Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

71–80 of 278 posts

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

#71

No one knows what the future holds, but as the dust settles on WFH, I think that FAANG will double down on in-office and use their leverage as desirable large market cap companies with lucrative total comp packages to selectively seek out and retain those who are willing to agree to an in-office or hybrid work environment. They have identified in-person collaboration as a key competitive advantage going forward, want…

Now replace WFH with 401K and see if it makes sense. Its a benefit. To be competitive you offer it. If you don't, bye bye talent.

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

#72
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?

Yes. The biggest companies, with the most political power, believe just that. I pray smaller companies make themselves more competitive by offering WFH but that’s yet to be seen.

hah. i have some bad news for them. the cat is out of the bag. they may be able to force people to do things in the short term but long term they are going to become obsolete.

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

#73
post #51
post #28

The thing is, this becomes theater of working. Imagine commuting to the office 60-90 minutes each direction just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if a company bans zoom for office days (but none will) And im not even going to start on the complete waste of time of people in an open space talking non stop about their fantasy football draft. I haven't heard those w…

> just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom Presumably, that's what the return to office plan is trying to fix. Right now, if you go into the office, you're spending a lot of time in zoom calls because half the people in every meeting aren't there. If everyone's in the office, you can just meet in person.

Yeah except half of my team is in an office in a different part of the country. How are they meant to participate, if not by calling in? Even if literally everyone across the entire company came back to their offices tomorrow majority of my meetings would still be online and in conference rooms.

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

#74

No one knows what the future holds, but as the dust settles on WFH, I think that FAANG will double down on in-office and use their leverage as desirable large market cap companies with lucrative total comp packages to selectively seek out and retain those who are willing to agree to an in-office or hybrid work environment. They have identified in-person collaboration as a key competitive advantage going forward, want…

I've always thought about this being the settling point at the end of the day.

Putting aside the debate between what people like/is effective.

FAANG companies have a lot of political leverage when they have in office employees.

Amazon specifically in Seattle, wouldn't surprise me if some of the reason they're doing this is so they can continue to work their way into city's politics.

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

#75
post #18
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.

I have numerous emails and messages from agents (recruiters) of the company assuring me that positions were fully remote. I was sent plenty of job descriptions that specifically stated they were fully remote positions.

Maybe that means I would have been rif'd in one of the "okay we have to call it a layoff" layoffs before this policy tho.

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

#76
post #51
post #28

The thing is, this becomes theater of working. Imagine commuting to the office 60-90 minutes each direction just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if a company bans zoom for office days (but none will) And im not even going to start on the complete waste of time of people in an open space talking non stop about their fantasy football draft. I haven't heard those w…

> just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom Presumably, that's what the return to office plan is trying to fix. Right now, if you go into the office, you're spending a lot of time in zoom calls because half the people in every meeting aren't there. If everyone's in the office, you can just meet in person.

This assumes that everyone you are working with is in the same office and conveniently clustered together.

This is highly unlikely to be the case with a massive company like Amazon. Teams have been pretty distributed across buildings/offices/location even prior to the pandemic in many many companies.

So I am not sure it will be as simple as you make it.

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

#77

No one knows what the future holds, but as the dust settles on WFH, I think that FAANG will double down on in-office and use their leverage as desirable large market cap companies with lucrative total comp packages to selectively seek out and retain those who are willing to agree to an in-office or hybrid work environment. They have identified in-person collaboration as a key competitive advantage going forward, want…

All it takes is 1 faang to say screw it you can wfh, then they have the recruiting advantage over the old dinosaur style businesses.

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

#78
post #28

The thing is, this becomes theater of working. Imagine commuting to the office 60-90 minutes each direction just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom Want to talk collaboration and productivity? Let's see if a company bans zoom for office days (but none will) And im not even going to start on the complete waste of time of people in an open space talking non stop about their fantasy football draft. I haven't heard those w…

Amazon is somewhat infamous for their willingness to make workers spend unpaid time getting ready to work. They're the folks that took "we don't want to pay our employees to stand in long security lines to get into or out of our warehouse" to the Supreme Court and won. Employees who stayed with Amazon after that because it was only being done to lower paid employees enjoy little of my sympathy.

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

#79

No one knows what the future holds, but as the dust settles on WFH, I think that FAANG will double down on in-office and use their leverage as desirable large market cap companies with lucrative total comp packages to selectively seek out and retain those who are willing to agree to an in-office or hybrid work environment. They have identified in-person collaboration as a key competitive advantage going forward, want…

Now replace WFH with 401K and see if it makes sense. Its a benefit. To be competitive you offer it. If you don't, bye bye talent.

FAANG total comp is a lot higher than what most other companies will pay. I think the parent poster is right -- the smaller companies will pay lower salaries and offer remote work, and the larger companies will pay higher salaries and require at least 3 days per week in the office.

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

#80

No one knows what the future holds, but as the dust settles on WFH, I think that FAANG will double down on in-office and use their leverage as desirable large market cap companies with lucrative total comp packages to selectively seek out and retain those who are willing to agree to an in-office or hybrid work environment. They have identified in-person collaboration as a key competitive advantage going forward, want…

You don't think it might have something to do with the billion dollar campuses FAANG companies had built?
Post reply on HN