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Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week (www.cnbc.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 78 points 6 days ago

I work for Amazon. People are NOT happy.

Sadly, this is exactly what Jassy wants. Amazon are desperate for people to leave, and this is another push towards this.

It'll be interesting to see what happens, but given that I'm unable to go to the office more than 3x a week due to having a young family to look after, my time.here is clearly limited - unless I'm able to work something out.

There is a strong remote advocacy group at Amazon, but the best that was mustered last time was a one hour protest during lunch. This might be the catalyst for people to say "fuck it, let's unionize", but I'm not confident.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago

Why do they want to get rid of people?

[-] [email protected] 46 points 6 days ago

Amazon gets rid of around 5-8% of their staff every year through unregretted attrition, where they'll fire "underperforming" people, with maybe 10-15% of people being threatened with underperformance "

Alongside this, to cut a long story short Amazon grew huge during COVID, and despite tens of thousands of layoffs the company has been trying to shrink everywhere possible, cutting fat wherever they can. IMO, leadership made lots of really stupid decisions, and the CEO has set Amazon on a course where irreparable damage has been made.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

I don't think this is going to be just cutting fat though. They're going to have their desperate and least-talented employees working in the office while their most talented employees will end up finding remote employment elsewhere. That's how RTO always goes.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

Oh, 1000%. I could write a book on how monumentally stupid the whole process is (and most Amazonians agree), but the fundamental points are:

The people that stay are of a certain mindset, where you don't pick up "hard" tasks, and you are quick to establish blame/ownership elsewhere.
Data is king, but you can lie a lot with data.
Employees are customers also, and when you piss off employees you piss off customers and their families.
You spend a huge sum of money on hiring and training talent, only to send them to your competitors.
You spend money to give severance to active employees. That is still, to be, the dumbest thing ever. SO many people don't resign, they just down tools or do a bad job to get the extra pay. PIP is called Paid Interview Prep for a reason.
Amazon's Focus/Pivot has such a bad reputation that being fired used to mean that other big companies would happily tell you "if you have any trouble at Amazon, let me know and we'll start an interview loop".

Most fundamentally of all...very few companies do this. It died with Jack Welch/GM and Gates/Microsoft, after they saw the same downfalls. Amazon is yet to learn their lesson, and it shows in how poorly the "Amazon Management School" under Bezos are performing. The other big tech companies also now do this, although less severe, and surprise surprise, they're all going downhill - making awful decisions, delivering nothing of value, and ignoring customers over leadership.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

5-8% of their staff every year

I'm aware of this policy but I didn't realise the number was that large.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

It's a great strategy to have your employees backstabbing each other instead of working together too. "Oh, Jim is struggling? Good, one more person below me in the ranks".

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

It feels the exact same way in the USPS.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Non-Amazon related answer: every company does this at some point, usually for cost cutting. They want people to quit vs letting people go. They basically introduce less-than-ideal working conditions knowing some people will leave because of it. I haven't looked at the job market personally but friends have said it's not great so basically people have to put up with it or take their chances not finding another job for a while.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

It also depends on where you live. Where I live, if you are working a fully remote job, and your employment contract doesn't specify that you need to work in the office, if they try to force you back into the office then you can quit and go on employment insurance since it would be considered a constructive dismissal.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

I'm assuming new people are less likely to complain about no raises and bad conditions.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

True, paired with Amazon moving many roles out of North America and into India.

With that said, a lot of people (like myself) joined Amazon when remote working was encouraged, only to then be told to go in 3 days a week. We lost loads of really great engineers that didn't have opportunities in their local area. We'll likely lose a LOT of people again, myself included, unless opportunities open elsewhere where I can transfer to a new area. Amazon are tricky, though, and they'll preempt this by reducing transfers or laying people off soon to ensure that those that cannot adhere to 5 days a week are considered to have "resigned voluntarily".

That's all to say that a lot of bad faith on Amazon's part will likely scare people away from joining. After the NYT article dropped almost a decade ago, Amazon got around it being hard to hire by having great transfer opportunities and high salaries. Neither of those exist now, and with all the anti-worker rhetoric and lies about internal AI performance "saving x hours on upgrades" I don't see Amazon ever getting top talent again. Amazon will slip into boomer tech soon enough.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

Just to give an outsider perspective to anyone reading this. I live in the Seattle Metro, have worked for Microsoft, and now work at a unicorn. I have a list of skill and experience that any ops department would drool over. Amazon is is one of the companies I won't even apply to unless I'm desperate for a job (and even then I'm not planning to stay).

