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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

Weird to hear that they’re complaining. On LinkedIn, I often see Amazon employees talking about how RTO has been great or that there’s a positive side to it. Maybe they’re just managers? Or maybe the silent majority is too afraid to speak against it publicly? I feel like Amazon looks very bizarre to an outsider, almost cultish in accepting this new reality of RTO, all just to shill almost universally Chinese made low quality products.

Either way if this didn’t spur them into unionization I don’t know what will. Not that I’m pro union either - I have concerns about how many of them run. But I feel like losing 1-2 hours daily is such a big cost that it’s worth dealing with that.

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No one is going to trash talk their company on LinkedIn, that’s just a quick way to being unemployable. I’m just talking about techies anyways, and the grumbling I hear in social conversations.

It is difficult to get tech workers making > $200k/year to unionize. At that point, it’s more grumbling about first world problems than about oppressive working conditions (yes, working from home is better, but no, RTO isn’t some sort of unreasonable request for the compensation involved, but people will still complain of course).

Personally I think RTO is unreasonable regardless of compensation, since it isn’t required for the job and improves nothing. It probably hurts the company more. To me taking away 1-2 hours of time everyday from people is a huge change in working condition.

It is definitely tough to get tech workers to unionize. There's a lot of possible lines of organizing like not destroying the Earth, or not contributing to genocide, or solidarity with staff who don't make 200k a year. But historically labour organizing has been about the immediate material circumstances of the workers, because people are pretty selfish and short sighted in aggregate.

> or solidarity with staff who don't make 200k a year.

I don’t really see it. Amazon techies wouldn’t have much in common with Amazon warehouse workers, and I’m not seeing any other people they could share solidarity with. But think if you are an SWE say at a traditional manufacturer, your needs and interested are going to differ a lot from someone working the assembly line.

"don't have much in common with warehouse workers" is so demonstrative of the American lack of class consciousness.

The people making 200k a year are still workers. They may have savings and insurance that make them feel more secure, but they still need to clock in every day to afford to be alive. Their activities in their day to day life are constrained by "will Amazon fire me for this". If they ever suffer some kind of injury that prevents them from doing their day job they would quickly discover that their position is just as precarious as the delivery driver who brings them their cheap plastic shit from China.

> Weird to hear that they’re complaining. On LinkedIn

We might live in different universes but in mine LI is exclusively used in positive tones and for praising. Saying anything negative about any company, and especially the one you work for, is the greatest taboo. You can occasionally criticize something about an unnamed company for virtue signaling. Like really, LI is for people looking for a jobs so who would to hire a person publicly complaining about their employer?

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