When I was at amazon I was routinely putting in 170hr+ work weeks. It was impossible.
Doing what?
Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
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Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
#32So while this is really good for people that have dependents at home, or other consistently demanding activities. I would not enjoy such an arrangement. The arrangement I'd be most excited by is a team with forced three month sabbaticals yearly (or honestly even 6 month sabbaticals). Of-course with the normal amount of vacation time added as well. The way it would work is: Say a team is supposed to have 8 people. Hir…
Also ensures good handoff on projects -- if you work 60h/wk for, say, 8 weeks to ship something, and 40h/wk for 2 weeks before/after to handle turnover, and then are basically AFK for 8 weeks, you'll probably do a pretty good job on handing it off.
(My personal ideal is ~8 days on (12-16h/day), 6 days off, and then a month or two off twice a year.)
Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
#33When I was at amazon I was routinely putting in 170hr+ work weeks. It was impossible.
Do you get overtime pay? I assume you meant you are on-call 24x7.
Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
#34I think what they really mean is "30-hour workweek while being physically present in the office". I would find it difficult to believe that employees wouldn't continue working from home under pressure from management or simply because of tight timelines.
Precisely. Amazon is a sweatshop. The expectation is salaried employees put in ungodly hours. All this is doing is giving people more freedom to burn themselves out at home, while further blurring the lines between work and life and throwing in a 25% pay cut as the cherry on top. It's like the opposite of Google campus life, but with the same goal.
I've worked at places exactly like this. You go to the office, get work done, get home after an 8+ hour day...and then work until midnight. It's exhausting and honestly not healthy. I gained a majority of my current weight doing that and went to the hospital twice for what ended up being severe anxiety (physically thought I was having a heart attack; worst pain ever).
I now work at a much better place where I feel more valued and my work life balance is simply amazing in comparison.
Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
#35When I was at amazon I was routinely putting in 170hr+ work weeks. It was impossible.
Pff I do 171 hour weeks
Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
#36'Amazon is piloting 25% pay cuts'.
I wonder if the group that does this will be viewed as lesser, e.g. work on less interesting projects, be less likely to be promoted, than the "40" hour employees.
Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
#37Something about this bothers me. Time-keeping is already not straightforward for an engineer. Because the work is done in our heads and doesn't necessarily stop just because the workday is over. You don't have to be sitting at a keyboard for your head to be grinding on a problem. More often some problem takes hold of you, occupying some mental bandwidth even while you're away, at home trying to enjoy time with your family or whatever - technically you're still working, your mind is preoccupied, you might not be able to sleep or when you do you dream about the problem.
From the outside it might appear like you came back to the office after a nice weekend break and quickly knocked out whatever task it was that was on your mind. But it's not that simple and after unloading that task, even though it's Monday you could be feeling like you need a break because you actually just worked through the weekend on it.
Because of this, I feel like engineers are already massively overworked and/or underpaid when you consider their salary based on a 40hour workweek when the real mental effort can be pushing 60-80 hours a week. Things like unlimited/discretionary PTO, flex hours, and management that understands the balance of overtime and undertime keeps things fair. Establishing a 30-hour workweek just seems like going hard in the other direction.
Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
#38Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
#39'Amazon is piloting 25% pay cuts'. I wonder if the group that does this will be viewed as lesser, e.g. work on less interesting projects, be less likely to be promoted, than the "40" hour employees.
The pilot is a team-wide thing. You won't have a 30-hour employee on a 40-hour team. 30-hour employees will work with 30-hour employees under a 30-hour manager. I think that will help offset some of this, but it does put a limit on what projects you could work on. For the pilot, anyway. I'm interested to see how this pans out.
Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
And my team at Amazon almost every day has only 4/5 engineers at the office because one is taking it easy working from home. Sometimes people take hour lunches and leave after 7 hours. Sometimes they want to finish something and stay later.
In which way is "working from home" "taking it easy"?
Because working from home is usually light on working.