Amazon doubling down on return to office | Hacker News Reader

Amazon doubling down on return to office

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

126 pointsecliptik129 comments

> I consistently pay attention to what Amazon does, as the company has read the market well for the past decades: both from a business perspective, and also from how to attract and retain software engineers - doing this in a frugal way.

I've been in Amazon for several years, and I couldn't disagree more.

Amazon has always been terrible at attracting, and particularly retaining talent. It's compensation philosophy is bad at rewarding tenured employees and high performers. The saving grace was that stock grew insanely during the bull market of the 2010s. Many people made lots of money and it acted as very effective golden handcuffs.

However the situation is very different now. Stock has been flat for over 2 years, so the singular most important reason to stay is gone. It's going to be interesting to see how the market evolves during the next 1-1.5 years.

I definitely agree it's interesting to pay attention to what Amazon does. Whether it's to copy or avoid it, remains to be seen.

> Amazon has always been terrible at attracting, and particularly retaining talent.

Could not agree more. It appears the culture is quite toxic, in addition to the lower-tier pay. Not to many people ever leave Amazon saying "wow, most fun ever" like they do at places like Google. Even when layoffs were happening, ex-Googlers were consistently expressing sorrow over losing a team they really enjoying working with. Not so for Amazon. Instead it's chants of "never again."

I certainly hope those 30k Amazon workers maybe consider unionizing now, after realizing that executive leadership doesn't give one single care what they think. Organizing efforts are federally protected, and if they're going to get drummed out anyway, not much to lose. You won't have a seat at the table until you drag it there yourself and bolt it to the ground. Don't want to be treated like a disposable cog who can have their work arrangement changed at any time? Organize. If people tell you "just go get another job", ignore them. You don't want another job, you want agency and protections at your job.

I imagine the current administration would be friendly to backstopping those efforts via the NLRB [1].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=nlrb+amazon

I don't understand G.O's obsession with Amazon RTO and not the rest of the industry. No, it's not "unprecedented pushback", Apple employees fought much harder, executives publicly quit, and employees went to the media with names publicly exposed. And yet they went back to the office (those who didn't quit, which might of been intentional on Apples part)

Now back to G.O, I really really don't understand the hype surrounding him in the industry as if his words mean anything.

He was a line manager at Uber 2017-2020. And left the industry. He writes as if he had held multiple SVP positions analyzing how and why engineering orgs do things. He writes about Uber once in a while, in such a generic way, as if in a 30,000 person org all teams have the same ways of working

His writing in clueless, its 90% "I have been told", "people in the company are telling me", its basically a mix of DJT's ex-twitter feed and Blind.

His latest "trick" was scanning LinkedIn to show that in the past 45 days Google's engineering org grew by 6%. I really doubt that happened, Googlers I know really doubt that happened, and using LinkedIn which doesn't verify employment is a very poor way of analyzing data

Yeah, it's very strange when people think of LinkedIn "data" as some finely calibrate scientific instrument.

At best, it produces "anecdata at scale" (biased heavily towards people who or of a certain personality type that enjoys spending time on LinkedIn).

In fact, this data could actually indicate the opposite effect as well, with the LinkedIn org growing because people update their profile to start looking for jobs.

He's a journalist now, therefore he does what journalists have always been incentivized to do: write clickbait articles. Amazon RTO is a hot topic, simple as that.

He claims (or at least implies) to have a lot of contacts in the industry, especially among the cool known brands. If true, relatively few people can claim so.

A lot of Google subcontractors represent themselves as Google employees on LinkedIn etc.

For anybody else wondering what/who "G.O" is, it's the author of the article, Gergely Orosz.

Yes - he is referring to me.

Hi! The G.O. here who you refer to.

To reply to some of the factually incorrect parts of this comment:

On why I don’t cover other companies’ RTO? But I do! You asked about Apple: wrote about them and RTO last month [1]. Other companies doing this - also [2]. You can find my articles on my blog [3] and I really try not to “obsess” about any one company.

