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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

#821

Post by ekianjo »

kwanbix wrote: post #757
mrweasel wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Companies forget this. I have had coworkers quit because they couldn't deal with transport. One got stressed out of his mind because our office was close to motorway which frequently has accidents and if that happened he might not be able to pick up the kids on time. Others had to leave clients hanging because the…

I know this might be an "unpopular opinion," but after working fully remote for three years, I found myself feeling really down. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. So, three months ago, I started a new job with an office that’s 45 minutes away, and I’ve been going in every day—and I couldn't be happier! I do have the option to work from home all days if I want, but honestly, I prefer going to the office. Now, I g…

if you want to see people you can work in a coworking space near where you live without the commute. I dont understand people who want to commute more than one hour a day if they have the choice not to. And even more so if you consider the environmental impact and all the stress that goes with it.

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

#822

Post by squigglydonut »

jamalaramala wrote: post #766

Another point to consider: the environmental impact of having hundreds of thousands of people commuting to work every day. Transport is the second most important source of greenhouse gas emissions, after electricity and heat. I'm not sure if large office spaces are more energy efficient than home offices.

Yea it would be more efficient to have "living pods" essentially little chambers where the employee can sleep in after a long 16 hour day a work. The personal home emits too much energy and waste. It would be better for the employee to just go into the pod, plug in their nutritional tube, and watch netflix for a few hours before falling into an induced asleep at the mandated time as set by their work schedule.

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

#823

Post by squigglydonut »

ta988 wrote: post #690

Amazon found the best way to reduce their workforce. Make them switch from a perfectly fine work environment to a horrible one and wait for them to leave. You don't even have to make them come, threaten to do it. Just come work in small companies that respect their employees. Good talents are hard to find.

They should also remove all desks and force people to sit directly on the floor. Forget open office plan. The new trend is Minimal Office.

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

#824

Post by syene »

walthamstow wrote: post #820
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…

I'm extremely curious about the nationality and residence of a person who uses Braintree (a town in Essex UK with a silly name) as an example but purchases things in dollars

United States dollars are the de facto global currency. I can see a British person converting pounds to US dollars writing for a global audience.

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

#825

Post by naikrovek »

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…

ah-hah, but have you considered the executive's perspective on this? that perspective is "no."

the only reason executives really dislike remote work, is because as "face people" they have never had a place for it. It doesn't benefit them in any way, so how could it possibly benefit anyone else? they have never had a position like yours. they both deeply understand that no one is like them, and bizarrely believe that everyone works like they do and benefits from working in the office.

I have worked closely with executives throughout my career and the only common thread between them all is the intense hatred for telecommuting. I have never met an executive which understands it well enough to understand its place in their work environment. These same executives frequently called me after hours asking for work to be done immediately; work that could only be done in the office because that's where all of my digital tools were located and where the network connectivity was, etc. Zero recognition that one of those things could solve the other.

Well, it's that, or they just want to be dicks and give out orders. That could be it, too.

It's probably 50% of each. "executives get benefits, plebes do not."

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

#826

Post by bmitc »

kwanbix wrote: post #757
mrweasel wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Companies forget this. I have had coworkers quit because they couldn't deal with transport. One got stressed out of his mind because our office was close to motorway which frequently has accidents and if that happened he might not be able to pick up the kids on time. Others had to leave clients hanging because the…

I know this might be an "unpopular opinion," but after working fully remote for three years, I found myself feeling really down. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. So, three months ago, I started a new job with an office that’s 45 minutes away, and I’ve been going in every day—and I couldn't be happier! I do have the option to work from home all days if I want, but honestly, I prefer going to the office. Now, I g…

I experience that as well. But the way I see to combat it is that working from home gives me more energy to go out on my own terms like taking classes, volunteering, etc.

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

#827

Post by NoGravitas »

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?

Yes, yes we should.

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

#828

Post by jon-wood »

kwanbix wrote: post #757
mrweasel wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Companies forget this. I have had coworkers quit because they couldn't deal with transport. One got stressed out of his mind because our office was close to motorway which frequently has accidents and if that happened he might not be able to pick up the kids on time. Others had to leave clients hanging because the…

I know this might be an "unpopular opinion," but after working fully remote for three years, I found myself feeling really down. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. So, three months ago, I started a new job with an office that’s 45 minutes away, and I’ve been going in every day—and I couldn't be happier! I do have the option to work from home all days if I want, but honestly, I prefer going to the office. Now, I g…

I think this is completely fine. Some people like working remotely, other people don't. I fully expect to see a gradual trend of companies going on way or the other over time, because hybrid really is the worst of both worlds with nobody really being happy.

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

#829

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

monch1962 wrote: post #789

I work for a consulting company in Melbourne Australia. The Melbourne city council has started petitioning the government to force govt employees to return to the CBD for work. Their reasoning is that CBD-based businesses are somehow entitled to pre-COVID customer levels, which means employees need to start coming into the CBD more often. Apparently this is getting serious consideration. It's not like we home-based w…

> Their reasoning is that CBD-based businesses are somehow entitled to pre-COVID customer levels

It's more like downtown property prices are based on those levels, and property is leveraged, and if banks collapse do to commercial property prices plummeting, you're in for a bad time.

Also, although downtown is a very small part of the city - in many cities, downtown property taxes make up a relatively large chunk of total property tax revenues.

You either death spiral downtown property prices by keeping taxes steady while values decline, or you increase tax everywhere else to make up the difference.

Either of those options leads to a bad time for politicians.

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

#830

Post by jrib »

walthamstow wrote: post #820
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…

I'm extremely curious about the nationality and residence of a person who uses Braintree (a town in Essex UK with a silly name) as an example but purchases things in dollars

Braintree is also a town near Boston in the United States:

https://www.mbta.com/stops/place-brntn

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