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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

#981

Post by artyom »

nextworddev wrote: post #226

"Everyone I know at Amazon is over-worked and stressed out" is the biggest myth. Practically the majority of middle management I knew at AMZN didn't do anything. Source: ex-AWS

This is true. Not only management, but a bunch of the so-called SDEs that are only there to say "we're investigating" every time there's an issue while they all wait for the guy who knows the system to wake up in his timezone.

There's people that's overworked and stressed out, tho, but those are the minority that do the actual work. I'd say it's an 1 out of 10 ratio at best, being conservative.

This is all because every single project is scoped, designed and implemented with the only goal in mind: your own promotion. Same applies for hires, you don't hire roles, you hire _the structure you need to be promoted_.

Source: same.

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

#982

Post by stubybubs »

Peroni wrote: post #794
james_woods wrote: post #768

Citing an article from MIT Sloan Management Review: "But there’s no clear evidence that these mandates improve financial performance. A recent study of S&P 500 companies that was conducted by University of Pittsburgh researchers found that executives are “using RTO mandates to reassert control over employees and blame employees as a scapegoat for bad firm performance.” Those policies result in “significant declines i…

>When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant. >we’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; They believe there are advantages to being fully in-office because they have observed these things. Zero mention of actual data to back up their beliefs and observations despite…

They were called out on this for not living up to their "data driven culture" when they went to 3 days back and the response was basically "Uh well... Eat shit I guess."

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

#983

Post by phito »

guywithahat wrote: post #416
xyst wrote: post #384

What sucks is that other companies will follow Amazon because “Amazon did it”. Other company I worked at went to a “hybrid model” to be followed at the end of last year. Ended up “silent quitting” by using up all of my PTO and sick time which allowed enough time to get my bonus and find a new job. Of course I was put on a PIP but by that time I was already gone, lol.

Silent quitting is a great way to permanently ruin your reputation. Even if you never get a job there again, you could never ask your coworkers or management for a job. Silent quitting is indistinguishable from being a bad employee. From my experience though WFH just doesn’t work. People aren’t as invested in the company and they produce worse results. If companies could figure out how to keep productivity and qualit…

Terrible takes all the way

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

#984

Post by fer »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #415

Before the pandemic, everyone was working in-office 5 days a week. The pandemic is now over. Why is it so controversial to return to what everyone was already doing previously? Kudos to Jassy for being a leader in this space.

> Before the pandemic, everyone was working in-office 5 days a week. [...] Why is it so controversial [...]?

Because it is a lie. Teams managed themselves and trusted their members.

People who were virtual employees, or whose team was in a different location than theirs, have been let go at different points of the layoffs/RTO mandates, when they existed before the pandemic.

This is a regression to a point that never existed in Amazon's history.

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

#985

Post by lincon127 »

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?

Why? There's no option to work from home in those positions, so there's no need to pay them extra to work on site. Seems kinda like a roundabout way of asking for better wages for non-office workers.

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

#986

Post by collyw »

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…

Same. I can't stand working in my home office at this stage. Somethings are easier when you don't have the distraction of a busy office, but many things are a lot easier / more efficient. On-boarding new staff is so much better in person.

Similarly, in the old days when I had jobs where I was expected to wear a shirt and dress reasonably smart to the office, I enjoyed getting changed into other clothes afterwards. It marked a real change between work and personal time. That gets very blurred with working from home.

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

#987

Post by collyw »

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…

> if you're sick you shouldn't work at all, you should be focusing on getting well.

Most people could work perfectly well with a bit of a cold. Then covid turned it into a virtue signal to slack off for something trivial.

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

#988

Post by NeutralCrane »

billfor wrote: post #649
nvarsj wrote: post #368

I was in the "office is a good thing" camp for a while, but having been forced now to do 3 days, then forced to move to an office an extra 20 minute commute away, I've changed my feelings on the matter. Spending 2-2.5 hrs in commute a day is a terrible experience when trying to balance a high pressure job with the rest of life. I really miss hybrid with 1-2 days in the office. That was the best compromise all around.

I usually read or sleep on the commute because I can take the train. It never really bothered me much because I like to sleep and read. Are all these negative comments about the commuting because you have to drive to work?

Yes. For much of the US a train isn’t even an option.

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

#989

Post by throw0101a »

ryukoposting wrote: post #977
throw0101a wrote: post #838

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! Who'da thunk it? I think I saw it mentioned in an old HN thread once, but I'd like to see a study between the WFH desire and its relationship with (a) commute times, and (b) commuting method: walking, cycling, driving, urban transit, commuter rail, etc. If your commute was a 15-30 minute (one-way) bicycle ride, ho…

I live in Wisconsin, so 30-60 minutes of cycling year-round is a non-starter. I'd much rather take public transit, since then I can read a book or daydream.

> I live in Wisconsin, so 30-60 minutes of cycling year-round is a non-starter.

I live in Toronto, Canada, and in the Before Times (pre-COVID) I cycled to work everyday from March to December (rain or shine, as long as the streets were clear).

See perhaps the video "Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

Also the Oh The Urbanity! channel, a couple who live in Ottawa/Montreal:

* https://www.youtube.com/@OhTheUrbanity/search?query=winter

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

#990

Post by adnjoo »

billti wrote: post #579
fnordpiglet wrote: post #462

As a former senior person at aws although I left on good terms I will never return there and this stuff cements the deal for me. I need a company that respects my decisions on how I do best in my career and not surveil of police my work style. As long as I am a trusted leader who delivers results that customers need why does anyone care where my bag of water is physically located? Who are you to tell neurodivergent e…

> Who are you to tell neurodivergent employees to suffer? I found this line telling. I’m wondering if the Hacker News crowd is biased towards the “hacker” stereotype - the socially awkward coder who likes to be left alone and crank out largely independent work. I have a couple of folks like this in my team, and they are absolutely as good (or better) working from home, as they don’t really talk to others much or cont…

https://basecamp.com/books/remote
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