If the cloud is so great why can't you work remote?
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Yet another thinly veiled stealth lay-off by a technology company. Amazon’s cloud boss Matt "The Prat" Garman will indeed see some departures, as intended and desired. However, that first wave will be of their most talented, who feel confident they will land on their feet elsewhere, leaving those that simply cannot leave (yet) or those that will cozily under perform. When Amazon applies the inevitable followup reductions (subjectively based on their internal review process) to remove the latter, and the former buckle under the load or also leave, Amazon will be left with lower-middle talent at best.
The more I see of business "strategy" among this layer of "leadership", the more I'm convinced it is just a game of Jenga with talent, resources, infrastructure, security, quality, etc; pulling out as many pieces as possible in the drive for short term/sighted gains until a company collapses under its own dysfunctional "efficiency" and "success".
This is absolutely it. The C-suite and senior management are made up of sharp people. They absolutely know this will trigger an exodus and a large bag of fire-able workers. They don't care that they're likely to lose a bunch of talented, hardworking staff. Its all been accounted for. At worst the results of a mass exodus will only impact their bottom line in a few years. They just need this years numbers to look good and line to go up.
You mean Amazon is bad to their workers?
This makes zero sense.. If you're a cloud company why can't employees be in the cloud
At the all-hands meeting, Garman said he’s been speaking with employees and “nine out of 10 people are actually quite excited by this change.”
Just imagine the conversation between the CEO of AWS and some random employee.
„What do you think about the return-to-office policy I propose, Cog #18574?“ „Great idea Mr. Garman sir, really smart move from your team. Incredible thinking and leadership from you Mr. Garman.“
continues to tell people that 9/10 employees he talks to are excited to return to office.
The other 1/10 gets fired for not being a team player.
He has to be straight up lying. There’s no way 9/10 are excited to be ordered back into the office. If that were the case, they’d have been in the office already.
The ten surveyed were already in the office voluntarily.
Well, yeah. Isn't the whole point of these foolish office mandates to get people to quit? That way they can reduce their workforce without the cost and negative press of another round of layoffs.
Layoffs are not bad press. Not to the shareholders, the only ones who matter to these types. I used to think "oh, layoffs mean the company isn't doing so good," but shareholders see "they reduced cost but lost no customers, thus increasing value of the company should it be sold."
I hate that that’s the case.
I’ve been trying to lose weight, so I chopped off my leg just below the knee. I’m several pounds down, and I didn’t have to stop eating even a calorie. It’s amazing.
The only issue is that now I don’t have a leg and exercise may be difficult….
He pointed to Amazon’s principle of “disagree and commit,” which is the idea that employees should debate and push back on each others ideas respectfully
That’s all fine and dandy for ending debate about a stupid roadmap feature, but “disagree and commit” is a different story when you’re asking people to spend 3 hours unpaid in a car everyday.
As a long time Amazon employee, disagree and commit essentially works like this:
Employee: "I'm not convinced this is the best way to do something"
Manager: "Noted, now stfu and do what I say"
Engineering is a skilled trade. We need our own union like every other skilled labor group.
Depending on your country, that is the norm. Engineers here have at least 2 national unions to choose from, finance have a couple of unions, same with teachers, admin staff, etc. etc.
As usual, this is probably just US being victim of 'merican exceptionlism.
And they are smart enough to put us at the very bottom of the management ladder, even though we're not actually management. That way we can't legally unionize. In the U.S. at least.
I asked our CTO at a town hall if there were plans to improve the office my team got moved to because they moved us from the nice office to the city and the back to the previous area but a crappy office. Nope.
What if 37 000 employes leave amazon same day ?
What if 37,000 employees sign union cards same day?
Funniest to me in this kind of debate is having my N+1 manage us from across the country, having two team members in another town, and somehow, my ass being at home 15km from the office makes any difference at all to the daily life of the team? It doesn't. My actual manager, the dude giving us our marching orders, doesn't care. Shit, our N+1 doesn't care either, since he's almost always remote himself!
Only people I've seen actually care seem to be HR, for whatever reason.
I don't even get how any company with several sites has anything to stand on. Makes no fucking sense.
HR only cares because they're told to make a policy and it's their job to enforce it.
I don’t even get how any company with several sites has anything to stand on. Makes no fucking sense.
Companies like Amazon got major tax breaks and free land from governments to build these office sites. Governments gave these incentives with the expectation that it would generate economic activity around those sites. But if everyone is working from home those offices aren't delivering on the promised economic activity.
And also they spent a lot of money on those offices and so want them to be used. It's hard for whoever decided to build that office and the government officials that gave all the tax incentives towards it to admit that conditions have changes and all of that was for no significant benefit. It sucks to realize something you put in a lot of work into had no real benefit. Most people just have to accept that. But if you're in a position of power you can make people do things that will make your project look like it had a successful outcome.
I forsee an Amazon brain drain about to happen.
I'm a manager at a large aerospace and defense company. We had a hybrid arrangement where most people (who didn't have to touch hardware) could work from home a couple days a week. Most people seemed to think it was pretty reasonable. There really are benefits to in person collaboration, so some on site days seemed to make sense.
We recently moved to fully RTO, and I find it frustrating. It's not a big deal personally - I live close and I'm older - but it pisses off a lot of the employees, who see no good reason for it. I don't see any notable productivity increase moving from three to five days on site, it just makes my management job harder.
Can the Amazon prime boss leave instead?
I’m 47. I’m not a boomer (although I’m probably hella-old compared to most here) and I’d just like to say: What a bloody bunch of boomer-bosses.
“Have you tried disagreeing on a call! It’s hard!”
Grow up man, use the hand up feature and state your case. I work in a fully remote business and we have better meetings here than any office based meeting I’ve ever been in. Calendars are public, confluence is prevalent, slack is the lifeline (thankfully very little email) for everything; with a bunch of “banter”, hobby channels etc. We start every large meeting with a “one personal and one professional highlight” before we commence. I know the people here better than I’ve ever done my office based colleagues.
They are going to regret this. I do not know any developer who would prefer 5 days in the office. None. It’s not like Amazon’s compensation was that high. I really genuinely don’t understand how they expect to recruit.
I do know a few devs who prefer 5 days in the office. But they're absolutely the minority.
Personally, I try to go once a week, but I usually don't because I dread having a day with 50% my normal productivity.
It's just so noisy all the time in there. Open space and really high ceilings for "collaboration"...
Do it during holiday season. Do it.
Another company that lays off it's talented people first, due to the meddling of a CEO where he has no business to.
Never quit in these situations, or they win.
Do the absolute fucking minimum you can, or even less so you piss off management, until they have to fire you, which they can't outright as after a certain number of years they have to give warnings and trainings first.
Why don't they just keep working from home and get fired? Instead of having to quit themselves?
It's the US, they get fired on a whim...
Getting fired with cause doesn't come with severance and looks bad on a resume.
Getting fired with cause doesn’t come with severance
Yea this is fucked and needs to be fixed.
So admitting that it's constructive dismissal?
They don't have decent worker rights in the US so this shit means nothing.
I don't know about everyone else, but if that were my boss, they'd be severely underestimating my capacity for petty behavior.