Amazon Returns To Office, AWS Employees AREN'T Happy

Is remote work over forever? Amazon seems to think so. I'm sure people will be totally rational about this...

S/O Ph4se0n3 for the awesome edit 🙏

[Pilosofia]

Office warking:
20% of energy on the work.
80% of energy to get there.

[ElFlipo]

One of the most exploitative employers in recent history has a bad take on employee quality. Shocking.

[XavierGoncalves]

yay wasting 15 hours of our lives per week commuting

[MB-nklr]

Commute hours = working hours. Problem solved.

[_kostant]

I think part of the reason people are upset is it’s a bit of a rug pull. Folks were able to move them and their families while housing rates were good. Now all these “go to office” demands are here, the market is trash. So now Amazon isn’t just saying “come back to the office”, they are saying “sell your homes and move, or quit”.

I have a close friend that luckily got an exception for medical reasons. But otherwise they were going to make him move from just outside Boston to Seattle.

[noname-dtsv]

acknowledge the time driving to work as working hours and pay me for it then I'll happily come to office every day of the week

[serendipity-]

I used to work at Amazon (AWS) too! I left for a series D startup and never looked back. I get paid more now, am fully remote, and most importantly I’m not miserable. Screw Amazon

[jaredtruscott]

The best engineers sure as hell aren’t driving into an office either.

[supernova_eu_w]

Theo, I get how you really want to get that colleague over to your place, but companies don't realize how high the personal cost is for someone to move. I don't know about his personal situation of course, but I have a family with 3 kids, moving would mean changing my WHOLE LIFE for a company that can lay me off ANY MOMENT. Do you realize how ridiculous of an ask that is?

[ericmackrodt]

CEO: Everything is great everyone is doing a great job, I'm very happy.
Also CEO: Therefore you must return to the office.

[superuser]

major YIKES. So, they force everything to go remote then one day say everyone must return or else lose their livelihood. Nah, I'm heading to the office but expect 1/2 the effort after stressful hour commutes... TWICE a day.

[saltedslug]

God this bureaucratic, high school-ass corporate "culture" shit is so exhausting. This guy gets paid millions of dollars to stimulant rant via email all day. I'm so glad I don't work for a corporation, I could not fake all this stupid "It's all for the customer and we are a family" jargon. A job is a job. I go to work, I go home. That's it. I am not participating in some cult.

[k-yo]

Remote work with 2 to 3 personal encounters over the year to slack-off and break the ice. Best approach I had the chance to experience, ever.

[sarjannarwan]

Working from home has made such an improvement in my life. No more 3 hours (including return) wasted on commuting. Don't go to the pub like I did a bunch for work drinks, don't pay a bunch for food in Central London and can cook whatever I want at home for lunch which is much healthier. Have my close to perfect setup at home with desk/monitor etc. Also have time to go to the gym and exercise.

I could see how it would maybe reduce productivity but for me these pros are massively worth it for me. It's like a 50% improvement in my standard of life vs maybe a 10% increase in productivity if I was in the office. That improvement in people's lives will attract better talent who already have bargaining power.

Even though I don't work at Amazon this stuff does kind of suck as other companies often copy each other. Also if other companies lower these benefits then they don't need to compete as much on them.

[mal]

Nah. I don't even look at code if I have a meeting within the next 2 hours. Then it takes me an hour to get back into it afterwards. On my rare office days, I don't code at all, I can't focus with the constant interruptions. People who don't code don't understand the head space required to start solving complex novel problems. People who's job it is to reply to emails and make spreadsheets will never understand that.

[hopelessdecoy]

Crappy employees are crappy regardless of location just like workaholics are workaholics regardless of location.
Just be honest, especially places with global teams were zoom is always required. it's about building leases and nothing else.

Also hustle, startup and all other anti-employee cultures suck.

[Fernando-ryqt]

Something I'll never understand is that companies already noticed that real workaholics work all day, every day at every hour when WFH

But if you send them to an office, they will 100% disconnect when their shift is I know I did back I actually avoided going to the office just to skip on the cheap chats, coffee parties and people constantly reaching with questions and completely cutting my workflow every minute.

Besides being able to.... annoy people easily I fail to see how an office fosters better productivity.

Maybe is just me hating offices of course

[mrsideshowjack]

One of my good friends left our team at IBM to work for AWS, he got a nice pay bump, but it was also so he could buy a house outside of London and have space for his growing family, as it was mainly WFH

[codedusting]

I hate the office. Reduces productivity, pollutes the environment, waste time, and what not.

[PianothShaveck]

The new kind of mini-sketches for sponsor segments are pretty nice