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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

#31

Post by photon12 »

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.

Welllll, when you are a cloud for the world's governments and systemically important financial institutions, you have operating functions that keep you being able to retain those customers. AWS has had issues in the past with employee retention in those types of departments.

If there is a theory of RTTO as a form of soft layoffs, it still seems like we have a lot to learn about how that impacts the compliance and security capabilities of companies using such tactics.

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

#32

Post by GauntletWizard »

User23 wrote: post #18
hgsgm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Constructive dismissal is still a layoff.

I'm all for remote work in tech, but I also think it might be difficult to convince a court that "please come to work" is creating a hostile work environment.

Significant changes in job location absolutely do count. Forcing people to work from home would probably be enough to count, actually - If the employee objected. Forcing an employee who had promises about WFH availability to come into an office is going to be a slam dunk, for essentially zero gain - The damages will generally be too small to be worth it, at least in the US with at-will employment. But as a matter of labor law, it should be classified as a layoff.

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

#33

Post by Someone1234 »

x86x87 wrote: post #17
whoisthemachine wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not certain about that, but I do think companies believe this is a simple way to kill two birds with one stone: 1. Trim headcount. 2. Keep the most "loyal" employees (or those who need the job the most and will say yes to anything, which is a double-sided sword).

haha. Because loyal == high performing. That is how it works. There is absolutely no way that high performing employees that can get a job by crossing the street will ever think about jumping ship because of the shitty manner they are treated.

These companies have no accurate way of measuring performance anyway.

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

#34

Post by laidoffamazon »

base698 wrote: post #26
SilverBirch wrote: post #8

Remote work definitely comes down to a company culture issue. For most engineering jobs I would say flexibility is a massive competitive advantage. There are so many great engineers out there who prefer not to be in the office it's a great talent pool, but needs to be actively managed in order to get the best out of it. Having said that, Amazon comes across as exactly the company that would require you to be in the o…

The company hired and promised whole orgs and teams remote work for the last two years, many in areas with no Amazon offices. Some were tied to offices 3+ hours away on paper, but during recruiting were promised never returned to office. Others have remote only as a condition of their employment. When your recruiter, boss, director, VP are all remote and promising a remote only employment, what are you supposed to th…

There's no evidence that remote-only ("Virtual location") employees have to ever go to the office. It's really just people that would have had an office before that had a loose RTO policy since like 2021.

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

#35

Post by xivzgrev »

"For instance, some employees who are part of global teams will come into the office only to continue taking virtual meetings, and they may not even have a coworker in their office, the petition states."

My company is RTO, but with teams across offices, so I know this pain all too well. Our leadership has not addressed this disconnect either, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

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

#36

Post by akira2501 »

x86x87 wrote: post #2

this RTO mandates are getting old. Do people, in general, believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started?

> believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started?

Yes. We built it that way for a specific reason.

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

#37

Post by rtp4me »

turtlebits wrote: post #9
x86x87 wrote: post #2

this RTO mandates are getting old. Do people, in general, believe that we can revert to whatever we were doing before the pandemic started?

The complaints are also getting old. If you were hired with the expectation that you go in the office, RTO is an eventual expected outcome. I do see the psychology of taking away what many see as a "benefit", but it's really just going back to the norm.

Agreed. If the expectation was to work from the office when you were hired, you should expect to go back to the office once the pandemic is/was over. Otherwise, why would you take a job in an office if you didn't want to work there (there - as in "in the office")?

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

#40

Post by Zigurd »

photon12 wrote: post #31
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.

Welllll, when you are a cloud for the world's governments and systemically important financial institutions, you have operating functions that keep you being able to retain those customers. AWS has had issues in the past with employee retention in those types of departments. If there is a theory of RTTO as a form of soft layoffs, it still seems like we have a lot to learn about how that impacts the compliance and sec…

Re "AWS has had issues in the past with employee retention in those types of departments." Amazon as a whole is the only first tier tech company where people I know wanted to get jobs, and later decided to leave because the work environment was bad.
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