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AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

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Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s reality. Outside of a pure tech audience, literally no one gives a shit that your company wants you to RTO. I work from home but visit customers in all sorts of industries—manufacturing, finance, healthcare, insurance, retail. All of them are in office now or at a bare minimum hybrid, but with at least 3 days a week in office. So if the standard for most people who work is some portion of their time away fro…

> It’s divisive to demand WFH for a single class of worker ... which nobody does. Rather people simply imagine they do, because they're intellectually lazy. We go through this same conversation again and again and again. "Oh Starbucks workers make 15 an hour now?? Who do they think they are! I work construction and only make 12!" "Oh Bucees gives three weeks vacation? Well I work much harder and I don't get any!" "Wa…

You are never going convince someone whose job will never be able to shift to remote that you are pulling up anyone but yourself with a crusade for WFH. You just won’t get the sympathy because having to write code in an office is not equivalent to working in a sweatshop and frankly everyone seems to know this with the exception of the opinionated tech class.

So you should realize that you are your only advocate in this fight and if you can’t convince your organization why RTO isn’t in their best interest, your option is to find a company that is friendly to your remote working needs or settle in to your new normal…which was the old normal for most tech workers until March of 2020.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#122

It seems now is the time to start asking for a private office, some furniture, a massage chair ;) That way, if performance drops, you can blame it on the inferior office at work :)

Now is the time when we have thousands of people laid off from other FAANGs looking for jobs. It seems to be slowly getting better, but it's still pretty far from when you can ask for anything.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#123
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk about Meta, but Google is also pretty soul draining these days. Pre-Pichai it was a pretty cool place, but that was ages ago.

But are we bullish on Google in general, financially speaking? They are doing cool stuff with waymo but way behind on AI

I don’t see a path for Waymo either. With crime as high as it has gotten in the likes of SF, LA, Portland, Seattle, NYC, without a dude inside these cars will have a fairly short lifetime. Ads, idk, I haven’t seen them in the last 15 years, and their decision to disable ad blocking in Chrome sounds like desperation to me. Search engine duties are better handled by some company which does not insist on filtering search results for political reasons. What else do they do? Android/App Sore? Ok, I think that has staying power. Google Workspace (or whatever it’s called)? That’s rolled up into Cloud, thanks to it it makes a small profit. So no, I’m not bullish on Google at all. I have sold my entire position.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#124

This is a strategy to get rid of non H1B workers. It’s pure discrimination

Highly doubt it. It is increasingly becoming difficult to get (or renew) H1B visa.

But that’s the point. Look at all these American workers who quit and we can’t find qualified candidates to fill their vacant positions, so that, Senator, is why we need your vote to expand the H1B visa program.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I post this every time this topic comes up. But WFH and remote work ability are an exception to the rule in almost every industry/job type other than tech (and sales). Effectively everybody else goes someplace other than home to do their job. I love it, I prefer it, but I recognize that I am lucky to have a career that can offer it. If my company demanded RTO, I would have to weigh the option and perhaps choose to se…

Or, you know, unionize.

Folks sometimes think that unions operate by threat of work stoppage and they dictate all terms to the company’s chagrin. However, people who have been at those tables realize that unions operate by compromise. If you unionize with the hope that this will get you 100% WFH, don’t be surprised if you end up with hybrid and your union is telling you it’s a win. And the next time your contract is renewed your union might be trading WFH days for a greater employer paid portion of your medical insurance when it skyrockets.

I am not saying don’t unionize to get WFH, but realize all you are doing is giving them one more item as currency for the next time contract negotiations come around.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#126
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a contract. The vast majority of people currently working from home do not have a contract explicitly stating it’s a work from home position permanently. Those people who went from office to home during covid will have to go back to the office or they will be fired and receive nothing because they did not fill their role.

This is an extremely pro-business perspective. Just because they can do it doesn't mean they're correct, and we should just bend over and spread our cheeks for them. Certainly, we shouldn't beg for them to fuck us, but apparently some of us are really craving it.

