Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule (opens in new tab)

This week I went to the office (not Amazon, another company in Europe) for 3 days in a row because we had new-joiners and I wanted to make it easier for them in the beginning. I live near the office, just a 15m walk away, and I would still not like to continue 3D/W. I know, people call it entitlement, but my problem is that the office is a hostile environment. Here is my experience, in an office that was at most 30% capacity, in a 3Y old building:

  - The "kitchen" area is so tiny, if you want water you will queue, there are only 2 places on the whole floor where you can get it and they are tiny rooms where at max 5 ppl could enter, 3 comfortably.

  - Queues at the bathroom, there are 2 stalls, for the whole floor, I couldn't find another one (I really hope there is one more, I just failed to find it, I did ask, nobody knew about another one). This got worse and worse as the week progressed. I've noticed a similar issue at my previous employer (5Y old building, part of why I left, health issues that are greatly improved by the access to a toilet)

  - They implemented some eco-friendly lights, with movement sensors. This sounds great and I am for helping the environment, the problem is that in practice these lights turn on-off every few minutes, during the day, in summer, in a sunlight filled building. My eyes were so tired every EOD.

  - In the same eco-friendly manner they made the AC not run during the night and morning. So, if you respected the work schedule and came to the office in the morning it was hotter than outside. It's summer, we had 30C in the morning, 47C in the afternoon. I needed to wait for 1-2h for the AC to kick in and recover after arriving in the office.

I am conflicted, I did see that the new-joiners liked the in-person meetings and all, and I do get it. It is easier for non-experienced people to talk to new colleagues online if they have some interactions before. But, time after time, as my employers change buildings I see always reductions in common areas/bathrooms/etc. I find it hilarious now that I have to research the building of potential employers and ask them if they plan to move out in the next 1-3Y (more and more jobs no longer offer remote work in my area).

They could have just made the article focus on how the big corps are trying to anger staff enough to quit on their own so they don’t have to pay severance. These companies are playing with fire. It turns out you do need some staff to finish projects and the more chaos you cause, the less will get done with existing staff.

I'm very pro WFH but this is pretty benign and standard tbh. One of the reasons employers give you a badge in the first place is to track whose coming and going into the building.

Before the pandemic/WFH, another employee got let go at my company because they were trying to stealthily work remote. My understanding is that their badge-in/out data (or lack thereof) was used.

At a prior megacorp that I just quit from for their return to office strategy people would come into the office, swipe their badge at the entrance, log in to their machine, lock the screen, and go home to work.

> Amazon has tracked the attendance of US-based workers and targeted those who appeared to fail to comply with its hybrid working policy, sparking concerns about privacy.

Concerns about privacy? Really? They expect that entering and leaving their employer's building should be something that they should be unaware of?

The title reads less confusingly with some well-placed hyphens:

“Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3-days-in-office rule”

What a bizarre article. How can an employer not be allowed to keep track of when you work?

>The email to a select number of employees prompted some to raise concerns about privacy...

This is a fascinating perspective for Amazon employees to take given the numerous privacy concerns many people have had about Amazon for a long time.

I have a friend who’s required to do 3 days in the AWS office, buuuut… Amazon hasn’t re-opened the building he’s supposed to report to. Like he has a desk assigned in a closed building.

To summarize:

* Amazon requires in-office work N days a week.

* Employees agree.

* Employees don't honor the agreement.

* Amazon sends a notice that employees need to honor the agreement they made to return to office.

* Entitled employees are upset.

Well, they didn't make up the rule just for kicks. It was bound to be enforced eventually, and that's what they're doing now.

I'm a huge WFH fan, but I don't see the problem of a company demanding 3+ or even daily attendance. It's a bad business decision IMHO, but it's simply that: a business decision. And they have the right to know if you are complying with that job requirement, it's not too different from requiring warehouse workers to lift boxes.

I think employees should also have a law in their favor stating that once they badge out of office at 5 pm, their laptop is locked completely.

This will make all attendance reasonable.

With all the talk of more Covid coming this winter, should be interesting to see how that plays out with lockdowns again if they happen.

Just let your coworker/friend swipe in for you. If they can't tell otherwise, does it really matter?

*Not financial advice

"Concerns about privacy" on just "works at office/remotely" is a weird complaint.

I'd think even under EU and GDPR logging whether user badged in or used VPN would be entirely fine.

I've heard a lot of orgs have flex weeks or flex days. I really want more awareness of who is doing what in this regard.

My org is giving folk 6 flex weeks a year where they can work remote all week.

It's the end of WFH Hybrid for certain industries.

This is going to spawn a plethora of linkedin influencer and biz insider articles about "psychological safety" and "hostile communication" and HR consultants will get paid to use chatgpt to make language sound less bad

Bezos is desperate to hold on to those corporate tax incentives.