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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

#851

Post by stackedinserter »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #200
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…

Amazon pays well, but will work you like a dog. My wife worked as a WHS specialist, and really enjoyed her team starting out. However over time they all got weary of the workload and left. Insolent managers, incapable and sometimes even unintelligible workers (it got so bad they started posting signs in two languages), and a mounting focus on speed over safety completely burnt out their facility’s entire safety team.…

Gosh, I work like a dog and pretty much own the whole company codebase, but probably for 30% of AMZN money.

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

#852

Post by shortrounddev2 »

paxys wrote: post #391
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.

It made sense starting from when the concept of an office was established until mid-2020. Has the world really changed so much in these last ~4 years that we can't even imagine going in to work 5 days a week now? That too considering every other industry besides tech is already doing it?

Yes, it has. We spent 4 years working from home with no loss in productivity, and now we're being dragged kicking and screaming back into the office to satisfy the KPIs of some business degree loser and his fragile ego. Offices suck. A lot of people here talk about the commute, but the office itself sucks, too.

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

#853

Post by jensensbutton »

Salgat wrote: post #677
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.

You mean an employer set an expectation, checks to see if people are meeting the expectation, and holds them accountable if they aren't? What incredible bs.

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

#854

Post by rty32 »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #767
weq wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

RTO definitely helps reduce workforce and keep the most complaint workers. I suspect that "most compliant workers" and "most creative engineers" has little overlap.

Well, 'most "complaint" workers' completely changes the meaning here.

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

#855

Post by pc86 »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #641
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…

I especially liked "if you were on the road seeing customers" as if they're reluctantly granting an RTO exception to people meeting with customers and those employees should be thankful for it.

I think it's more instances like "if you're traveling and you get back to your home city at 9am don't feel like you need to be in the office by a certain time, just WFH that day." Obviously if you're traveling as part of your job you're not going to be working from the office during that travel.

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

#856

Post by jeffwask »

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…

I was at a large manufacturing software company where the CEO came out with a return to office mandate early on except it didn't apply to anyone in my chain of command. My director lived in an RV and worked from that travelling. Every VP above worked from a remote location, so I asked. I was told they all had other arrangements. I left within a month.

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

#857

Post by bluedino »

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…

At first I enjoyed going into the office a day or two a week...but nobody else goes in, and it's even weirder being in a giant office building with just a couple people on each floor than it is staying at home.

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

#858

Post by palata »

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…

> Shame on Amazon.

Wouldn't be the first time, would it?

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

#859

Post by VyseofArcadia »

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…

> This is Amazon having it both ways, which is what a lot of companies are doing. You can work remotely 'sometimes,' with a secret definition of 'sometimes,' operating in the background.

This isn't really different than startups offering "unlimited" time off. That's just

> This is Company XYZ having it both ways, which is what a lot of companies are doing. You can take time off 'sometimes,' with a secret definition of 'sometimes,' operating in the background.

I think it's widely known that "unlimited" time off is a scam, and people with "unlimited" PTO actually take less time off then their peers who have to accrue PTO the old fashioned way. And yet sometimes I still see people who are enthusiastic about it.

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

#860

Post by farceSpherule »

This is an attrition forcing tool.

These CEO's who think they are business geniuses fail to grasp that they look like morons parroting this "RTO means productivity and collaboration" nonsense which has been disproven time and time again.

They are doing this because they are just dumb people. They over hire and allow their organizations to become bloated because they know that when it's time to make their metrics look good, they just create such miserable work environments that they know they will lose some people. Next comes the layoffs.

I mean, this is ape level intelligence here. No thought required.

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