I am a bit puzzled on the comment about writing about Uber in “such a generic way.” Here’s a deepdive that happens to be about Uber’s data center history, just from two weeks ago [4]. I am not aware of these pretty specific - and not that easy to track down - details shared before.

[1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-scoop-apple-rto/

[2] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-scoop-rto/

[3] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/

[4] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/uber-move-to-clou...

He writes interesting medium-to-long articles on topics that are on topics senior engineers / engineering managers care about and don't get much informed coverage elsewhere. There aren't that many genuinely technical journalists in our space, and I'm not aware of any as prolific as him. (I'd love to hear some, though!). I am a happy subscriber.

This feels like a way to layoff people without any of the headaches of organizing a layoff. Employees will quit voluntarily and your workforce may shrink by 5-10%.

And no severance.

Employees who were hired remote and have no office within a reasonable distance should absolutely force Amazon to terminate their employment so they can collect unemployment. Amazon is the one forcing the significant change in employment terms, so employees shouldn't do them a favor and resign if they don't have another job lined up yet.

Yes! It's called constructive dismissal in Canada, not sure about other jurisdictions.

But probably requires paying lawyers etc. which may or may not be worth it.

If you have a job lined up no. If you're going to be job hunting wouldn't you get backdated unemployment even if you had the savings to live without it?

For context, depending on the state, unemployment can be a few hundred dollars per week. So you might cover the costs of your lawyer. No idea of the answer to your question as there's also an assumption you're looking for employment while unemployed and may be ongoing documentation requirements.

Depending on your state, hiring a lawyer might not be necessary. In at least one state, the employment division takes violations of employment contracts very seriously and will go to court on your behalf if the violation is egregious enough.

And in all states, you don't have to have a lawyer to bring a case. These are civil cases, and you can represent yourself. You're trading time for money in that situation, of course, and there's a learning curve you need to mount.

Employees who were hired remote can remain remote. Not all employees hired during covid were classified as such. Employees were also able to request exemption from the return to office policy.

I am curious where this is coming from because TFA implies that this policy applies to people who were hired remote. What is the actual distinction between those who have to RTO and those that do not?

> Many employees accepted offers from Amazon with the understanding that their position will be full remote.

Some employees hired during covid were explicitly classified as virtual. Some were given a location and said you don't have to come to office but if you did have an office it would be in <city>.

It's made very clear when hired so anyone saying otherwise missed a subtle detail.

> It's made very clear when hired so anyone saying otherwise missed a subtle detail.

That's an oxymoron, either it was made very clear or it was subtle and therefore not very clear at all.

Not really. People also willingly overlook things hoping for a different reality. It’s a pretty human thing to do.

Yes, but that's not the point I was arguing with. Either it was made very clear (and people choose to overlook it despite it being hard to miss) or it was a subtle detail (that people easily missed, quite possibly unintentionally). Both can't be true at the same time.

> Yes, but that's not the point I was arguing with

I believe the commenter you’re replying to is willingly overlooking things hoping for a different reality. It’s a pretty human thing to do ;)

Employees were hired with a specific location or they weren't. There isn't an in-between. However, employees during covid were also hired and told to remain out of office until guidance changes.

Some chose to interpret that as WFH forever, some chose to buy homes hours away from their assigned office location. Now some are acting confused and feel slighted when in reality, they ignored or conflated the hiring and the WFH-covid guidance into a single thing.

Thank you for this much needed clarification.

>with the understanding

If you want something to be true, get it in writing.

'Yeah, we're technically based in Seattle, but everyone is working from home anyway' is not a legal contract.

Sucks and the employees aren't to blame, just warning anyone else out there.

This can't be overstated.

If it's not in writing, it doesn't exist. What you were told verbally means nothing. (Yes, technically a verbal contract is a binding contract, but if you can't prove in court that something was said, it doesn't matter.)

I assume that remote workers had an employment contract, though, and surely where and when they are expected to work was included in that.

