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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

#131

Post by ejvincent »

jonas21 wrote: post #51
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…

> 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.

This is my personal take, given that I work at Amazon. Here's the landscape of people I interact with:

* Supply Chain - Bellevue, Vancouver, Austin

* AWS / other businesses - Seattle, occasionally elsewhere (NYC, Boston, HQ2)

* Foreign business teams - Luxembourg (EU), occasionally elsewhere (India)

* Team members on my team - Bellevue, Seattle, Vancouver, and elsewhere

Tell me how we're going to get all of these groups together for "hallway talk". At best, you can get a team in one locality, but even that is difficult with immigration challenges.

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

#132

Post by shuckles »

ipaddr wrote: post #113
brandon272 wrote: post #54

No one knows what the future holds, but as the dust settles on WFH, I think that FAANG will double down on in-office and use their leverage as desirable large market cap companies with lucrative total comp packages to selectively seek out and retain those who are willing to agree to an in-office or hybrid work environment. They have identified in-person collaboration as a key competitive advantage going forward, want…

FAANG want you to come back for their real estate valuations. You get to sit on zoom and pretend you are doing this to increase face to face.

This is one of the most strange recurring theories. Companies are valued based on the recurring cashflows they generate from operating activities. A large technology company could have a _huge_ one-time write down of their real estate assets, and (assuming it does not make the company illiquid) not have its valuation materially impacted. Nobody is buying these companies because of their skill at investing in real estate.

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

#133

Post by qvrjuec »

ahelwer wrote: post #126
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?

He explains why he does this in his post.... >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.

Not everyone is built the same way

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

#134

Post by newaccount2021 »

ptkanchi wrote: post #125

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 im…

[dead]

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

#135

Post by ipaddr »

mjr00 wrote: post #108
weard_beard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now replace WFH with 401K and see if it makes sense. Its a benefit. To be competitive you offer it. If you don't, bye bye talent.

401K is unambiguously a benefit to every employee. Remote-first or remote-only is not unambiguously a benefit; some people actually prefer to be in the office and interact with people face-to-face. Yes, even some talented ones. If remote work was all it took, Gitlab (remote only since 2014) would have sucked up every talented engineer on the planet. Yet somehow they're still a very distant second to Github in their s…

Gitlab is somehow in the conversation with github and a huge reason for that is talented engineers. There hiring process is not the best, the ego level is higher than it should be and management isn't the sharpest or most creative.

Without wfh you wouldn't be talking about gitlabs.

They have access to a greater pool of talent but they still have to have a solid business plan / sales / some luck.. And they have to pick the right talent from that greater pool

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

#136

Post by filoleg »

makoz wrote: post #107
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.

Disclaimer work in Amazon. That at least doesn't work at all in my situation. I'm based in Seattle and I collaborate regularly with folks in probably 3-4 other geographic locations, ironically no one actually in Seattle. If anything getting the video conferencing to work in a meeting room is more of a hassle/friction and a poorer experience when you still have to accommodate someone remote.

I am not at Amazon, but at another FAANG, also am in Seattle, and it is the same thing for us. If we were hit with RTO, it would make exactly zero sense for my team/org.

Out of people I work with, one of them is also in Seattle, another one is in Toronto area, the team lead is in SF, the manager is in SD, and the skip level manager is in MTV. I am not even gonna talk about people on the partner teams that we gotta work with, as they are all spread out all over the place. RTO would be an absolute net negative for every single person on my team, as we aren't going to see the people we work with in our local offices regardless.

And don't even get me started on trying to find available meeting rooms in the office for meetings that were not scheduled way ahead of time. If someone wants to hop on a call with me for a debugging session or has anything to discuss impromptu, being available for that in the office is rather difficult. All while I can hop on a meeting call on a minute's notice when WFH.

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

#137

Post by old_hat »

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?

I'm 40 and I work from the office 5 days a week for roughly the same reasons. General expectation from the company is around 2 days a week in the office, but I prefer it, so I come in every day.

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

#138

Post by ahelwer »

qvrjuec wrote: post #133
ahelwer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He explains why he does this in his post.... >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. Not everyone is built the same way

No, they say they do it for the change of scenery and nobody else is there.

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

#139

Post by tkiolp4 »

mjr00 wrote: post #108
weard_beard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now replace WFH with 401K and see if it makes sense. Its a benefit. To be competitive you offer it. If you don't, bye bye talent.

401K is unambiguously a benefit to every employee. Remote-first or remote-only is not unambiguously a benefit; some people actually prefer to be in the office and interact with people face-to-face. Yes, even some talented ones. If remote work was all it took, Gitlab (remote only since 2014) would have sucked up every talented engineer on the planet. Yet somehow they're still a very distant second to Github in their s…

The problem is that interaction face-to-face takes at least two people. You may like it and you would do it any day of the week, but the person in front of you may hate it. So, obviously the win-win scenario is to be flexible and let the people decide where they want to work from. Only then you can be sure that the person in front of you really want to see your face that close… it was their choice.

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

#140

Post by toomuchtodo »

darth_avocado wrote: post #127
potatolicious wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?

"It's okay as long as you willingly participate in the theater and power dynamic."

The problem isn't really remote as much as employers having the ability to grossly change working conditions on a whim with no worker recourse. C-level doesn't have any proof on site is a superior operating model, they feel it is, and they believe that's good enough to call the plebs back.

Who was the last person you knew who gave up substantial power willingly?

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