Switching to work from home was, without exaggeration, one of the best decisions of my life. I did it a little less than a year before COVID made it pretty much mandatory, so I probably didn't need to quit that old job. But it's okay. Now that I am not exhausted from commuting 90 minutes through hellish traffic, and spending my limited introvert energy dealing with people all day, I feel like a million bucks. I don't have to hunker down all weekend, recuperating from the last week, and preparing for the next. I don't just get back my commute time, it's like I get two extra days every week, during which I am actually capable of enjoying my life.
I recently turned down a very exciting recruiting effort from an old boss, because it would have required me to commute at least two days a week. I cannot think of anything that could entice or threaten me to go back to the office at this point.
Lucky you. IT / Tech sector is at 6% unemployment and the worst its been since the dotcom bubble burst. Remote work would be awesome. Operations, even Dev-Ops and Business Development level is hard to find for remote, and the market is pretty bad. Haven't seen or noticed what its like for the return to office culture, but, I'm not driving from one computer spending my gas to sit down in front of another computer. Preposterous.
I turned the consulting just to keep my schedule; it's ..an interesting change of pace. I think people are lucky to be having remote work at this moment.
I used to commute 90 minutes each way to and from work, back in the 1990's. One day I added up all that time I was spending sitting in traffic and it totaled an entire month of my life just sitting in traffic. My year was essentially 11 months long, not 12. I told my boss "In two weeks I'm not coming in to the office anymore". He said I could work from home, back when 56k modems were the fastest available. The company went out of business about 6 months later, so maybe he knew about that or maybe not, but those 6 months were amazing. I found another job that was a 15 minute bus ride away, and went back to an office but it was a far better situation. Oh, I also gave up driving completely, the city actually towed away my shitty car because it hadn't been driven in 6 months. Good riddance! I didn't drive for about 20 years, until I met my wife who had a car. I got a license so I could drive her around. I still don't own my own car, and now I've been working at home for almost 5 years. I'm never going back to an office if I can avoid it at all.
Am luckily in a postition where my org is 100% remote (for the time being), and I am cherishing it for as long as it lasts.
Many (most?) HN posts that discuss WFH seem to be from the POV of the employer/management, with topics such as:
* ensuring employee vigilance
* reducing employee wasted cycles (with the corner case provided often being workers with multiple side gigs)
etc...
(side note: seems like those comments are coming from temporarily-embarrased CEOs-in-waiting)
OTOH, looks like reviews of WFH from the IC level are often pushed aside in HN, and it may show a skewed appreciation for the true popularity and benefits of WFH.
While it may not be for everybody, for a great many of us, WFH is the best thing since sliced bread.
And to have that removed for X reasons (whether legitimate or not) will incur a significant pain for those of us who have aligned to (what I consider) an optimal productivity lifestyle. Let that pain be heard, rather than pushed aside as invalid.
I bike to work every day (40 min one way) and drop off my kid at school on the way to work. Ironically my commute is about the best part of my day (and I learned during the pandemic that it's hard for me to establish that kind of habit without a forcing function).
I totally get that folks don't want to back to the office, but my advice is that, if you have to, try to turn it into something enjoyable (noting that I specifically moved to an area that's bike friendly).
Is it a bit isolating? It is for me, and it’s a concern, but that’s outweighed by everything you mentioned. It would be nice if there was some happy medium. But what is that?
A dirty trick for Amazon is to reduce the workforce as layoffs at large corporations are regulated. Once enough people quit, they will allow either a hybrid or fully remote option again.
Soon after Oakley was acquired by Luxottica, they hired a guy to make our lives miserable and let us quit. After he did what he was hired for, they filled the vacant positions with contractors. I still feel sorry we didn't respond with a class action lawsuit for the blatant and widespread harassment - they really deserved it!
Are there jurisdictions that allow this? In my jurisdiction, that would be considered a constructive dismissal and legally treated the same way as a layoff with the same employer obligations.