Ah ok, so I have an extended family member who was hired by AWS during the pandemic. This person was explicitly hired as remote so I assume that they do not have to RTO since it is in writing. I can’t really ask them for complicated family reasons also seems kinda rude to just ask haha. But I have been curious. I am glad to know they won’t have to move across the country again.

Gergely Orosz is a hack. He can show a scan of a contract with personal information redacted if he'd like to. He creates "facts" by using vague words like that

Employees either had a remote contract or they didn't. Their income taxes were paid accordingly. This really isn't or shouldn't be a surprise to anyone

> Employees who were hired remote can remain remote.

Where did you get this from though?

I work at Amazon.

I work at Amazon. I have a full remote contract. My SDM askordered me to go to the office. He said he can't force me to go to the office, but I have to go to the office. He is fully aware I have a full remote contract.

You should discuss with your leadership/skip-level. I'm not speaking for the entire company, strictly sharing how things happened during covid and what I know from my team/peers.

That said, if your entire team is back in the office, you will be a burden and at a disadvantage relative to the rest of the team. So your circumstances are yours but you should consider how you can best be successful and remain agile to the changing world pre, during and post-covid.

You communicate using assertions and vocabulary that positively connotates acquiescence to employer demands and very-nearly implies that such acquiescence is the only reasonable course of action. This is an approach that is typically used to persuade rather than to inform - it feels out of place here, and the I predict that concealed nature of the persuasion renders this comment stronly harmful on net.

Care to be specific? Using big words with vague generalizations is out of place here. Sharing my experience here for other's to garner and use for their own decision making is far from out of place.

So glad I bailed on Amazon. I interviewed during COVID and got weird vibes about BTO plans. I live near some existing AWS offices, but nobody would/could give me any assurance that I could remain remote, or work from those offices (vs those offices being colidated into the HQ2 in Arlington VA). It was all pretty silly as the VP was in Seattle and the rest of my peers would have been scattered (though I would have hired a “local” team, maybe).

So tell me Johnny, why did you leave Amazon?

My boss told me to go back to office, and I said no f'ing way--fire me! And they did.

Probably not a great conversation to have on your next interview.

It seems fine if the new job you're interviewing for is remote-only.

It's also fine if you're interviewing for a company local to you, there's no Amazon location anywhere nearby, and you were fired for refusing to relocate.

Doesn’t this effectively target all the best employees? Those that can walk away like that.

This would reinforce my suspicion that big tech companies don’t really believe in the concept of engineer quality. They just hire quantity and convince them all that they’re exceptional.

> Doesn’t this effectively target all the best employees?

No, because a huge percentage of the best employees are on H1Bs and have no choice but to stay.

Big tech might have some issues when the carpet gets pulled on H1B rules XOR H1B allocations during the next administration. I'm like 99.9% sure that the status quo will end one way or the other (I'm hoping it'll be rules but scared that it'll be allocations).

Oh right. Good point about the H1B capture.

They will just outsource and deal with the time zone issues. For now they have the best of both worlds.

Data and IP sovereignty makes this increasingly difficult, and in many cases the internationality of the talent simply doesn't buy you any savings (eg any model beyond 100b params or so, anything where you need 9 9s, etc.). Source: been in c-level convos on exactly this topic.

Agree with work-a-day code slinging, but that profession is a few years away from becoming 99.9% product management anyways. In tech, if a job is in danger of outsourcing, it's either data annotation work or is probably cheaper and easier to automate sans product design/management.

Also: if we're talking actual top-tier talent -- mostly O1, not H1B, btw -- you can get very top tier talent for not much more in rural Colorado/Missouri compared to Delhi / Hong Kong / São Paulo. And without the risk of a state actor saying "fuck you this belongs to me now".

Kind of funny seeing Hong Kong listed with Delhi and Sao Paulo considering the fact that rent in Hong Kong is roughly similar in San Francisco (I pay 3800 usd a month for 520 square feet) and salaries reflect that.

That said I agree about the availability of top tier talent for relatively cheep in rural Colorado/Missouri but I don't think that'll stay the case for very long with the increasing move to remote teams (even with companies like amazon refusing to be remote).

