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AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

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Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#71

Post by pal9000 »

ramchip wrote: post #62
pal9000 wrote: post #49

Amazon (aws) was by far the worst place I’ve worked. Literally every engineer was offered and this was in Germany, where the culture and labor laws are super employee friendly. Everything was soulless including the god ugly Chime and other internal tools. Although principles like bias for action, disagree and commit are pretty effective and cool. Just for work culture, I’d have preferred to work at Google or Facebook…

> Literally every engineer was offered I might be missing an idiom here - offered what?

Overworked* oops

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#72

Post by aprilthird2021 »

justanorherhack wrote: post #61
syspec wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't H1B workers the most likely to comply?

That’s what he is saying. Get rid of non h1bs then keep draining people until they leave and then use that as justification to expand h1b positions. H1b is really not fair. They have virtually no negotiation standing without risking their immigration status. They are underpaid and subsidized, and drive domestic wages down. Among many simple reforms they should execute, a big one would be tonseperate the sponsor compa…

> They are underpaid and subsidized, and drive domestic wages down.

This is true in outsourcing companies (such as Wipro, Infosys, etc.), who account for the lions share of H1B visas, but their entire value prop is outsourcing. I think FAANG pay H1Bs pretty well. I have known several who make above the median of their salary band because the comp systems reward good performance.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#73

Post by happytoexplain »

rat9988 wrote: post #60
squiffsquiff wrote: post #55

I realise this topic has been covered repeatedly but considering it from another angle: As an engineer employed by third party companies using AWS, this doesn't look good. I don't care if the support people are in an office. I do care if they're available and know what they're doing. There are other cloud providers available. For new entrants, what's Amazon's unique selling point?

I'm not sure what your argument is. I feel like you just wanted to bash amazon. If you don't care if the support people are in office, why are you concerned by the RTO news?

This is a pretty strained framing. The parent didn't say anything ambiguous or illogical.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#74

Post by moandcompany »

Ekaros wrote: post #26
moandcompany wrote: post #5

They should be bold and make it six days a week.

Also set working times from 9 to 9. Also there is some strange perks there like food. Do you really need that much better than say some starving African?

Taking dogfooding to a new level.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#75

Post by Gud »

pal9000 wrote: post #49

Amazon (aws) was by far the worst place I’ve worked. Literally every engineer was offered and this was in Germany, where the culture and labor laws are super employee friendly. Everything was soulless including the god ugly Chime and other internal tools. Although principles like bias for action, disagree and commit are pretty effective and cool. Just for work culture, I’d have preferred to work at Google or Facebook…

Being overworked is a choice you make.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#76

Post by throw4950sh06 »

mathieuh wrote: post #47
pfannkuchen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t they just reverting to the same working conditions they had from the time they were founded until sometime in 2020? Circumventing severance here seems like quite an overstatement.

Well yes, if you disregard the fact that the last four years of realising that WFH is not only possible but preferable for workers happened. It's backsliding from a situation that was advantageous for many workers. For many people it's become non-negotiable that a job offer remote working. If where I worked mandated return-to-office I would immediately begin looking for somewhere else to work.

I don't see how the realization could've happened if they're moving back to the office.

I'm not surprised btw, every remote first company I've been in is stuck. I'm not saying it's inherent, but making it work is extremely hard. Imho it makes perfect sense that a company doesn't want to invest into it - it's not a lifestyle business.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#77

Post by [deleted] »

faizshah wrote: post #37
pfannkuchen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t they just reverting to the same working conditions they had from the time they were founded until sometime in 2020? Circumventing severance here seems like quite an overstatement.

Amazon has one of the lowest average tenures in the industry. The number of engineers and teams that existed pre-2020 under those working conditions is tiny (except maybe the leadership teams). Once you have worked a remote/hybrid software job with a remote team you can’t put that genie back in the bottle (or something like that, that DHH said).

[deleted]

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#78

Post by exe34 »

rat9988 wrote: post #60
squiffsquiff wrote: post #55

I realise this topic has been covered repeatedly but considering it from another angle: As an engineer employed by third party companies using AWS, this doesn't look good. I don't care if the support people are in an office. I do care if they're available and know what they're doing. There are other cloud providers available. For new entrants, what's Amazon's unique selling point?

I'm not sure what your argument is. I feel like you just wanted to bash amazon. If you don't care if the support people are in office, why are you concerned by the RTO news?

rto causes the competent people to jump ship and keeps the script readers who won't/can't complain

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#79

Post by exe34 »

moandcompany wrote: post #31
punnerud wrote: post #16

Any statistics on the kind of people that stick to office work. A, B, or C players? Introverts vs extroverts, programmers vs project managers..

I heard Amazon employees were told 9 out of 10 Amazonians were looking forward to returning to the office. I guess they asked ten employees this question. Nine were on H1B visas, and the tenth was already on Focus/PIP.

beware of any survey where management asks the questions, answers the questions and then analyses the responses and frames the presentation.

Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office

#80

Post by franga2000 »

lynx23 wrote: post #64
globular-toast wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entitled to what? Control over their own lives? I hope you didn't have any choice in your job, or take holiday or weekends, or even get paid or sleep. Otherwise you might feel entitled to these things.

Quit, and you have full control over your life again. Stop being so childish. Comparing holidays, sick leave, pay and nightly sleep to physical presence is simply laughable. The pandemic was an exceptional situation. Holding onto that special status is plain entitlement.

Standards change. Before paid sick leave was common, people would've laughed you out of the room for even suggesting it - "you're saying I should be paying you for doing nothing just because you got sick? I didn't make you sick, how is that my problem?". But now we all (hopefully) agree it's one of the basic worker's rights.

If all I do is press buttons on a keyboard all day, there is no reason I should have to be in the office for that. Entitlement would mean expecting something unreasonable - WFH for programmers etc. is reasonable. People have been asking for it for years and companies refused. They were forced into it and the world didn't end. Why shouldn't we keep it? The only people forced return to office benefits are the middle managers "overseeing" the people doing the actual work.

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