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Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

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Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#31

Post by harshalizee »

Ancalagon wrote: post #24
librish wrote: post #6

There are a lot of companies making remote work work for them, and for a lot of people's lifestyles it's a huge boon. My personal experience has been that WFH has lead to an absolute grinding halt in productivity that requires any form of collaboration. A lot of people will often not respond to Slack for several hours and any video conferencing is usually scheduled for later in the week, instead of in 20 minutes. I k…

My biggest gripe with this more-productive-in-office take is that for the last 6 years all of my teams have been distributed (by the company). So those gaps in between replies still exist, now I'm just sitting in an office instead of at home. Edit: To further my rant. This distributed teamwork was occurring long before covid as well. Half my team at an insurance company was based in 2 other offices in Florida and in…

Yup, exactly same situation here. My company jumped on the bandwagon to hire a lot of remote workers, some in different time zones even. Now some meetings are at awkward times for everyone involved. 8AM meetings, 5-6PM meeting, etc. 7AM-10AM for deep work was my go to sweet spot before everyone clamoring for meetings and slack during the day. Now it's just more meetings that could've been an email.

Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#32

Post by dom96 »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #9

WFH makes it possible for some engineers (and managers) to not do any work and is often a case of "out of sight, out of mind". Without a strong way of gauging impact (a ton of hypergrowth startups and large companies are in this bucket), you can basically coast along doing minimal work. On the other hand, there are a ton of engineers who are hyper-productive when working remotely but because companies don't know how…

WFH isn't the problem in that case, failing to gauge impact is. There is always a way to gauge someone's impact. Do you seriously walk around the office checking to make sure people are working hard to gauge impact?

Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#33

Post by lfx »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #27
whateveracct wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have deep collaborative conversations via DM all the time. If anything it's better because it's written.

This is actually not great, because everyone else doesn't benefit, because it's in a DM that nobody else can see. In an office people near by will benefit too by being in earshot.

But you can copy all of the contents to tickets, emails, etc. All is not lost.

Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#34

Post by dubcanada »

sokoloff wrote: post #18
xakahnx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried calling people on the phone? This is the remote-work equivalent of tapping someone on the shoulder. It's equally helpful for companies that have multiple offices where you need to collaborate with someone not physical near you

The absolute best way to not reach me is by cell phone call. If you’re not my wife or kids, use any of the text mediums, but I’m not picking up an unscheduled call (and if you’re not already in contacts, it won’t even ring).

Ya instead you should be at an office so I can just walk over and bug you face to face instead.

Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#35

Post by marcinzm »

_vertigo wrote: post #7
1101010010 wrote: post #4

> Jassy said he and the S-team, a tight-knit group of senior executives from almost all areas of Amazon's business, decided at a meeting earlier this week that employees should be in the office "the majority of the time (at least three days per week)." Was the meeting in a physical office? Can we expect the policy to apply to them as well as the rest of the staff? You know, to make it easier to "ask ad-hoc questions…

Honestly I would be surprised if the majority (all, really) of the S Team isn’t planning on coming in every day of the week

When you've got a private office, a couple executive assistants, a private driver, a company paid hotel if you need to stay late and a (possibly second) house close by it becomes a much easier thing to do.

edit: And of course 24/7 nannies.

Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#36

Post by chank »

librish wrote: post #6

There are a lot of companies making remote work work for them, and for a lot of people's lifestyles it's a huge boon. My personal experience has been that WFH has lead to an absolute grinding halt in productivity that requires any form of collaboration. A lot of people will often not respond to Slack for several hours and any video conferencing is usually scheduled for later in the week, instead of in 20 minutes. I k…

So you're saying that your ability to get work done is dependent on forcing time with your co-workers on your schedule instead of theirs? This would be rude even if in the office. I've had the complete opposite experience of being able to get co-workers to respond in chat and jump onto meetings when needed.

I can definitely agree that if your company doesn't set an expectation of how remote/hybrid work will be conducted then there will always be some people who are overly laissez-faire with it. My own opinion is that remote work should be conducted mostly the same as if you were in the office. You're just not sitting in the same building anymore. Everyone should keep sensible hours that are close to the same hours of your team and be generally available. Seems to have worked so well for my company that they've begun closing down physical offices.

Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#37

Post by dubcanada »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #9

WFH makes it possible for some engineers (and managers) to not do any work and is often a case of "out of sight, out of mind". Without a strong way of gauging impact (a ton of hypergrowth startups and large companies are in this bucket), you can basically coast along doing minimal work. On the other hand, there are a ton of engineers who are hyper-productive when working remotely but because companies don't know how…

WFH has nothing to do with people not working, people don't work in offices just as much. Tons of people love to come in at 9am, make coffee, stand around talking, go for a smoke at 10am, meetings, out to lunch for 3 hours at 11am, back to work for 2pm, meetings, smoke break at 2:30pm, make some tea, go back to the desk for 30 mins, go to the washroom and back to the desk for 10 and now home.

It's not exactly like adding "remove" to it and now suddenly everyone is a slacker. Sure perhaps there may be a higher percentage, but that is not proven (at least I've not seen any studies) so only a guess.

Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#38

Post by chank »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #27
whateveracct wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have deep collaborative conversations via DM all the time. If anything it's better because it's written.

This is actually not great, because everyone else doesn't benefit, because it's in a DM that nobody else can see. In an office people near by will benefit too by being in earshot.

Don't know about you, but I generally don't speak loud enough that people outside the conversation generally overhear things. Also, word-of-mouth is a absolute horrible strategy to make sure things are shared across a team.

Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#39

Post by 1101010010 »

jmartin2683 wrote: post #19

I’d quit. No need for all that. Pretending like it’s 1995. I can’t imagine anything less productive than trying to work in a room full of people going about their own business.

My last day at the office was almost 5 years ago, and I was one of the lucky ones with a closed-door office in a sea of "open floor" cubicles. As I walked in to the roughly 12x18' room which was occupied by 4 other people (only 2 in the year prior), I was met with a cacophony of noise as all four of them were participating in their own separate video calls, mostly with staff on the same campus (there was a massive meeting room shortage).

It dawned on me then how emotionally and psychologically draining the entire routine experience had become and I turned around and went home at once. This ended up being the best decision I had ever made for my career, my family and my personal well being. I hope to never return to an office space again.

Re: Amazon Announces RTO for Employees

#40

Post by hashtag-til »

jurassic wrote: post #26

I didn't need any more reasons to avoid working at Amazon. Their work culture is famously toxic and their way of back-weighting the vesting schedule is perfectly constructed to make people endure abuse in the workplace. But this kind of attitude toward remote work really seals the deal. Truly an F-tier workplace.

I got an offer from them (in the Alexa/hardware group - UK), but the place looked like a cult - with all their mantras to learn for interview and stuff. I mastered it for interview and just told them some nonsense rubbish. Still went on the other phases and got an offer.

After all steps, somehow I felt $ would be life changing. It wasn’t, so I did the right thing and didn’t leave the current place to go there.

Looking for something slightly more normal.

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