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Comment by turnsout | Hacker News Reader

> Genuinely, are there many desirable workplaces left that are remote?

Are you serious? Try the entire tech industry except Amazon and Apple.

Not even close, a lot of places are hybrid and there's a valid concern that we'll see more tech companies (large and small) follow in Amazon's lead just because Amazon did it first.

Currently trying to leave Amazon and it's been a slog to even get an interview for anything fully remote despite a decade of experience.

While I agree with the "are you serious?" part, there are plenty of other companies that are backtracking on remote work, including quite a few small and/or early-stage startups that I see posting in the monthly "Who's Hiring" threads here on HN.

I know of no studies that show that RTO mandates improve any measurable statistic for a company, and remote work has done wonders for my commute and well-being, so I will no longer consider working for a company who does not have a majority of its employees working remotely. I'm a staff engineer with a couple decades of experience. My current company is 100% remote and it's lovely.

Is Amazon even desirable to work for? (I'm not even including their recent RTO policy)

Everyone in the industry knows Amazon has very poor work life balance (and a brutal on call load). It's even in that letter you get from Jeff Bezos when you apply: "You can work smart, hard, or long. At Amazon you don't get to pick just two."

If you are fresh out of college, get a couple years in to get it on your resume.

For anyone else, if you are in the Seattle area I don't see why you wouldn't just work for Microsoft. Microsoft does pay the worst out of all the big tech companies (until you get to L67+), but the work life balance is so much better, and allows fully remote.

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