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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

#992
post #981

"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 ev…

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

#993

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…

100% NOT worth it. Don't be fooled by any stories to the contrary. Amazon is a very abusive workplace.

The day to day toxicity is highly dependent on your team, manager, and skip. My current team is great, my manager is halfway decent, and my skip is basically invisible to my team in a day to day sense. I've seen a few other teams where it's very clear there's cutthroat politics going on and they're all miserable.

Organizational toxicity, like the original 3 day RTO and now 5 day RTO change, is the bigger problem. My L8 and L10 both learned of the 5 day RTO change at the same time as everyone else, meaning the S-Team made a decision and didn't give a heads up to anyone - probably because they don't care about feedback or data. Organizational toxicity also takes the form of stack ranking, URA metrics, and changes to promotion requirements over the last year to make them more difficult at all levels.

I'm coming up on my 2 year mark and more than ready to find something else, but it seems like fully remote security roles are pretty competitive right now.

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

#994

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…

They pay too well to say no if you don't have any other competing offers. For some roles they pay too well even with competing offers. It's literally life changing money for a lot of people.

I'm just about to hit 2 years and was planning to leave anyway around that point, which is typical, but now there's going to be a sudden increase in the competition for remote jobs that I wasn't anticipating.

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

#995

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…

> How petty are the tyrants. Having to work in an office for $300k/year is an incredibly privileged position. There are so many people that have it much, much worse, and calling it tyranny is so out of touch it's a bit distasteful. I'm not disagreeing with the points that you probably can get your work done remotely or that companies should respect their employees, but tone it down a few notches. And the organ transp…

The difference between someone making $50k/year and $500k/year is functionally irrelevant as compared with the C-levels. It's a rounding error to their multi-million comp packages.

There shouldn't be anything distasteful about advocating for yourself and others who rely on their labor to survive, even if they're well paid for that labor.

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

#996

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…

@kwanbix: do you have kids? I feel that's one of the primary deciding factors for working from home. People without kids are much more flexible with their time, whereas people with (small) kids are severely more limited. Freeing up commute time and being able to do small chores like starting the washing machine creates significant happiness, which totally offsets the downsides of not seeing your co-workers (that) often.

Before kids I would also become depressed if I worked remotely full time. But today my "alone time" is already pretty much gone outside work hours so I don't mind being by myself during the day.

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

#999

> 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 Well it depends how sick you feel. Personally, if I only have a cold, I prefer working (from home) over hanging on the couch and watching Netflix all day long. If I'd have to come to the office I'd report ill though, also because I don't want to contaminate my colleagues.

If you are happy about your relationship with work such that you would prefer to do it rather than rest, then what I have to say next is not relevant to you. For others whom this might not be the case: You need rest. If your only or primary form of rest is Netflix on the couch, such that you feel you “should” work instead, you might consider if other forms of rest might be better for you.

Rest benefits you and your employer. Working while ill is a sure path to burnout. Burnt out employees are less productive and more likely to quit.

It’s okay to not grind 25/8.

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

#1000

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…

The upvote brigade might disagree, but I certainly didn't mean my comment to yuck anyone's yum. If you want to commute, go for it! It's a free country and all that.

I did feel somewhat isolated when I first started working remote. I also moved to a new city at the same time, and I didn't have much to do... besides work. I had to force myself out into the world a bit, and it got a lot better. It helps that I found myself in a community where I could easily find things that I found appealing.

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