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Comment by pxeboot | Hacker News Reader

What is the best way to handle this if you are unwilling to return? Wait to get fired? Resign? Hope they make an exception for you?

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If I was absolutely not willing to return. I'd probably continue working, maybe even more, smarter, or harder than currently. And attend everything I can virtually. Make it known that I exist and my work matters and they need me. Continue working. If they make any threats to fire me, I work towards an exception. If no exception is granted, probably just get fired and hope for a severance.

I might consider negotiating for lower pay to continue working, or try to work towards some sort of deal like that. But I'm not sure if that would actually be better than a potential severance and unemployment considering the a firing could still be on the table and would only make the severance and unemployment lower.

Yeah, good luck persuading an SVP to approve an exception for you.

The best thing you could do, if you're working at Google, Meta or Amazon is to always be looking, or any other publicly traded company for that matter. They prune people whenever they feel like it. If shareholders aren't happy, this typically happens roughly every three months.

> Wait to get fired? Resign?

Job market is bad right now. Probably why AWS felt they could do this currently.

Run it by your supervisor. When I worked as a developer at Amazon, pre-pandemic, I worked from home whenever I wanted, which was mostly one or two days a week. If your manager won't let you flex, consider switching teams.

What if your supervisor can't allow you remote work because policies from higher management strictly forbid it? What do you do in this case? Go to the office and not be productive?

I personally would not want to work in a place where managers had such little flexibility. I'd quit, if pushed. But Amazon wasn't like that pre-pandemic and I suspect they are returning to pre-pandemic norms so I don't think that's the case here.

AFAICT (haven't yet discussed with my manager), managers have zero flexibility and any exception must be approved at SVP level

Isn't that how delegation works? CEO says full time is now 40 hours on-site unless the management layer below me says otherwise. The SVP would then say the same. Eventually, your manager is given discretion and you have a discussion.

We likely won't see SVPs publicly sharing their internal policy, but it feels strange to assume that SVPs would be involved in the individualized scheduling of all the employees who report up to them. They have better things to do.

Yes thats the key. Before pandemic it was under radar, team could set their own policy, people do not come at all, people come for few days in week, few hrs in a day. All would work if manager is okay.

Now companies have implemented tons of metrics and monitoring right from the top. So individual manager have little leeway in giving employees any flexibility.

The director told my manager that I could ignore it, then the director was made to move out of the house he just built!

Be wary of who and what you trust. There are proper remote gigs, don't risk it IMO.

edit: To be clear, this wasn't at Amazon or even part of FAANG. I took my own advice and went elsewhere, seeing the writing on the wall.

That's not the case anymore. There are teams that run badge tracking systems to make sure you're badging in every day, for enough hours and ping your manager if you've not been in enough.

If you continue to not come in enough, your manager gets assigned a task to have a conversation about firing you or getting you in the office regularly.

If you continue to not come in enough, you're fired and it doesn't look good for your manager.

Bizzare. When I was at AWS I'd IM my manager that I was working from home and he'd say, me too. There would be no need to ping the manager about my location, he knew. Amazon had such a big retention problem, and I hear they still do, that I'd doubt a manager would fire a good performer over work location. They had some tempting retention offers when I resigned. Amazon fires low performers aggressively, so avoid being in that category, on-site or otherwise. Sounds like it's completely changed?

Jassy dreams of having the same control and spying over corporate employees as he does over the warehouse workers.

I mean this company has devolved into one that spies on its workforce so much that it can, and will penalize drivers who sing along to the radio.

Leave. You get fired, it'll be with cause.

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