It seems like such an approach would cause the most skilled and in demand workers to leave first. The ones that stay would be the ones that are unable to find a job elsewhere.
What's not spoken about is that Amazon engineering is 80%+ h1bs. They will not push back against RTO, which is why these policies can be pushed through. American workers are pushed out to companies with better working conditions. The impact of foreign workers on corporate culture cannot be underestimated, this will ripple across corporate America. We are all worse off
One of my happiest days of my life was when I quit my office job and got a new job where I could work from home with a boss that trusted me to do work at the time that's best for me. Since then, life is much better.
That's the trick, "At a time that's best for me". If I could work like 2 hours in the day and 4-5 at night, I'd have killer productivity, both home and work life.
It is all a house of cards. A bunch of people in the city became dangerously levered bagholders, and the city is pushing people to come unnecessarily. It is a huge amount of waste of time and resources for the sake of an economy.
Amazon already sounded like the worst FAANG to work for due to the way they sculpt reviews to avoid options vesting, combined with lower salaries than the other FAANGs. But with this? Yup, 100%. I don't see why someone would consider Amazon unless they have no other options.
I've been working since I was 12, and working from home since I was 19 (32 now). I can't imagine ever going back to an office, especially now that my wife is pregnant. I'd rather learn a new profession than doing that.
You're lucky you're in a position where you have that choice. Many will be forced to find a different company that offers remote or will actually suck it up back into the office.
Layoffs are bad for the public image, stockholders, etc.
If people quit themselves, they can get rid of a lot of workforce without having to lay them off.
They lose the chance to choose who stays and who goes, but if your bonuses are tied to quarterly results, it doesn't really matter for a quarter or two.
RTO mandates are a way to cut the best talent. In a previous job, team was delivering on initiatives and running smoothly. Then came the soft RTO policies and then mandated RTO policies.
Best/good people on the team dropped. Myself included after 3 on-shore devs self “retired”. Team then consisted of soldiers, and a couple of off shore devs that did the bare minimum (ie, on shore fixed many of their mistakes, releases taking much longer than usual). Velocity of team sharply dropped. Organization and team turn over increased greatly.
Occasionally, get a ping from hiring manager to see if I’m interested in rejoining. But, RTO is still in effect so I decline any further discussion
Plus this should disproportionately target the disabled and working parents without triggering any discrimination lawsuits. Those groups have higher healthcare costs so even more savings.
To be honest forcing your employees into the office looks really desperate. It makes me think Amazon is in real trouble if they can’t create a website remotely and need to physically force employees into a big building to try to get them to produce.
That’s not good for public image and if I were a shareholder I’d be planning for an exit.
They get rid of people who might need extra considerations for working, and they keep the employees who they can reliably push around or will compromise in favor of the company. Of course they also lose out on top talent that will go where someone gives them flexibility. But I think they prefer obedience to talent.
Not only that, but Amazon is of such a scale and such a segment, that hording high end intellectual capital is not likely to have any great impact on their results in any case. They're the closest thing in today's world to what would be in any sci fi dystopia world a global company that runs everything from taxis to health care. There just are not any other companies like Amazon, with the exception of Alibaba which is like Amazon on steroids.
At this point, the use of companies like Amazon or Alibaba is kind of necessary to get by for most people. Even those who don't use it, are using it indirectly. Via using apps and sites running on Amazon. Via going to stores supplied by Amazon. And on and on and on. The tentacles are everywhere.
Yes and no. For unskilled labor, probably it doesn't matter that much. For complex projects such as in AWS you need months or sometimes years to onboard new talent and make them catch up with the rest of the team (assuming there is a "rest").
There are loads of employees in orgs like Professional Services/Solution Architects and other Sales orgs that were hired remotely and live in locations far from any office. This is clearly intended to increase attrition.
I’m pretty pro WFH. It’s undeniably great from an employee’s perspective.
However I’m pretty annoyed and disappointed by the lack of honesty around its costs. There’s significant costs and benefits to remote work.
COVID was a little bit of a cheat code for WFH. We all built up relationships and repertoires during office work which made the transition to remote much much easier.