Amazon does not, as I understand it, worry all that much about high employee attrition. It's also probably not a coincidence that they're doing this when a lot of other big tech employers are having layoffs, since it probably makes this factor, if not zero, at least less than it otherwise would be.

Exactly what I was thinking, it's a win/win for Amazon. Attrition through policy the half-steppers, with automatic self-culling enabled.

An awful person on a contract I'm on was ordered back into the office. She quit. I'm confident that was the goal.

Yes, it is a great strategy for sociopathic managers

What they don't consider, or don't care about, is that this will select-out the best people, the ones who have the most readily available options, and it will select-in those who are least capable.

This means that the managers really don't GAF about any kind of quality, or their real strategy is merely to throw warm bodies at their problems and hope they can wrangle some kind of productivity from them, evidently while soothing their own egos while "managing by walking around" and hovering over everyone's cubicles trying to enforce butts-in-seats indicia of work that actually have near-zero correlation with actual productivity.

If this happens to anyone - look up the laws of your jurisdiction in regards to "constructive dismissal". Being required to go back into an office after being fully remote for 3 years may well qualify, and then (as far as employment law is concerned) you were fired, you didn't quit.

Every day at 5pm, I do three things:

1. I turn off my work computer and exit my home office.

2. I get a big hug from my 1 year old daughter.

3. I remind myself how glad I am that I left Amazon, because it was obvious in 2021 that they'd do this eventually.

Tech survey 2021 showed that most devs preferred remote at least half of the time or more. The S-team had those numbers. Then they sent out an email saying "we know you all can't wait to be back in the office!". They simply don't care what you think or want.

All employee surveys are corporate theater. They create the illusion that employees and owners/management are equal parties in a discussion. They aren't. Corporations are oligarchical in nature. The philosopher Elizabeth Anderson calls them "private governments" with powers over our lives that would make most political theorists squeal.

I think the surveys play a role. They help the employer see whether the new policy will be easy or slightly tricky to implement. Either way it’s happening.

Its providing the illusion of choice.

Like on an airplane when they ask 'chicken or beef' - you ask for beef, "sorry we only have chicken left"

People in tech are among the most advantaged when it comes to salary/job conditions negotiation, and the possibility of saving up a reasonable reserve cash fund "just in case".

For the opposite, see shop clerks, phone marketers etc. Few people want to do such jobs unless in dire straits; there was a famous article from the Resident Contrarian about it.

> All employee surveys are corporate theater.

There's a theatrical aspect, but I assure you many companies take the surveys seriously; they just don't treat them like a "vote" in the way many people seem to expect.

From management's perspective the surveys are trying to read the temperature of company and figure out:

1. Are there unexpected sources of pain?

2. Approximately how bad will the pain be for new policies?

If some process intended (and thought) to be lightweight and cheap is called out as expensive and a major source of pain, management will probably take action.

For something like ending remote work, the question is "Exactly how badly will enforcing this policy hurt us? Do we want to make that tradeoff" my guess is that if 99.9% of the company had sad Remote work was non-negotiable to them we wouldn't be reading this headline.

Good call out. A thing I've noticed is that sometimes the surveys are a response to conditions being super toxic and terrible. Even when they're undertaken for good reasons (e.g., to learn how to fix it) by then so much trust has been lost that the responses are worthless.

The best time to plant a "tree" is when things aren't fucked. Maybe the second best time isn't now.

> The S-team had those numbers. Then they sent out an email saying "we know you all can't wait to be back in the office!". They simply don't care what you think or want.

What baffles me is that forcing all full remote workers to return to the office with such short notice and in this time of the year is something that's impossible to do without huge monetary and human costs for the worker. After all, does Amazon expect their workers who have spouses and children to force them to abandon their job/school and move back to comutting distance to the office without any support?

Yes, or rather it doesn't really care. If you move together with your spouse and children with you or if you move to a new place on your own while seeing them only on weekends, it doesn't really matter to them as long as you are in the office during weekdays.

