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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

#181

Post by ipaddr »

x86x87 wrote: post #174
goostavos wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you need are enough people to fall in line. Amazon is filled with workers on visas. At least from the subset I've talked to, this isn't the hill they plan to die on. "Come in or fuck off back to {home country}" is a pretty strong bargaining chip. For me, getting fired would mean taking a few months off to leisurely reset, then slowly getting back on the leetcode grind, and then trying to find a new remote job. Dr…

I agree. This is where the people that can draw lines in the sand are even more important.

I will cancel prime and hit them where it hurts. Who will join me?

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

#182

Post by brianjking »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #106
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…

In Amazon's case, it might not be theater. Amazon owns around a dozen skyscrapers in downtown Seattle. Amazon has a massive number of employees in downtown Seattle, and whether those people are downtown or not makes a significant difference to the real estate values in downtown Seattle. Making their employees come into the office may in fact mean a significant financial reward to Amazon, but not because the employees…

I don't work for Amazon, but used to live right down the street from the Amazon balls and the rest of the crap downtown.

I have since moved a bit out of the city and do work in tech. However, I can say that I would not care one iota about what financial interests Andrew Jassy or any other CEO has about their own interests.

They do not care about my mental health, time, cost of commuting. Why should I care about theirs?

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

#183

Post by twblalock »

whateveracct wrote: post #88
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.

FAANG total comp is higher, but I think I've made way more money/hour off working remotely than I ever would have if I stayed at FAANG [1]. So while I have less total money, I have made the money I made way more efficiently. Which in some ways, makes me richer :) I sometimes have to remind myself that this level of leisure is basically what "traditional retirement" looks like (but with like a quarter-mil/year income…

The commute angle of the remote work argument always seemed weird to me. If you work at a FAANG you can afford to live anywhere, including in places that would give you a short commute to work.

I feel sorry for people in the service industry who have hour-long commutes because they can't afford to live closer. But that is not the case for tech workers.

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

#185

Post by mypalmike »

ahelwer wrote: post #138
qvrjuec wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some people find they benefit from physically separating home life from work life.

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

#186

Post by whateveracct »

twblalock wrote: post #183
whateveracct wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG total comp is higher, but I think I've made way more money/hour off working remotely than I ever would have if I stayed at FAANG [1]. So while I have less total money, I have made the money I made way more efficiently. Which in some ways, makes me richer :) I sometimes have to remind myself that this level of leisure is basically what "traditional retirement" looks like (but with like a quarter-mil/year income…

The commute angle of the remote work argument always seemed weird to me. If you work at a FAANG you can afford to live anywhere, including in places that would give you a short commute to work. I feel sorry for people in the service industry who have hour-long commutes because they can't afford to live closer. But that is not the case for tech workers.

To be fair, I had a 15-20 minute walking commute. But that adds on 30-40 minutes to an 8+ hour workday.

Also, you can start bean counting and consider the costs of housing with a short commute vs the longer commute and realize that the market knows what it's doing and it becomes a wash comp-wise.

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

#187

Post by twblalock »

ipaddr wrote: post #165
shuckles wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 est…

It's many aspects. More employees in one location, more political power, bigger tax breaks can finance billion dollar campuses. People buy these companies because of hype and asset vs profits. Real estate is a part of their assets and it increases their balance sheets Look at Google making 7 billion dollar investment in 2021. They need to make that payoff. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.architecturaldigest.com/sto.…

Nobody is seriously looking at the real estate portfolio of a FAANG when they value the stock. They care about future earnings projections.

7 billion dollars for Google is a tiny amount. They make almost 300 billion per year. Nobody gives a crap about the value of their office buildings.

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

#188

Post by potatolicious »

aerhardt wrote: post #166
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…

> The idea that you can staff whole teams of people (and their dependencies!) in a way that they're all guaranteed to sit within a short walk of each other is straight-up madness. Beyond a certain scale this is quite impossible. If the world has been mostly remote well before the pandemic, what does this say about the idea that outstanding results can only be produced by the serendipity and (alleged) increased effici…

Oh I have many thoughts about that, especially because I ran a team that was spread over 4 cities pre-pandemic and we made it work!

There is IMO well-justified use cases for in-person collaboration. As much as technology has reduced the effects of distance, the penalty is non-zero for some things. It's unfortunately still a lot easier to do some things remotely.

The trick IMO is that there's a big gap between "sometimes we feel the need to be in-person" and "we should be in-person all the time/most of the time". I think the latter statement is incredibly poorly substantiated.

The answer to all of the above is pretty straightforward: scheduled, reserved in-person time where the entire team meets. You kind of have to do this anyway! If you have developers in New York and Chicago and San Francisco and Tokyo who are all in-office, you still need to do meetups!

Have a travel budget, set up in-person sprints on a cadence that works for your team!

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

#189

Post by [deleted] »

hgsgm wrote: post #12
wonderwonder wrote: post #7

Kind of think people not being able to return to the office is the goal. It lets them reduce head count without the need for severance. Kind of like in office space when they just stopped paying the guy. I did laugh at the part about being the world's best employer. Pretty hard to do with mandatory pips and firing warehouse employees via algorithms.

Constructive dismissal is still a layoff.

[deleted]

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

#190

Post by ben0x539 »

npalli wrote: post #146

Amazon has over 1.4 Million employees. Looking at this article, 14,000 joined a slack channel to complain. So only about 1% is pushing Andy Jassy about this. Should we assume the remainder (~99%) is OK? If so, this is yet another instance of a small group of people strategically using regular/social media to amplify a minority position which the majority doesn't support.

Why would you assume the remainder is OK with this? Joining a slack channel isn't a referendum.
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