Just for work culture, I’d have preferred to work at Google or Facebook for upto 30% pay cut. So with policies like this, I’d imagine people who don’t quit are the ones who can’t quit. Maybe that’s fine for Amazon. They diversified the workforce geographically
So far I'm done with FAANGs. I can get a nice salary, albeit lower, elsewere and still live comfortably.
FAANGs are just not worth it anymore in my opinion.
I might be missing an idiom here - offered what?
Got any more?
Is there a list of these anywhere?
Point being, they never actually put "work from home" in anyone's contract, so technically nothing is changing. They are simply enforcing the always existing rules.
I don't work there anymore because I wouldn't go back to the office.
exactly, so i would counter with saying that if they're never returning to office, then it can't possibly harm to add it as a clause in to the employment contract.
Circumventing severance here seems like quite an overstatement.
For many people it's become non-negotiable that a job offer remote working. If where I worked mandated return-to-office I would immediately begin looking for somewhere else to work.
In a company the size of Amazon, there are exceptions to many things, including exclusive in-office work pre-2020. This is more than a revert.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that company policy should have to account for every single outlier, but arguing that circumstances that make "returning" to office extremely difficult are not actually that uncommon people hired under the pretense of indefinite remote work for a given position. One of my teammates (who also didn't live anywhere close to any of the three offices mentioned above) had bought a house just a month or two before we were all told we needed to be in one of those locations. If Amazon truly considered remote work to be untenable in the long term, they shouldn't have built up entirely remote teams in the few years they had to deal with it and hired teams locally with the expectation that they might need to go into an office some day.
Yes, I know they aren't technically under any obligation to respect the fact that people are hired remotely, but that's the whole point being made here; weak labor laws mean that it's legal, but that doesn't make it any less scummy.
Once you have worked a remote/hybrid software job with a remote team you can’t put that genie back in the bottle (or something like that, that DHH said).
I love it, I prefer it, but I recognize that I am lucky to have a career that can offer it. If my company demanded RTO, I would have to weigh the option and perhaps choose to separate from the organization if I couldn’t make the pros/cons work for me.
In the US employment is effectively always “at will” for the employee. The employer has some regulation that protects the employee, but if they are essentially willing to pay you, and are providing a safe environment to you, what is so wrong with that? They aren’t torturing you.
Tech workers who complain and demand some sort of regulation/intervention against RTO need to realize that those complaints fall on deaf ears to literally everybody other than that tech worker audience. If you want to effect change, quit and deprive the company of your labor.
I think of it as tech workers tend to get treated as people in some ways instead of cattle, and we should work to ensure that everyone gets those benefits. In other words, it's not a privilege that should be shamed or guilted, it's that tech workers are able to demand basic respect on some things.
Looks like all the employees about to lose their work from home jobs are upset and downvoting.
I think a lot of Amazonians, even those who choose to stay, will look back on this as their "no more free snacks" moment (I also think there are probably many Amazonians who are already past that point, but that is a different topic).
Most don't even have them... but ok
Of course, that's the sort of thing that tends to be true right up until it abruptly isn't.
But that’s not what 95% of AWS workers do.
However, doing this will only breed deep seated resentment. That can only be bad for the company and Amazon as a whole.
If the figures here are correct, 90% are unhappy with the decision and ~70% are considering switching jobs, it could become quite entertaining to watch this company implode from a distance. It will be the top talent who leave first, instantly creating a weaker company.
Its not even a good decision from an innovation/productivity perspective, studies are mixed and many that claim a productivity improvement in the office, if you look at who was involved in funding them, were actually funded by people or entities with a vested interest in office real estate.
H1b is really not fair. They have virtually no negotiation standing without risking their immigration status. They are underpaid and subsidized, and drive domestic wages down. Among many simple reforms they should execute, a big one would be tonseperate the sponsor company from the visa. Which would allow them to negotiate and have more agency.
2. The idea that any FAANG wants to push out non-H1B workers is pretty laughable. They have some of the most efficient workforce in existence and the highest comp in the industry. Many H1Bs in Amazon make more than the vast majority of citizen devs pound for pound. These companies could hire loyal, willing citizens to replace all H1Bs at a fraction of the cost. But they don't do that because H1Bs are also talented and worth the high compensation. Those H1Bs in turn know that and job hop just as citizens do. They also value remote work when it's available at a similar comp range, but these days it no longer is.
You end up losing your higher performers, because they have many alternatives, and keeping the people who have fewer options.
As an engineer employed by third party companies using AWS, this doesn't look good. I don't care if the support people are in an office. I do care if they're available and know what they're doing. There are other cloud providers available. For new entrants, what's Amazon's unique selling point?
AWS is flailing now and pissing off all the competent workers. Those who have the skill will leave for newer gen cloud companies without the baggage like Fly or Tailscale or even Oxide. Or they'll start their own thing.
So do you really want your whole company's compute environment running on infrastructure managed by burnt out and low skilled people?
This might be the start of the migrations from the first generation infrastructure focused cloud services to the new more application focused services.
The same thing it's always been: cargo cult membership for tech bros who think Amazon invented renting virtual servers.
I guess they asked ten employees this question. Nine were on H1B visas, and the tenth was already on Focus/PIP.
It would be an interesting study to look back over the last five years at the company's performance, and then compare it moving forward now that they are going back to the office fully.
AWS is a huge part of their revenue isn't it? This also affects pretty much every tech company since they all use AWS to some extent.
Yes
> and about to quit
No.
Fuck you, fire me.
No, I don't work there, but I'd rather be fired than quit myself. At a minimum, I can get unemployment, and the job market is so saturated that the extra time to find a replacement job will be welcome.
I wonder how this will play out.
Previously the perception seems to have been that WFH was OK. So it seems like a pretty big change to their working conditions. Just making a massive change to somebody’s working conditions and then shutting off access if they don’t comply… I mean, how long will they pay them to do nothing?
It seems like they are just being fired to me?
We have shit worker protections in the US generally, but at least I hope some folks file for unemployment.
That way, if performance drops, you can blame it on the inferior office at work :)