This is how it was before you WFH, so the argument was that cost is assumed anyway. This little WFH break was just some bonus money you free'd up. I don't agree with WFO mandates — they're dumb. WFH or bust.

Monetary cost is one thing, but no parent can simply pull their kids out of school right now and expect them to have a decent transition to another school.

Rental contracts aren't typically reviewed each month, and in some places with high demand it's not possible to just find an apartment in a couple of weeks.

As Amazon frames their return to office, it's impossible to be met by some people.

I suspect that's by design. My gut tells me that Amazon wants a bunch of people to quit, to try to avoid another embarrassing round of layoffs and so that they don't have to pay severance.

Yep - this is constructive dismissal for sure, but in the US there isn't any general law against it.

My guess is that the fairly soon, the tech companies will be in a hiring phase again. Amazon has further damaged their reputation and will have to pay higher to attract talent.

Congrats man. Enjoy your time with your daughter. Time is the only currency that matters.

>Time is the only currency that matters.

I'm mid GenX and I wish I hadn't spent so much time working. I will never get that time back.

Ditto, early 20s grinding at amazon instead of building a life.

I think it's fine to do that in your 20s for a while to build a resume and a big bank account. After that, though, you should probably prioritize other things in life. Don't live your whole adult life like that; it's not worth it.

In hindsight, I'm not sure if it is ever worth it. Particularly when young. Early 20s imo should focus on balance and growing. I should have joined some sports leagues to develop a social circle. Nobody wants to be 25~27 and have no friends.

Professionally, the resume build was good. The pay, 2.5 yes experience and made about 80k/yr all in. That was still a 50% raise, but not life changing or worth the 55-75hr work weeks (averaged about 60). Was too much sacrifice, not saying quitting was thd option, just could gave tried less hard and easily worked 5 to 10 hours less per week with the same result.

>just could gave tried less hard and easily worked 5 to 10 hours less per week with the same result.

I think this is an important point. Too many people spend too much time at work thinking all those extra hours will somehow pay off for them. They almost never do: the slacker co-worker who leaves after his 8 hours are done might get a slightly lower raise, but after 10 years you won't see a significant difference between the two in savings or career trajectory, all other factors being equal. The slacker might not be as well-liked by management, but he'll quit after a couple of years anyway and go to another company and get paid more than the hard-working guy putting in 60 hours/week, then do the same after 2-3 years, etc. Loyalty is not rewarded.

"Tech survey 2021 showed that most devs preferred remote at least half of the time or more"

I'm sure the devs would also prefer a salary of a clean million a year. What the devs prefer doesn't equate to what a business should do.

Quite the straw man example there considering many Orgs didn’t have much of a choice in going remote during the worst of the pandemic

That's fine, but don't turn around and tell me that I want something that you know I don't want. Don't pretend I said this would make me happy.

"We believe that employees are much more likely to understand our unique culture and become part of it if they are surrounded by other Amazonians in person"

This statement strikes me as dishonest. 'Culture', a nebulous and immeasurable term, is clearly being used to lasso people back to the office for an ulterior motive. Are there truly no reasons for RTO more firm and factual than absorbing culture, whatever that may be?

The author asserts that Amazon could be trying to increase attrition, but is this really the reason? Maintaining office buildings and bringing people into them just so that some of them might quit?

> "We believe that employees are much more likely to understand our unique culture and become part of it if they are surrounded by other Amazonians in person"

Sounds like a cult.

If the culture is so special then why do people not want to go back?

How is this not constructive dismissal? If you signed a contract stating that you work remotely, does Amazon have the power to unilaterally change that?

I suspect it is, but done in such a way as to avoid some of the larger lawsuits from layoffs. Sure you can enjoy the peanuts unemployment gives you by claiming it, but I imagine its somewhat harder to file a discrimination claim?

edit: and i doubt amazon made any promises about remote work

In at-will employment the terms of employment can be changed at any time. As long as the terms weren’t changed because of membership in a protected class it’s completely legal in the US.

Unless you have a contract. Contracts cannot be unilaterally changed.

