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Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

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Re: Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

#131

Post by illusive4080 »

jedberg wrote: post #76
illusive4080 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Below 200? And here I thought I’d at least make a pretty penny if I left my comfortable job for a tech company

Amazon is odd that way. Everyone has a base that low, even VPs. All of the comp is in RSUs and hiring bonus for the first two years. Even someone with a total comp of $1M a year will have a base salary of $250K, and a hiring bonus of $700K a year, and then RSUs that in theory make up the rest, as long as AMZN goes up at least 15% per year. When the stock was on a tear, some people would make 2x or 3x their expected t…

Ahh ok so on an average year you do make a substantial amount.

Re: Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

#132

Post by classified »

randycupertino wrote: post #6

5 days a week RTO is just beyond the pale. 3 days, sure. 4 days, maybe. But 5 days in office is harsh. Top talent sees this as rude, lack of trust, unnecessary babysitting and middle managing. 3-4 days sure, good for networking, collaboration, etc. But give people 1 day a week flex at least to be trusted adults who can responsibly wfh.

Let them fuck it up royally. At least this way the idiots get to pay for their stupidity when top talent quits because of that.

Re: Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

#133

Post by kevindamm »

charcircuit wrote: post #81
kevindamm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be about hours in a seat, it should be about deliverables met and actions & communication around those that couldn't be met. For knowledge work and creative tasks, at least. I would really be surprised if Amazon didn't allow their top performers a day or two of WFH per week in pre-pandemic days. Other FAANGs basically had that policy before the pandemic. If they're really saying 5-day RTO for everyone, y…

This logic fails to account for priorities changing. If priorities change Friday morning it could mean all the work you did that week was worthless. Should one spend their whole weekend working to finish some deliverance or should it be limited by the expected hours? Similarly if someone front loaded 40 hours Monday through Friday and priorities change on Friday or a critical bug comes in people will have to wait unt…

If priorities are being made after code is written then it won't matter if the code took a day, a week or a month, or whether it was done under the company's florescents or a sunny back patio. Decisions about near-term objectives should be made before work is underway, or interleaved with experiment development and analysis.

Your last statement actually supports my point that it shouldn't be about hours served but about objectives met.

Admittedly, it is much more difficult to clearly define work expectations when they aren't in terms of hours, and doing so fairly across team members is especially difficult. And things like on-call rotations complicate that even further. But it's also very easy to game a system that is hourly-based and often results in schedules slipping, or worse: some team members doing heroic efforts near deadlines to make up for other team members that think they've done their work because their timesheet said so.

Re: Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

#134

Post by AgentOrange1234 »

When I ran the numbers, I realized commuting for RTO was going to cost the equivalent of 6 full time weeks of work. My whole team is at a different location. So I am driving in to be on Zoom calls. It is deeply pointless and frustrating.

I mentioned all of this to my boss, who is great btw, and was told there is just no fighting this. After several months of trying to make the best of it, I’m done. I’m planning to leave after my next vest.

It’s really a shame. I liked a lot about the job. So many good people have been forced out.

Re: Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

#135

Post by HelloNurse »

rtomaven wrote: post #31
Animats wrote: post #5

How does their "hub" thing work? Is your whole team in one place, or do you just report to some random cubicle farm?

:::: How does their "hub" thing work? Is your whole team in one place, or do you just report to some random cubicle farm? Basically, you show up to random cubicle or sound-proof photo booth and "collaborate" via Chime (now Teams) with other workers around the world also sitting in random booths/cubicles. Unlike Google/Facebook you do not even get free lunch.

Could it be a semi-deliberate way to discourage people who have a life and retain only "worker bees", including the visa-dependent immigrants that other comments mention?

Re: Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

#136

Post by brianmcc »

phil21 wrote: post #84
ascendantlogic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any days in office just to spend most of it on zoom calls is too many.

I don't understand why companies don't "get" this bit of it. I'm fairly amenable to the idea of RTO. Office work with a team is just different, and I've worked almost exclusively remote my entire career. If I were a high level leader in these giant orgs trying to implement RTO I'd 100% ban any internal Zoom calls for in-office days. If you are in the office you are in the office. Why take the worst possible form of c…

Ironically, screen sharing on zoom whilst all colocated can be less bad than sitting round a gigantic TV type screen for calls where screen content is needed :-|

Re: Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

#138

Post by teeray »

randycupertino wrote: post #6

5 days a week RTO is just beyond the pale. 3 days, sure. 4 days, maybe. But 5 days in office is harsh. Top talent sees this as rude, lack of trust, unnecessary babysitting and middle managing. 3-4 days sure, good for networking, collaboration, etc. But give people 1 day a week flex at least to be trusted adults who can responsibly wfh.

Why is 3 seemingly always the minimum? Why not 2? I did 2 days in-office for 2 years—it was a great balance. All the meetings ended up on Tuesday/Thursday and M/W/F was solid get-shit-done time at home. You also never started or ended the week in-office.

Re: Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

#139

Post by teeray »

dehrmann wrote: post #83
aaa_2006 wrote: post #41

This whole issue makes me wonder whether the real problem is Amazon’s high cost structure rather than RTO policies alone. If employees are forced back into expensive offices just to justify those huge campus investments, maybe the better fix is shedding real estate, not tweaking attendance rules.

Occupied offices are more expensive to operate than vacant ones (more power, more HVAC, more janitorial). Those buildings might be expensive, but using them is more expensive.

Vacant buildings cost more to insure, so not all costs are obvious.

Re: Amazon RTO policy is costing it top tech talent, according to internal document

#140

Post by Izkata »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #115
technion wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how i used to manage with five days in office. I am currently using myunch hour to see a doctor. A few weeks back I needed to see a plumber, and before that an electrician. Its five seconds out of the work day let them in and send them on their way but I guess we're looking at burning annual leave if I was stuck in office.

>I have no idea how i used to manage with five days in office The quality of offices was also much better in the past like a single office for for 2 to Max 6 people. Now it's crowded open space hot desks offices with 40+ people.

Some of us never knew that world, even when we were going in every day for years.
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