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In which way is "working from home" "taking it easy"?
Because working from home is usually light on working.
To each their own, but this is why I don't want to dev for a living.
* - 3 day weekends every week is an awesome thing for me.
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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.
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.
While I would not like such workplace, it sort of makes sense. It's similar to what Elon Musk said once - if you work more then everyone else, over time it becomes noticeable. Perhaps Musk shops reward you better?
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"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).
> I wouldn't agree with this broad generalization. https://www.google.com/#q=amazon+sweatshop
I've been told by people that work for Amazon that they can barely keep their teams properly staffed and working over is just a common occurrence, I doubt a 30-hr work week is viable for a company that is more or less (now) a logistics company. Doing so would require higher headcounts, losing money, or both. Not a viable solution, even with the automation push Amazon has. The only type of companies I could see gettin…
I think that's true of every tech successful company. There's always more +EV work to be done than people to do it, and recruiting quality people is never easy.
It seems short-sighted to suggest that the existence of this problem necessitates working long hours. There are lots of factors to consider:
* It's possible that somebody working 30 hours is actually more productive than somebody working 40 hours, so productivity goes up under the new policy without hiring anybody new.
* It's possible that many more people could enter the workforce if a 30 hour week with a flexible schedule was possible. This working style could be appealing to students, retired people, stay-at-home parents, artists, etc.
* Maybe it's actually okay for productivity to go down. If the company is able to remain stable while getting slightly less done and having much happier employees, perhaps that's a net gain to society.
'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.
Amazon experiments. It's not about bold PR moves to make waves and attract attention. It's about trying everything, even ideas that might sound bad, and seeing if they actually work. This? This is the same idea. Try it out on something less important (HR software, sure, why not) and see what happens.
In the worst case, a bit of internal software is late. That's a low-cost risk to see if you can find a way to reduce developer costs efficiently.
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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'm biased as I'm an Amazon SDE. That aside... Amazon experiments. It's not about bold PR moves to make waves and attract attention. It's about trying everything, even ideas that might sound bad, and seeing if they actually work. This? This is the same idea. Try it out on something less important (HR software, sure, why not) and see what happens. In the worst case, a bit of internal software is late. That's a low-cos…
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…
Though as others have suggested, a 3 month vacation every year might be an even better approach to a 75% work schedule.
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…
In any case, what you describe seems like a pretty big limitation to me. If your employer isn't asking you, or pressuring you, to do more work, then they really shouldn't be held responsible when you do. I wouldn't paint my neighbor's house without having been asked to and then be upset with them for not asking me to (and therefore not paying me to) paint their house. That's nonsensical, but it's also an analogy with limited applicability.