Employers unfortunately think otherwise. From experience when the time comes, most people cower and accept the new status quo.

Again from unfortunate experience. Feel free to take it as an anecdotal point.

Employers do it because it works and employees don't have the knowledge or means to protect their rights.

Well, it doesn't matter what the employers think. It matters what the court thinks.

Of course, it takes time and effort to sue and I imagine a lot of people would just let it go.

Not all states are at-will for what it's worth.

While you are technically correct, it's not really relevant. There is one state that isn't at-will (Montana) and as far as I know there aren't a lot of people that work there in tech.

>How is this not constructive dismissal

Companies move offices all the time and require you to go to that new office (even if it's inconvenient for your commute/you have to move cities).

That is literally grounds for constructive dismissal though. See Reynolds v. Innopac Inc., 1998 for example, a change in location of work that required a substantially greater travel time would change the way the employee carried out job duties. You have the right to refuse that as an employee.

Oh, sorry, classic HN US-centrism (though TBF, Amazon is primarily a US company).

Sure, in Canada it maybe different.

Even if it is constructive dismissal, so what? Amazon won't owe you severance or anything like that. So you'd get some money from your state's unemployment office and that's about it.

This will depend a lot on your contract (if you have one) and your local employment laws. If Amazon tries this with. workers in Vancouver (Canada), for example, severance would likely be required.

Right, well in the US, where Amazon has the plurality of its global workforce (and quite possibly majority of its highly compensated work force), severance is not required.

It is, but sadly that's not illegal in the US.

Would love to see an engineering union form from this

Heck no, as long as human minds are corruptible, unions will decimate the group they are designed to protect.

Human minds being corruptible, applied to management and shareholders, does a good job of explaining why unions are necessary in the first place.

My understanding of US history is that almost all meaningful worker protections were fought for and seized by labor unions. Things like the 40 hour work week, paid leave, overtime pay, etc.

What have they produced since 1940?

A bizarrely rightwing investment in the anti-Communist witch hunts, and a pretty enormous structural backlash in the form of the Taft-Hartley act?

People are so anti-union but don't realize how much they could help with other problems:

1. Companies rampantly abusing the H1B system 2. Wild discrepancy in the skills and quality of software engineers 3. "top tier" companies acting as a cabal to reduce comp + benefits of employees. 4. Companies abusing the use of "contractors" to get around full time hiring.

I see so many people including on HN decrying the pay engineers get. Wait till you see how much money companies make off your labor.

Here’s a good recent podcast episode on countering some of the common anti union rhetoric that you might get in response[0].

It would be great to unionize tech workers to fight for an end to abusive practices like on-call, uncompensated overtime, abuse of foreign workers, unhealthy work environments, and poor wages (remember the vast majority of tech workers aren’t at FAANGS on the coasts).

0: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-177-popular-anti-...

If for whatever reason you'd like to backup a slack conversation and you don't have export privileges, check out SlackDump. Used it yesterday to back up a private conversation. Though it probably wouldn't be useful in a vast majority of cases, your employer would probably prefer you didn't have an external record of any messages exchanged. Also imap-backup for when you get an alert in the middle of the night that you're suddenly having email syncing issues.

Here are some badly thought out reasons to return to the office:

1). Collaboration: Most of the time this makes no sense since teams are much more geographically distributed nowadays since Covid. Are you actually talking to people in person, or are you on the same zoom meetings all day?

2). Team Management: There are better ways to monitor if work is getting done than by checking if butts are in seats, and that doesn't include checking if your Teams bubble is green either.

3). Productivity: Some people are more focused and productive at work, and some people are more focused and productive at home. It depends on the way your brain works and what your office is like.

This is not to say returning to the office is a bad idea, but we need to be honest and realistic. There are actually good reasons for being in the office.

1). To have lunch with people in your building, or meet up with coworkers for happy hour after work.

2). If your office building is a nice place to work, has perks, and you enjoy being there. Are you able to focus and get work done, or is it busy and stressful? Does your office have events that are _actually_ fun, not just pretend work fun?

