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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

#671

Post by tbrownaw »

varispeed wrote: post #546
ryukoposting wrote: post #490

As a firmware engineer, my job demands more "in-office-y" stuff than most other engineers on HN. I have specialized equipment. Hardware. I need to interface with manufacturing. So on. Guess what? I'm going on 1 year fully remote, and I'm doing great! Turns out, all that fancy equipment can be brought home with you. We deal with a contract manufacturer, and emailing them from home is no harder than emailing them from…

My friend's job pays him enough he could lease his own office near where he lives. He has all the "toys" he needs, space for his own research and he doesn't have to waste time to commute. My view is that offices were a thing because there was no technology to do otherwise and back then equipment was too large / expensive to be kept at employee's place. Now only reason to go to office is to artificially maintain prope…

> Now only reason to go to office is to artificially maintain property value so landlords don't lose money.

My boss goes in to the office even on non-office days.

If I still lived in an apartment - ie, no separate room at the house to use as an office - I'd probably go in most days as well.

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

#672

Post by [deleted] »

dboreham wrote: post #541
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.

Amazon has been a known "do not work there" employer for a very long time. At least since 2008 in my recollection. Yes there are people here who consistently post on Amazon threads that they enjoy working there. I even know a couple such people personally. But it's always with the disclaimer "you need to be in a good team". OK but is there a field in the offer letter that denotes "Good_team: TRUE". Nope. So you can l…

[deleted]

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

#673

Post by repiret »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #612
ryukoposting wrote: post #490

As a firmware engineer, my job demands more "in-office-y" stuff than most other engineers on HN. I have specialized equipment. Hardware. I need to interface with manufacturing. So on. Guess what? I'm going on 1 year fully remote, and I'm doing great! Turns out, all that fancy equipment can be brought home with you. We deal with a contract manufacturer, and emailing them from home is no harder than emailing them from…

[flagged]

If there's a $100,000 oscilloscope, then it's there to get used. Specifically, it's there to allow the >$100,000/year engineer to get their work done more quickly. And the engineer is there because the company thinks they're giving >>$100,000/year in value.

Yes, the scope can be taken home. That is both physically possible, and there's plenty of rational employers who would rather have the lab equipment at home with the WFH engineers adding value than in the lab collecting dust. Even if it means some of the equipment needs to be duplicated.

And taking lab equipment home doesn't mean sneaking it out in Jonny Cash's big lunchbox [1]. For some employeers it can be as simple as "hey boss, can keep the logic analyzer at my home office?" while others might have a more formal sign-out process. There are no doubt other employers where the answer is always "no", but in general it's completely possible to take equipment home without stealing it.

The idea of taking expensive things home isn't limited to the tech sector either. Consider trucking - it's common for employee truck drivers to take their $500,000 trucks home.

[1]: https://genius.com/Johnny-cash-one-piece-at-a-time-lyrics

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

#674

Post by x86x87 »

interroboink wrote: post #202
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".

Snark aside, that's not how oncall works at Amazon. The oncall person has a laptop (and perhaps a pager), and they are expected to remote connect ASAP when needed. That was the norm well before Covid; doesn't make sense to wait for a commute before responding. But then maybe after you do the first level of triage, if it's still ongoing, then you go in to the office.

Pending/Arrival of Technician

sorry boss. stuck in traffic on 520/i90/insert your fav bridge

reply 90 min later.

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

#675

Post by Salgat »

keyle wrote: post #542
ryukoposting wrote: post #490

As a firmware engineer, my job demands more "in-office-y" stuff than most other engineers on HN. I have specialized equipment. Hardware. I need to interface with manufacturing. So on. Guess what? I'm going on 1 year fully remote, and I'm doing great! Turns out, all that fancy equipment can be brought home with you. We deal with a contract manufacturer, and emailing them from home is no harder than emailing them from…

I'm in a similar situation, but no hardware involved. Just the flexibility to juggle the kids at pick up times is godsend. I have much better no-interruption stretches of programming which yields better results overall.

Same here. I can do all my family errands when I want and plan around them. The best part, at least with the company's interest, is that I work when I feel most productive. Usually 3 hours in the morning, along with a few hours in the evening, I even often work weekends like this. And guess what? During these programming periods, I'm at my most productive. Force me into an office where I'm forced to synch with the office's schedule, and met with constant noise and interruption from others, and my productivity is maybe half.

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

#677

Post by Salgat »

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…

My wife's company does this hybrid office bullshit at a fortune 500 and they not only track the days you come in, but they will bring it up in annual reviews if it hits a certain threshold.

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

#679

Post by weq »

ryukoposting wrote: post #490

As a firmware engineer, my job demands more "in-office-y" stuff than most other engineers on HN. I have specialized equipment. Hardware. I need to interface with manufacturing. So on. Guess what? I'm going on 1 year fully remote, and I'm doing great! Turns out, all that fancy equipment can be brought home with you. We deal with a contract manufacturer, and emailing them from home is no harder than emailing them from…

Instead of announcing mass layoffs, tech companies use RTO orders.

They are very effective at trimming the fat and creating peons. Also effective in stopping the corperate real estate crash that alot of important trust funds depend on.

Productivity < Compliant Workers < Stock value

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

#680

Post by scarface_74 »

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…

None at all for most software engineers.

For me in particular, it was a remote opportunity (still is as far as I know since it is considered part of the sales organization) and they paid top of band for my specialty - enterprise app dev + AWS.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212

Working at AWS was the best thing that happened to my finances and my career.

Leaving AWS was the best thing that happened to my mental health

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