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Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

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Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#121

Post by twblalock »

alright_scowl wrote: post #96
twblalock wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG total comp is a lot higher than what most other companies will pay. I think the parent poster is right -- the smaller companies will pay lower salaries and offer remote work, and the larger companies will pay higher salaries and require at least 3 days per week in the office.

Smaller salary to be able to live in much cheaper cities where your general quality of life will also be massively improved? Sounds like a win-win to me. Especially considering that the decrease in cost of living probably far surpasses de decrease in salary.

If you do the math that doesn't always work out.

The main thing that is cheaper in cheaper cities is housing. Most of the other stuff people buy costs the same everywhere. If you move to a cheaper place and have a lower income, your non-housing expenses will become a larger portion of your spending.

Once you've worked in tech for several years in the Bay Area or Seattle you will generally be well off enough to buy a home in a nice area and still be able to save or invest a large amount every year. Housing will feel expensive but everything else will feel cheap -- even new luxury cars will cost a fraction of your income. Early retirement will be a definite possibility if you have a basic amount of self control over your spending. And if you have children, they will have access to all the opportunities that some of the country's largest metropolitan areas offer.

Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#122

Post by TigeriusKirk »

SilverBirch wrote: post #8

Remote work definitely comes down to a company culture issue. For most engineering jobs I would say flexibility is a massive competitive advantage. There are so many great engineers out there who prefer not to be in the office it's a great talent pool, but needs to be actively managed in order to get the best out of it. Having said that, Amazon comes across as exactly the company that would require you to be in the o…

The thing is these big companies don't really need a lot of great talent. They're fine skating by with masses of mediocre talent and a few great ones sprinkled in.

So yes, they'll attract fewer great engineers, but it won't matter much.

Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#123

Post by finneganscat »

akira2501 wrote: post #36
x86x87 wrote: post #2

this RTO mandates are getting old. Do people, in general, believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started?

> believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started? Yes. We built it that way for a specific reason.

[dead]

Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#124

Post by dvtrn »

plorkyeran wrote: post #68
xivzgrev wrote: post #35

"For instance, some employees who are part of global teams will come into the office only to continue taking virtual meetings, and they may not even have a coworker in their office, the petition states." My company is RTO, but with teams across offices, so I know this pain all too well. Our leadership has not addressed this disconnect either, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

I guess the obvious question is that if no one on your team is in the same office as you, who will even notice if you don't show up to the office? As long as your direct manager is on board, it seems easy to just disregard the RTO requirement and keep working from home.

who will even notice if you don't show up to the office?

They don’t have to “notice” it. They don’t even have to see it.

Do you have an access badge to get into your company campus/building/suite?

My last job started tracking access badge activity to monitor and enforce RTTO compliance.

Found it funny to get nagged about not hitting the required minimum number by a boss who lived four states away.

Laughed all the way out the door and into a new company whose policy is “if you wanna wfh, then wfh. If you want to come to the office, be our guest.”

Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#125

Post by ptkanchi »

Let me preface this by saying I don't have much of an opinion for or against RTO, but I feel like there's too much emotion attached to companies mandating RTO by tech employees. I'm at a company that is mandating RTO and for the past couple months there has been tons of whining and moaning in public slack channels, team Q&As, company wide Q&As, HR Q&As, being passive aggressive etc. All this behavior has reeked of immense entitlement, leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

The fact remains that a company exists to make money. When a company mandates RTO, generally it's doing so because it believes that's the best way to get the maximum output of it's resources against whatever metrics they are measuring against.

Employees should feel like the relationship between them and their employer is mutually beneficial, if that's no longer the case, pursue external opportunities.

We are incredibly lucky we are in a field that has a high demand for strong engineers, so you should be able to find what you are looking for.

Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#126

Post by ahelwer »

benjismith wrote: post #83

I must be one of the very very few software engineers that would prefer to RTO. (I'm not at Amazon, btw). I do enjoy the flexibility of being able to occasionally work from home. But I miss the bustling office culture, going out to lunch with coworkers, forming friendships with people from the office who don't necessarily work in the same department/team. Most days, I go into town and work from a WeWork (because it's…

You pay a few hundred bucks a month to rent a wework desk so that you have an excuse to commute somewhere?

Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#127

Post by darth_avocado »

potatolicious wrote: post #100
shmatt wrote: post #28

The thing is, this becomes theater of working. Imagine commuting to the office 60-90 minutes each direction just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if a company bans zoom for office days (but none will) And im not even going to start on the complete waste of time of people in an open space talking non stop about their fantasy football draft. I haven't heard those w…

> "Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if a company bans zoom for office days (but none will)" This wouldn't even be practicable - pretty much every BigTech company has offices spread all over the country, if not the world, and the odds are you work day-to-day with someone who sits nowhere near you. If you are forced to come in and you weren't allowed teleconferencing, you'd literally get nothing d…

So you’re saying, being remote is okay as long as that remote in another office?

Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#128

Post by mnd999 »

paxys wrote: post #66
jonas21 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom Presumably, that's what the return to office plan is trying to fix. Right now, if you go into the office, you're spending a lot of time in zoom calls because half the people in every meeting aren't there. If everyone's in the office, you can just meet in person.

> If everyone were in the office, you could just meet in person. How many people in tech nowadays do day-to-day work only with people in the same city as them? At my company at least that number is close to 0. Return to office doesn't mean you can stop collaborating with employees in another part of the country or the world. It will just be all that much more painful to do because now you'll have to hunt for empty me…

Basically small early stage startups and not always even then.

Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#129

Post by dopeboy »

clpm4j wrote: post #101
benjismith wrote: post #83

I must be one of the very very few software engineers that would prefer to RTO. (I'm not at Amazon, btw). I do enjoy the flexibility of being able to occasionally work from home. But I miss the bustling office culture, going out to lunch with coworkers, forming friendships with people from the office who don't necessarily work in the same department/team. Most days, I go into town and work from a WeWork (because it's…

Do you mind me asking if you're under 30yrs old?

Not OP - I'm in my mid 30s and do this for roughly the same reasons.

Re: Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

#130

Post by tkiolp4 »

benjismith wrote: post #83

I must be one of the very very few software engineers that would prefer to RTO. (I'm not at Amazon, btw). I do enjoy the flexibility of being able to occasionally work from home. But I miss the bustling office culture, going out to lunch with coworkers, forming friendships with people from the office who don't necessarily work in the same department/team. Most days, I go into town and work from a WeWork (because it's…

Some food for thought: seems like the majority prefer to WFH, now think of all the coworkers you were having lunch with, how many of them would prefer to have lunch with you if they were not forced to go to the office? Not many.

Don’t get too attached to people from work.

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