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Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule

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Re: Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule

#41

Post by alex-nt »

housemusicfan wrote: post #37
alex-nt wrote: post #33

This week I went to the office (not Amazon, another company in Europe) for 3 days in a row because we had new-joiners and I wanted to make it easier for them in the beginning. I live near the office, just a 15m walk away, and I would still not like to continue 3D/W. I know, people call it entitlement, but my problem is that the office is a hostile environment. Here is my experience, in an office that was at most 30%…

Your chief complaints (eco friendly everything in new construction, AC restrictions) are likely due to compliance with local laws. I would suggest to choose wisely when electing your political leaders. In fact California has a requirement for half the cubicle outlets in new offices to be on timers that shut off during "non-working" hours.

Where I live this was mostly a voluntary thing. I do not have a problem with it happening, I have a problem with the implementation. The lights thing is just nonsensical. Having them completely off during the day would have been better on both counts, but nobody thought about it.

Re: Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule

#42

Post by taeric »

soligern wrote: post #39
taeric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept.

I mean you could just follow someone else out. Alternatively leave, stand outside to badge in and then never enter.

Both of those would be trivial to see on the data, though?

I have no doubt these things can and will be gamed by more than a few folks. But I also have no doubt it would be rather easy to figure out most of them.

Re: Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule

#44

Post by taeric »

tivert wrote: post #26
taeric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept.

> A lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept. I've been joking with my coworkers that we should pool our badges, and just rotate one person who goes in and swipes everyone's badges in, works a day, then swipes them out.

It is not uncommon to have an attendant posted at badge in locations. Such that... this wouldn't really be hard to put a stop to. And that is assuming you couldn't just spot it in the data.

As I said in other response, I have no doubt these things can and will get gamed. I don't like the seeming escalation that is implied by this, though. Why start down that slope, if we can avoid it? (Valid to argue that the start down that pat was the badge readers, I think. But at some point, the last step has to stop being justification for the next.)

Re: Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule

#45

Post by alex-nt »

late2part wrote: post #36
alex-nt wrote: post #33

This week I went to the office (not Amazon, another company in Europe) for 3 days in a row because we had new-joiners and I wanted to make it easier for them in the beginning. I live near the office, just a 15m walk away, and I would still not like to continue 3D/W. I know, people call it entitlement, but my problem is that the office is a hostile environment. Here is my experience, in an office that was at most 30%…

A long long time ago, I initiated a project to move 80% of the SaaS company's workload out of a big cloud provider that is fond of 3 day in office work weeks into privately run data center cages. To be clear, we bought and ran the computers, rented the network and the cages/rooms in the data center buildings/campuses. One of our grading criteria was how many bathroom stalls and urinals they had in the men's and women…

A few years back, after I left my old employer I went on the local IT subreddit to find a question from somebody about another company from the same building. First comment was that he should accept the offer if he is open to go to the toilet in the Starbucks/McDonalds across the road. I felt vindicated :))

Every day in that building people would queue before and after lunch at the toilets. We are not speaking about a no-name company, it is one of the biggest financial software vendors in the world. Funnily enough, the old building, where they had fewer people, had x2 toilets. They moved us to a more dense floor with half the toilets.

Re: Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule

#46

Post by tzs »

taeric wrote: post #23
fnordpiglet wrote: post #20

At a prior megacorp that I just quit from for their return to office strategy people would come into the office, swipe their badge at the entrance, log in to their machine, lock the screen, and go home to work.

A lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept.

Some way to keep a count of the number of people in the building can be useful. I've seen occasions where someone checks to see if anyone else is still in the building, misses the one other person who is still there, and so arms the security system when they leave.

Re: Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule

#47

Post by fnordpiglet »

taeric wrote: post #23
fnordpiglet wrote: post #20

At a prior megacorp that I just quit from for their return to office strategy people would come into the office, swipe their badge at the entrance, log in to their machine, lock the screen, and go home to work.

A lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept.

Oh yeah we had that. But the query for compliance didn’t track how long you were in the office. Eventually it was updated and people had to be more clever. But the fact was while I was there they never got more than 35% compliance with the mandate. They were escalating the stakes and threatening performance review problems etc when I left. At some point I just decided it wasn’t worth being at a place that values controlling my body more than my contribution. If that’s the case they can have neither.

Re: Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule

#48

Post by fnordpiglet »

soligern wrote: post #39
taeric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept.

I mean you could just follow someone else out. Alternatively leave, stand outside to badge in and then never enter.

The second one was controlled for by monitoring if you logged in.
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