3). To have a separate place to compartmentalize work stress so you don't take it home with you. It's much easier to not think about work when you're working in a different place than you're sleeping.

Bonus: An internet connection with better upload speeds. This depends on your ISP, but typically in the U.S. unless you have FiOS it's very slow.

Amazon, a company famous for poor treatment of employees, is treating employees poorly once again.

Shocked pickachu face

If I was a sadistic type and in a position of authority at Amazon, I'd just say that WFH is entirely optional, but may be a factor in employee evaluations. Perhaps I'd set up some board that displays how many days each person is in the office vs home.

What do you think they do with _unlimited_ Paid Time Off usage numbers?

Boss at review time "well Bob only took 5 days off last year, you're at 15... Do you think maybe you could be a better team player? It's not fair that you're taking triple of what your team members are. Think of them and the stress they have when you're on PTO."

Excerpt from one of my actual reviews. I quit a week later.

Edit: I joined the second week of January 2 weeks after unlimited PTO went into affect. Before unlimited <5 years got 15 days PTO.

Was Bob 22 years old, single, and addicted to Adderall?

Such a silly policy, if they have a number in mind for acceptable annual leave just make that the policy.

Well how are you going to attract new young talent you must ply them with free stuff and gimmicks like unlimited PTO.

Hell, mobile network providers have been using the word _unlimited_ with a cap without any reprocussions for what decades?

I think companies that offer _unlimited_ PTO should set a minimal baseline of 10-15 days per year.

You know, some of the other staff are wearing 20 pieces of flair...

imagine you're the one person on your team in a different location, driving to the office just to sit by yourself with non dedicated seating with no monitors/keyboard/mouse

This is just a disguised ad for some paid Medium blog, FYI.

Feels relevant.

Amazon just doesn’t want their real estate values to decline even more due to everyone working remote now.

https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2022/02/04/amazon-doubled-i...

Not an apologist, but warehouse and data center real estate seems inversely correlated with RTO? The article isn't about their office space...

This is an easy way to lose your best workers

I've seen a handful of seniors already quit and some of the best L8's/directors openly distressed with no lever to improve morale. Many teams are now down to the idea guys. Amazing leadership from the top. Layoffs, RTO, stock down over 40% YoY, and no comp increases even with inflation. They must be playing limbo because' how low can they go?'

> Many teams are now down to the idea guys.

What do you mean by this?

people who talk but dont do

Man that's a great description, my greatest professional fear is becoming a useless ideas guy.

Didn't it start as something they described themselves as, in an attempt to imply the doers don't have any good ideas themselves and needed an "idea guy" to come up with something?

Probably, but the above poster's paraphrasing "people who talk but dont do" is what was in my mind.

Amazon and big corp will win this. Probably best for these engineers to move on and find a company that will allow 100% working. Good luck

> The same engineers upset about the RTO policy here to stay are also talking about canceling their Prime memberships or boycotting Amazon.

ohhh scary

> At the same time, looking at the market, it’s hard not to ask the question: if people want to leave, where will they leave to? Meta just announced more cuts - and closing all 5,000 open positions. Dozens of tech companies have put similar, 3-day return to office policies in place starting from December,

I've been saying this for ages. Big corp were always going to go BACK to hybrid working which was in place pre-pandemic. BAU

> Probably best for these engineers to move on and find a company that will allow 100% working.

I felt the same way about open-office distractions.

"Programmers already hated the changes to their working environment made in the past 15 years" but they nonetheless happened; it seems to me strong evidence they'll also return to office.

Awesome, their engineers can come work for me :D

Is that why the Twitch CEO is leaving

Frick, I hate to see what happens in a few months when Amazon _Triple downs_ on RTO.

I really wish journalist would understand that we don't give a fuck what Amazon is doing. The only reason this is an "article" is because it's Amazon.

Cool, no one gives a shit except maybe Amazon employees and if they haven't seen the writing on the wall I doubt this article will shine light on what they're missing.

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