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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

#511

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

strivingtobe wrote: post #189
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 hundr…

Both Amazon and Google are in their post-founder CEO phases. Microsoft went through the Balmer phase and found footing with Satya Nadella. Balmer probably set the stage for Nadella to succeed but sometimes changing the face is enough to reset culture a bit. Right now, Jassy and Pichai will never be seen in the same light as Bezos or Page & Brin. It might take another CEO at both Amazon and Google to unlock potential.

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

#512

Post by JonChesterfield »

keeptrying wrote: post #234

[flagged]

You've got the basic sketch right here. Better focus than the competition is indeed an advantage. Working hard to focus in an office environment - noise cancelling headphones, people walking around, suboptimal coffee and so forth - is however not better than carefully setting up a home office. It's not a remotely safe bet that the people working from home are being lazy.

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

#513

Post by adamking »

sorenjan wrote: post #509
fnordpiglet wrote: post #462

As a former senior person at aws although I left on good terms I will never return there and this stuff cements the deal for me. I need a company that respects my decisions on how I do best in my career and not surveil of police my work style. As long as I am a trusted leader who delivers results that customers need why does anyone care where my bag of water is physically located? Who are you to tell neurodivergent e…

> How petty are the tyrants. Having to work in an office for $300k/year is an incredibly privileged position. There are so many people that have it much, much worse, and calling it tyranny is so out of touch it's a bit distasteful. I'm not disagreeing with the points that you probably can get your work done remotely or that companies should respect their employees, but tone it down a few notches. And the organ transp…

> Having to work in an office for $300k/year

More like $98k/year on average

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

#514

Post by 01100011 »

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…

Some people need the money. I left my $160k/yr job in 2018 because I got a divorce and the alimony payments were going to slowly make me homeless. One of the first places I looked was Amazon. Fortunately I found something better and ended up tripling my salary. Many non-valley/low-stress jobs just don't pay the same as crap jobs like Amazon.

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

#515

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

hintymad wrote: post #493
fnordpiglet wrote: post #462

As a former senior person at aws although I left on good terms I will never return there and this stuff cements the deal for me. I need a company that respects my decisions on how I do best in my career and not surveil of police my work style. As long as I am a trusted leader who delivers results that customers need why does anyone care where my bag of water is physically located? Who are you to tell neurodivergent e…

> How petty are the tyrants. I would consider the relationship between a company and its employees as alliance. If both have the same goal and compatible style, then they work together. Otherwise, they part ways. Tyranny is possible only with violence, while employment is at will, at least in Amazon.

If you need to refer to a system where those at the top don't give their reports adequate leeway to get results but instead choose to make all-encompassing proclamations about how the entire hierarchy must behave, then "tyranny" isn't so bad a word.

Money is just violence that got too old to carry a sword anymore, so the threat if violence and the threat of termination are pretty well linked. It's only different in that once the money runs out the violence will come from elsewhere.

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

#516

Post by dudul »

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…

> From my experience though WFH just doesn’t work. People aren’t as invested in the company and they produce worse results.

What a terrible take. I've been remote for 7 consecutive years at a couple of companies and I was always invested in their produce. You know why? Cause they gave me RSUs so I actually cared about the value of the stock. Nothing to do with being remote or not.

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

#517

Post by [deleted] »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #462

As a former senior person at aws although I left on good terms I will never return there and this stuff cements the deal for me. I need a company that respects my decisions on how I do best in my career and not surveil of police my work style. As long as I am a trusted leader who delivers results that customers need why does anyone care where my bag of water is physically located? Who are you to tell neurodivergent e…

[deleted]

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

#519

Post by givemeethekeys »

sorenjan wrote: post #509
fnordpiglet wrote: post #462

As a former senior person at aws although I left on good terms I will never return there and this stuff cements the deal for me. I need a company that respects my decisions on how I do best in my career and not surveil of police my work style. As long as I am a trusted leader who delivers results that customers need why does anyone care where my bag of water is physically located? Who are you to tell neurodivergent e…

> How petty are the tyrants. Having to work in an office for $300k/year is an incredibly privileged position. There are so many people that have it much, much worse, and calling it tyranny is so out of touch it's a bit distasteful. I'm not disagreeing with the points that you probably can get your work done remotely or that companies should respect their employees, but tone it down a few notches. And the organ transp…

300k a year is what they get paid for making the company 3-4x as much, if not even more. If they can generate that value remotely, then being forced to waste another 1-2 hours of your life every day to go to the office should be worth even more pay.
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