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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

#551

Post by realmike33 »

drawkbox wrote: post #531

Looks like they have until January to change to fully on-site. That isn't much time to make life changes that allow using 2+ hours extra per day that was typically remote. > The decision marks a significant shift from Amazon’s earlier return-to-work stance, which required corporate workers to be in the office at least three days a week. Now, the company is giving employees until Jan. 2 to start adhering to the new po…

Take this with a grain of salt but I read on a similar Reddit post the return to office is mainly due to the tax incentives the city/county/state provided Amazon for having their offices located there. The Reddit user made a claim which Amazon could only receive those tax benefits if their workers actually worked in person at the location. ---

I can see this being a valid argument for return to office for a lot of corporations, if its actually true. The tax benefits are too good to pass up and in office has been the status quo forever.

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

#552

Post by mattgreenrocks »

zeptian wrote: post #471
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.

I’m curious: what, in your experience, was the root cause of this contempt? Other skilled professions can make decent money as SDEs do. Is it a love/hate thing? Feeling like the tools could easily not need them if they had sufficient gumption and will?

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

#554

Post by varispeed »

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.

Make sense for owners of the real estate.

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

#555

Post by thepasswordis »

39896880 wrote: post #539

> If you or your child were sick, if you had some sort of house emergency, if you were on the road seeing customers or partners, if you needed a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment, people worked remotely. This was understood, and will be moving forward as well. This is Amazon having it both ways, which is what a lot of companies are doing. You can work remotely 'sometimes,' with a secret defin…

Strategic ambiguity.

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

#556

Post by sub7 »

Remote work leads to less productivity, this isn't really doubted by anyone not working remotely. At-will employment means either party is free to walk away for reasons like this and that's exactly how it should be.

Surprised it's taken companies this long - I guess it's much harder to rollback than implement this so there will be a set of companies which just suffer on growth/performance and that'll be justification enough for the next cohort to go back to allowing remote work in edge cases only.

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

#557

Post by yieldcrv »

supergeek133 wrote: post #146
pton_xd wrote: post #10

I think this was a pretty obvious end-goal when they required everyone to relocate back to Seattle and go in 3 days a week. As a tangent, everyone I know at Amazon is over-worked and stressed out. I legitimately don't know anyone whose happy there. How is that a sustainable corporate culture?

The friends I have that work there that love it are absolute workaholics. Amazon takes every minute they're willing to give, they're successful and consistently promoted/paid more. This is also why I'll never work at Amazon. Haha.

This is actually why I’m skeptical about the complaints about Amazon

I’ve never worked there but I feel like I could? The complaints sound like a baseline level of toxicity seen in many places, I have the discipline for and others dont

Amazon would still be the last of the big tech’s I would choose for those reasons, the worst vesting schedule, and RTO, but it definitely sounds relatable

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

#558

Post by makeitdouble »

akira2501 wrote: post #550
drawkbox wrote: post #531

Looks like they have until January to change to fully on-site. That isn't much time to make life changes that allow using 2+ hours extra per day that was typically remote. > The decision marks a significant shift from Amazon’s earlier return-to-work stance, which required corporate workers to be in the office at least three days a week. Now, the company is giving employees until Jan. 2 to start adhering to the new po…

> Just seems a bit heartless. The writing has been on the wall for a while. Aside from that, Amazon decided to convert their workforce to work from home rather quickly, and shelled out the money and the effort in order to actually achieve that. > Remote jobs just allow a team to be more robust and dynamic to life changes. If you weren't hired into a remote job then you don't have much a right to expect or demand this…

> If you weren't hired into a remote job then you don't have much a right to expect or demand this.

To put it another way: "Look for a remote position elsewhere and quit"

That has been the return to office dynamic since the COVID emergency stopped.

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

#559

Post by andirk »

01100011 wrote: post #514
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.

> Many non-valley/low-stress jobs just don't pay the same as crap jobs like Amazon.

Clarify. Your current 3x salary job is better than Amazon, but it's in-valley/high-stress?

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

#560

Post by juunpp »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #305
adabyron wrote: post #167

The irony here... "On the first topic, we’ve always sought to hire very smart, high judgment, inventive, delivery-focused, and missionary teammates. And, we have always wanted the people doing the actual detailed work to have high ownership." Then shortly later.. "We are also going to bring back assigned desk arrangements" So they hire smart people with great judgement who have high ownership but also treat them like…

As someone in a hot desking situation, I would kill for an assigned seat. I do not even have someplace to put a coffee cup. Have to pack/unpack all of my stuff daily.

Seems like the capitalists have found the way to make office workers be constantly on the edge about their job security. Pack/unpack stuff every day is hilarious.
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