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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

#161

Post by pknomad »

tdeck wrote: post #135
pknomad wrote: post #117

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…

If you work in Seattle it's one of only a few options. A lot of folks in the Bay Area (including former me) don't understand how much of a monoculture this place is. There are really only 2 major places to work as a software engineer and very few startups or small companies. Nearly every SWE I meet works at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Meta (the last 2 have smaller offices here).

Hah! That jibes with my experience. I've applied for few startups in Seattle back in 2018 and every interview was prefaced with - "our engineering team is made up for ex M$ and/or AMZN".

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

#162

Post by neofrommatrix »

rwalle wrote: post #37

As a reminder, https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-... > Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer > Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for…

"Disagree and Commit" to that argument.

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

#163

Post by happytoexplain »

duringmath wrote: post #104

Least you expect from workers is to show up for work.

This seems obviously wrong - the least you expect is of course for them to accomplish the goals of their position. If that requires physical presence, then obviously that's part if the deal implicitly. But for tons of jobs, that's part of the "above and beyond" bucket. I.e. things like after-hours availability, that may improve outcomes, but actually have downsides that mean they could be net negatives depending on the specific job and the specific individuals.

Aside from such executive blindness, the only other reason anybody alive still thinks of commuting and in-office work in more innocent terms is because up until very recently (generationally speaking) they were simply a physical necessity for nearly 100% of jobs, so there was nothing to be gained by dwelling on it. That changed, so the acceptance of petty suffering changed. Also, the fact that the ratio of life improvement to hard work has steadily decreased since those times motivates employees to find other means of maintaining sanity.

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

#164

Post by packetlost »

tdeck wrote: post #135
pknomad wrote: post #117

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…

If you work in Seattle it's one of only a few options. A lot of folks in the Bay Area (including former me) don't understand how much of a monoculture this place is. There are really only 2 major places to work as a software engineer and very few startups or small companies. Nearly every SWE I meet works at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Meta (the last 2 have smaller offices here).

This makes me sad because I've been trying to move to Seattle from Madison, WI for years and was hoping the startup market would be better out there

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

#165

Post by aurizon »

nblgbg wrote: post #130

Reducing the number of managers is an interesting decision. I briefly worked at Amazon, and the only way for managers to get promoted is by hiring more people under them. There isn’t any other way to get promoted, which incentivizes managers to grow their teams and sometimes add features that may not make sense. Any opinions from ex-Amazonians?

I thought this went out when the USSR fell?

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

#167

Post by adabyron »

The irony here...

"On the first topic, we’ve always sought to hire very smart, high judgment, inventive, delivery-focused, and missionary teammates. And, we have always wanted the people doing the actual detailed work to have high ownership."

Then shortly later..

"We are also going to bring back assigned desk arrangements"

So they hire smart people with great judgement who have high ownership but also treat them like incompetent workers who need to show up to the office, in their assigned seat & do their assigned tasks... And he calls this startup culture? Can Amazon even be considered a "tech" company at this point? It seems long gone are the days of innovation & growth at the cost of profit.

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

#168

Post by SoftTalker »

snapcaster wrote: post #132
nyxtom wrote: post #56

I'm very close to being completely done with tech. This whole career has been stressful and the ROI is debatable

Did you start your career before covid? If not, didn't you already experience and endure 5 days a week in the office and not quit your career?

I worked in an office 5 days a week, wearing a shirt and tie, for 20+ years of my career. My commute door-to-door was nearly an hour each way. Most of that by train fortunately. It was just normal.

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

#169

Post by throwawayFanta »

pknomad wrote: post #117

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…

It's mostly money. If you are good at your job, amazon pays much better than most companies. I tried looking for a new job last year, and the only ones increasing my current comp were HFT and pre-ipo startups. Google wouldn't even match my current comp.

In terms of the rest, only Netflix, meta, snowflake and roblox (why?) might have offered better, but the wlb in the first two is similar to amzn, and i didn't like the outlook of the latter two.

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