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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

#711

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

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 a software lead for passenger information systems on public transit. What that means is: The little screen that shows you what your next stop is, and the little voice clip that plays "Next Stop: Braintree" or what have you.

It's not quite as nice a feedback loop as ordinary web dev, but I've found a $20 webcam easily pays for itself many times over in this environment. This becomes all the more important as we start to build more advanced software functionality into our product offerings, which is where I really shine despite my undergrad in electrical engineering (I chose EE, like how aspiring writers choose to major in the classics).

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

#712

Post by suslik »

dbliss wrote: post #45
allenrb wrote: post #25

So AMZN wants to have layoffs without using the word?

"So, we’re asking each s-team organization to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025.." .. manager layoffs coming too.

> manager layoffs coming too.

A large pharma company which I worked for until quitting in July went through a similar process this year. The goal was also to reduce the manager / IC ratio - organizational efficiency and span of control, they called it - but in most instances it were ICs who were laid off while their managers were simply relegated to ICs.

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

#713

Post by slekker »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #711
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 a software lead for passenger information systems on public transit. What that means is: The little screen that shows you what your next stop is, and the little voice clip that plays "Next Stop: Braintree" or what have you. It's not quite as nice a feedback loop as ordinary web dev, but I've found a $20 webcam easily pays for itself many times over in this environment. This becomes all the more important as we st…

Thank you for your work! I always wondered how those worked, and where the info came from, on top of what it runs on etc -- moreover I love seeing software built that directly improves people's lives :)

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

#715

Post by mxkopy »

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…

From the CEO’s memo:

“(you need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems)”

Somewhat telling that he’d use a congenital disorder as a metaphor for how work should be done at Amazon

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

#716

Post by mikro2nd »

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…

It's a way to get rid of people without looking like you're laying off.

Sadly it's the most competent that leave first and fastest.

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

#717

Post by guappa »

slekker wrote: post #713
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software lead for passenger information systems on public transit. What that means is: The little screen that shows you what your next stop is, and the little voice clip that plays "Next Stop: Braintree" or what have you. It's not quite as nice a feedback loop as ordinary web dev, but I've found a $20 webcam easily pays for itself many times over in this environment. This becomes all the more important as we st…

Thank you for your work! I always wondered how those worked, and where the info came from, on top of what it runs on etc -- moreover I love seeing software built that directly improves people's lives :)

Try copenhagen. They use the screen for ads and flash the name of the next stop for a couple of seconds between ads.

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

#719

Post by 7bit »

newsclues wrote: post #652
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…

Should we be giving 25% raises to grocery store and retail workers who don’t have the option of WFH? Lots of people don’t work in an office and still have to commute, shouldn’t they get compensation if the office workers get this benefit?

That's a straw man if I ever saw one.

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

#720

Post by Terr_ »

matthewsinclair wrote: post #710

I find the “remote vs onsite” debate to be a little bit misguided. I try to reframe it as a balancing act between “broad work” and “deep work”. The difference being that broad work is the kind of thing that needs collaboration and interaction and deep work needs focus and singular attention. As an engineering leader, I have had some success and traction with non-engineers by re-framing the debate in this way. I wrote…

Now that we're in the spiffy sci-fi year 2024 with video calls for all, I find that 90% of the "collaboration" work benefit is achievable remotely. (Like a co-debugging session.)

Less task-oriented stuff--general office chatting--doesn't work quite the same though.

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