No. This is reality. Business’s provide a service or product. They pay people to perform tasks to deliver the service or product.

Just because you want to work from home doesn’t mean you get to. Blue collar jobs don’t get the luxury of working from home. But apparently people like you feel like you’re above everyone else because you have a white collar job so you’re entitled to work from home.

Get a grip. You don’t get to dictate every aspect of your job. Start your own business if you want to do things your way.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the wrong way to look at it IMO. It's a way that spreads divisiveness and has an unstated pro-business bias. I think of it as tech workers tend to get treated as people in some ways instead of cattle, and we should work to ensure that everyone gets those benefits. In other words, it's not a privilege that should be shamed or guilted, it's that tech workers are able to demand basic respect on some things.

No, it’s reality. Outside of a pure tech audience, literally no one gives a shit that your company wants you to RTO. I work from home but visit customers in all sorts of industries—manufacturing, finance, healthcare, insurance, retail. All of them are in office now or at a bare minimum hybrid, but with at least 3 days a week in office. So if the standard for most people who work is some portion of their time away fro…

> Outside of a pure tech audience, literally no one gives a shit that your company wants you to RTO.

good point, with the exception of seattle as a whole. eastside light rail is not complete yet, and the DoT is closing all but 2 lanes of I5 in the middle of seattle for 10 months in 2025. The traffic is going to be horrific, and it will offset any potential short term gains that would otherwise have been had from increased real estate prices in downtown. they should have stayed 3 day until the transportation infrastructure was complete.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#128
post #58

Does this apply to Amazon operations in the EU and UK as well. I could imagine that it might be possible to fight such an edict under UK employment law. I'm pretty sure that they would not be able to do it quite so easily here in Norway.

We have stronger worker entitlements here in Europe but WFH is often just a positive remnant from the COVID era and not something specified in our contracts. For example I work fewer hours and from home on Fridays but nowhere in my contract does it say I'm allowed to do that.

If you are a salaried employee in Norway you are paid for the results not for where you work. You are expected to work about 37.5 hours a week. Almost everyone I worked with worked very flexible hours. I read somewhere that 100 000 people in Norway work only Monday to Friday (in a population of 5 million), it's not in their contract either, just in employment law.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely pro-business perspective. Just because they can do it doesn't mean they're correct, and we should just bend over and spread our cheeks for them. Certainly, we shouldn't beg for them to fuck us, but apparently some of us are really craving it.

No. This is reality. Business’s provide a service or product. They pay people to perform tasks to deliver the service or product. Just because you want to work from home doesn’t mean you get to. Blue collar jobs don’t get the luxury of working from home. But apparently people like you feel like you’re above everyone else because you have a white collar job so you’re entitled to work from home. Get a grip. You don’t g…

> Get a grip

Au Contraire, you should get a grip because you're being very pathetic.

It's one thing to be contempt with actions that harm you. That's just sad. But actively begging for it is nothing short of pathetic.

Call me entitled, I don't care. The reality is people like me end up happy and people like you ensure your own misery. It's so unbelievable that people don't even need to make you miserable - in the event you ever find yourself happy, you will do anything possible to make yourself miserable.

We DO have some control over our jobs, and we CAN demand better. The only reason you have the life you have is because a lot of people before you demanded better. Just for you to be a weak coward who lays on his knees begging for his throat to get used. If that's what you want to be, fine.

Objectively, you do yourself no favors. That's not my opinion, that's what it is. Nobody, and I do literally mean nobody, cares if you work hard or purposefully work at a business you do not like. Blue collar people don't give even half a fuck that you want to have as much, or as little, luxury as them. WFH people will not call you brave because you commute to the office. Instead, what happens is they continue their life MUCH happier than you, and you remain miserable by your own devices, and not a soul on Earth looks your way - not even for pity.

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