Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by notyourwork » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:06 AM UTC

Kenji wrote: post #53

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…

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 family or whatever - technically you're still working, your mind is preoccupied, you might not be able to sleep or when you do you dream about the problem. Oh my gosh, exactly this! When I am working on a theoretical maths problem, there is just no end to the work! On the train hom…

You sound like you resent this which makes me question whether you genuinely like what you do?

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

#92

Post by notyourwork » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:08 AM UTC

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).

Good for you! I am glad to see others supporting this because I also feel Amazon isn't a sweatshop. Every big company has a bad apple or few in the bunch and those are the loudest criers. The great teams (majority) don't complain because they have no complaints! Keep up the good work on Alexa!

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

#93

Post by mbloom1915 » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:10 AM UTC

guys lets not pretend Amazon doesn't operate in Europe and already have this setup - if its already working over there dipping their toes in the US is reasonable. it's a pilot.

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

#94

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:14 AM UTC

andrewguenther wrote: post #39

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.

The pilot is a team-wide thing. You won't have a 30-hour employee on a 40-hour team. 30-hour employees will work with 30-hour employees under a 30-hour manager. I think that will help offset some of this, but it does put a limit on what projects you could work on. For the pilot, anyway. I'm interested to see how this pans out.

There's no reason why you cannot do that. Our contractors get fixed hour allocations, and often will strictly work to the hours they are paid for (we won't pay overtime without approval).

A few of my folks were angry about this and claimed to be working 50-60 hour weeks. My response was "there's a easy solution to this problem". They cut out the excessive OT, which was mostly unneeded, and not too much changed.

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

#95

Post by smb06 » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:18 AM UTC

theDoug wrote: post #86

Buge wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of those are not about programmers, they are about the employees physically moving products around in warehouses.

That's not better, it's just a different class of employee.

Exactly. Most of the people who say "Oh its not that bad at Amazon" are white collared workers who are living in their bubble and don't know the hardships of different class of employees.

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

#96

Post by Twirrim » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:19 AM UTC

vadym909 wrote: post #64

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 wou…

If Amazon had a good track record for people working only 40 hours a week, I might be less skeptical about this 30 hour week situation.

There are very few technical teams inside that seem to come even close to that, so I'm extremely doubtful that managers are going to be sufficiently disciplined to keep their staff down to 30 hours, nor employees sufficiently empowered either. It's so hard to see this as anything other than a way to pay people less for comparable work.

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

#97

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:21 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #54

andrewguenther wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because working from home is usually light on working.

Your viewpoint, without experience, is toxic to rational discussions regarding remote work (and is ironic, considering your employer).

No, it's just a different viewpoint.

If you don't have measurable inputs and outputs (i.e. Tickets, service requests, widgets, cases, etc), you typically lose productivity. Not necessarily because of the employee, but also because of managers who don't function well with out of sight people.

Personally, I think in many cases you'd get better outcomes out of sending people home at noon on Fridays than having them telework.

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

#98

Post by 20yrs_no_equity » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:27 AM UTC

This plus stack-ranking means 60 hour workweeks. I worked at Amazon for several years, their culture may pretend to support this, but, like almost everything you read about Amazon, it's PR fluff. Never going to happen.

Simply only showing up in the office 30 hours a week would be enough to put your team on the bottom end of the stack.

Amazon is organized such that the politics are vicious and anything that can be used to put another team down (And thus elevate your team in the stack) will be used.

Managers like Bezos are proud of creating this toxic cult like culture because they rationalize it and are not interested in hearing about how they are screwing up.

A real example of this is Bezos claiming after the NYT article that if anyone saw abuse they should email him directly... and now the ex-amazon alumni group has grown by several people who did exactly that and were fired.

My boss was committing felonies on the PacMed grounds on a regular basis, drove %80 of his team to leave, and he still got promoted.

Because he was good at politics and BS (and terrible at actually getting product done, easily wasting %25 of our time with nonsense because he didn't understand how the system worked but wanted to "manage" (which really meant micro-manage.))

Felonies, I'm not kidding.

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

#99

Post by fratlas » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:28 AM UTC

dav43 wrote: post #85

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…

This is true of many more jobs, jobs that require you to think and use judgement. This isn't just engineering jobs.

Yes, especially for those jobs that already require 60-80 hour weeks (doctor, IB etc). We get paid well for our hours.

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

#100

Post by boardwaalk » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:34 AM UTC

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…

I'm not being facetious, but this might be a personal problem (not being able to get your mind off of work). For people who experience this, something like meditation might help, seriously. I certainly wouldn't fault an employer.

I'd love a 30 work week (if I wasn't trying to fast track towards retirement): those 10 hours (or more if working 4 days and not having to commute one weekday) would be entirely mine.