And I know I'm not the only one.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Amazon moving many roles out of North America and into India.

This really happening? What sort of roles are they moving?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

This quarter's top line might not be looking great, so gotta improve the bottom line to impress the Wall Street analysts.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Yeah, that's a constant. I was wondering if there's more to it. :D

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Rampant over hiring.

[-] [email protected] 33 points 6 days ago

Amazon shares ticked lower in afternoon trading.

I'm gonna have a really great laugh if/when the share price nose dives because office personnel start bugging out.

This whole "I want us to operate like the world's largest startup" crap is just infantile for the CEO of a multi-national conglomerate to be spouting and making into corporate policy. No one wants to work for a multimillion dollar "startup" with over a million and a half employees.

Working for startups is stressful as fuck and the incentives are to get a piece of the pie once the startup goes big. Amazon is already massive and the pie has already been eaten by those who came before. All they have left is corporate stability and he's just kicked the legs out from under that.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

It’s weird, it’s like he’s relying on the fact that “Everyone wants to work at Amazon” to always be there for them. Even though the very reason people wanted to work at Amazon were all the perks that no longer exist.

[-] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago

I'm not buying anything on Amazon for the next 90 days. Who is with me? I could quit Twitter but I don't know about a permanent quit of Amazon...

[-] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago

It's literally impossible to fully boycott Amazon, I've been trying for years. Even if you buy elsewhere, often you'll find out after the fact that Amazon does the shipping or payment processing.

We should nationalize their monopoly or break it up.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

It's like trying to boycott Doordash for takeout. Even if you don't use the app chances are the place you're ordering from uses their drivers without you knowing.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

I don't order garbage on amazon or pay people to bring food to my house, and have been able to survive somehow. Wild.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

If you use the internet you are using AWS. It is unavoidable at this point.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

What is avoidable is a subscription to their retail store, with its own very severe workplace issues.

And while it may be difficult or unrealistic to not be a cog in their web presence, people can still avoid being a direct consumer of that as well.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

I haven't bought anything from Amazon in 10 years. It's full of crap now, and the legit stuff is just thrown in to a bin in their warehouse for scanning by UPC, so it's 50/50 if it's an untraceable counterfeit. And the counterfeiters are good, so you probably won't notice it's fake until a couple years later.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago

Not that it matters but this change will mostly affect AWS employees which has basically nothing to do with Amazon web store.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

I haven't bought anything via the Amazon site in years. At least three, possibly five or more. Anything I need I can get elsewhere either online or in person without supporting Amazon's anti-union, worker-exploiting policies. I won't even use AWS for business purposes because of how they treat their workers. Boycott away, there are plenty of Amazon options that are "good enough" if not actually better.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Haven't used Amazon in two years. I don't even have an account anymore. Doesn't stop them from sending me emails 3x/day to sign up again. I try to shop local, but I do have to go to shitty corp stores for some stuff.

[-] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago

amazon is sadly too useful up in ak, but I'll try to support competitors (aliexpress)

[-] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

I’m not sure Aliexpress is a shining beacon of workers’ rights either.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

workers? I prefer to think of it as flesh based machinery.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Pro: they don't even need A/C to function!

[-] [email protected] 24 points 6 days ago

Asked my buddy who is an L7/Principal at AWS with years of experience if this would affect him. He laughed. Said he had already decided to quit in January. This just clinched it. Said they kept hiring entry-level L4s. Lots more senior people going to leave.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 6 days ago

Amazon is also flattening its corporate structure by having fewer managers in each organization.

Ah I see. Forcing out workers under false pretenses. Par for course, Amazon and Bezos are shit eating bottom dwellers.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

That's called effective dismissal in Canada. It is going to cost them real money if it happens here.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 6 days ago

How about you run your face over a belt sander.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

Emboldened oligarch in a plutocracy.

But also kleptocracy and really a kakistocracy disguised outwardly as an aristocracy or neo-monarchy as Raskin said.

Outside of just saying "America" or "Capitalism" How do we combine all of this into one satisfying, effective term?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

I like the term neofeudalism.

[-] [email protected] 227 points 1 week ago

They must really need another round of layoffs without severance.

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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024

449 points (98.9% liked)

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