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Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

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Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#61

Post by ender7 »

zeeveener wrote: post #52
gfody wrote: post #37

Something 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 f…

Programmers can suffer from this problem as well as engineers. The project never fully leaves your mind and often I'll go home and mull over the reasons why things might not be working or how to start another task. No "actual" work gets done, but I'm still working; just as you described.

In this context, "programmer" and "engineer" are probably meant to be synonymous.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#62

Post by Bluestrike2 »

vibrato wrote: post #58
pjmorris wrote: post #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.

They are piloting it on internal HR software which I think says a lot. To me this seems like a purely PR driven move after the lambasting their culture has taken lately.

I see that as a good thing. If you're going to experiment on your employees and try to change your workplace culture, low-profile projects that--while important--often aren't 100% mission critical are a good place to do so.

A major problem in HR or payroll software or something similar might cause some massive headaches for your employees, but it won't be as noticeable outside the company as a major outage or problem affecting customer data.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#63

Post by rezashirazian »

I have quite a few friends who work at Amazon and what I hear from them is that the quality of your experience is completely dependent on team you're on.

There are teams where all horror stories you hear are common occurrences(although less so in recent years) and others where it's an absolute pleasure.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#64

Post by vadym909 »

gfody wrote: post #37

Something 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 f…

While all previous evidence goes towards pointing this to be another way for AMZN to squeeze more out of their employees, I think we could give them the benefit of doubt. I think they may have seen a segment of talented developers saying I don't want to be in this ratrace. I'd rather work 30hrs/week and make $100K to maintain work-life balance. 6hrs/week or 4 days/week. I wish more companies were open to this. It would reduce internal competition. Some of the 60 hr/week employees are gunning for promotions and probably don't care about work life balance. Why should everyone have to compete with that?

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#65

Post by enraged_camel »

abbasaamer wrote: post #43
zzalpha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Amazon is a sweatshop" I wouldn't agree with this broad generalization. I work in Alexa and the work environment on my team is pretty awesome. Lots of freedom to try new things, good work life balance, and generally a high level of respect for engineers. I turned down Google to come here and I have no regrets (though not to imply that Google isn't equally awesome).

How many tech companies do you know where the current and former employees have come together to create websites like this? https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#66

Post by vibrato »

Bluestrike2 wrote: post #62
vibrato wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are piloting it on internal HR software which I think says a lot. To me this seems like a purely PR driven move after the lambasting their culture has taken lately.

I see that as a good thing. If you're going to experiment on your employees and try to change your workplace culture, low-profile projects that--while important--often aren't 100% mission critical are a good place to do so. A major problem in HR or payroll software or something similar might cause some massive headaches for your employees, but it won't be as noticeable outside the company as a major outage or problem…

I agree it's absolutely the smart way to go about testing this out. I only doubt that there's a real motive to change.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#67

Post by smm2000 »

themartorana wrote: post #45
andrewguenther wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because working from home is usually light on working.

Not in my experience or the experiences of anyone I know or work with.

A few times we got "work from home" day when teams moved from one building to another. You would expect more emails that day than usual as you could not just talk in person. Well, both number of email and commits went down significantly which tells me that people mostly "worked" from home that day.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#68

Post by drawkbox »

gfody wrote: post #37

Something 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 f…

Agreed, we really need time off after a project ships or major milestones. Usually after a long sprint on a project to ship you just have to start another one and are less effective immediately. Output would be the same or better with breaks after ebbs and flow of pressure shipments and into design/new projects.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#69

Post by chaostheory »

zzalpha wrote: post #18
smb06 wrote: post #12

I 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 like choices. I don't mind choosing where I will work. I don't think this is a bad thing.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#70

Post by Buge »

gfody wrote: post #37

Something 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 f…

Well these workers get 75% salary, but still get full benefits. So they get more than 75% overall value.
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