

#480

Post by op00to »

paxys wrote: post #391
rybosworld wrote: post #221

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.

It made sense starting from when the concept of an office was established until mid-2020. Has the world really changed so much in these last ~4 years that we can't even imagine going in to work 5 days a week now? That too considering every other industry besides tech is already doing it?

Huh? I have friends that work in engineering, accounting, and purchasing that are all at least partially if not 100% wfh. Plenty of other industries have given up on 5 days in the office.
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