Remote work is particularly difficult for onboarding new members and especially for juniors. Slack and Zoom are vastly inferior to face-to-face.
Remote work is great for talented seniors. But there is an undeniable cost to the team.
Of course there are spectacular benefits to remote work. For example being able to hire people you couldn’t otherwise hire!
I’m not anti-WFH. But I am annoyed at all the internet threads that act like remote work is all roses with zero costs. And especially annoyed at folks who only look at how impacts themselves and not the team. It’s totally reasonable for WFH to be net benefit in some cases and net negative in others.
I expect downvotes for this. But that’s super lame. Would rather people engage thoughtfully. Alas.
I feel similarly.
I've been pure remote since COVID.
I used to complain about having to come into the office just to stare at a screen quietly next to people.
Being remote has been great in some ways, but I've really noticed the reduction in connection to coworkers and the major decline in informal collaboration. I've also had to dedicate a room of my house as an office (have kids, so working from any common space is fully impossible).
My life just feels smaller now, when most days instead of traveling through the city on a busy train to meet up with dozens of collaborators, discuss, eat together, I start my day by sitting down in a small room by myself in front of a screen.
Work is what I do with most of my days. I'd like it to be as engaging and as socially connective as possible. I don't like commuting, but I'm planning for my next job to be in person.
Companies know the tech job market is awful right now, there simply aren't the number of jobs there used to be pre-pandemic or even a year into the pandemic. Hell I haven't even had a raise in 3 years, and while that kind of sucks, I don't have much leverage because my boss knows the job market sucks. I've been WFH for almost 5 years now, and thankfully I don't work for a company that wants us to return to the office.
Seeing this is Amazon corporate, as warehouse and delivery people never worked from home, probably most of them (if they weren't dumb with their Amazon salaries).
I read about an Amazon SWE that was trying do as little as possible to not get fired or just get a severance. I wonder if this is the most effective way to weed out all those.
With 300K employees they likely have thousands of zombie wfh employees.
I can't read the story, but I've noticed that there's a lot of vague terminology in these discussions. Does back to office mean an open office? Does it mean all day where others can bother you? Does it mean the boss can tell you to have a meeting in their office in ten minutes? Does it mean you have to ask permission to take the afternoon off to visit the dentist (and wouldn't you have to do that with WFH)?
[+] [-] karaterobot|1 year ago|reply
I recently turned down a very exciting recruiting effort from an old boss, because it would have required me to commute at least two days a week. I cannot think of anything that could entice or threaten me to go back to the office at this point.
[+] [-] mrinfinitiesx|1 year ago|reply
I turned the consulting just to keep my schedule; it's ..an interesting change of pace. I think people are lucky to be having remote work at this moment.
[+] [-] leptons|1 year ago|reply
I used to commute 90 minutes each way to and from work, back in the 1990's. One day I added up all that time I was spending sitting in traffic and it totaled an entire month of my life just sitting in traffic. My year was essentially 11 months long, not 12. I told my boss "In two weeks I'm not coming in to the office anymore". He said I could work from home, back when 56k modems were the fastest available. The company went out of business about 6 months later, so maybe he knew about that or maybe not, but those 6 months were amazing. I found another job that was a 15 minute bus ride away, and went back to an office but it was a far better situation. Oh, I also gave up driving completely, the city actually towed away my shitty car because it hadn't been driven in 6 months. Good riddance! I didn't drive for about 20 years, until I met my wife who had a car. I got a license so I could drive her around. I still don't own my own car, and now I've been working at home for almost 5 years. I'm never going back to an office if I can avoid it at all.
[+] [-] unsui|1 year ago|reply
Am luckily in a postition where my org is 100% remote (for the time being), and I am cherishing it for as long as it lasts.
Many (most?) HN posts that discuss WFH seem to be from the POV of the employer/management, with topics such as:
* ensuring employee vigilance * reducing employee wasted cycles (with the corner case provided often being workers with multiple side gigs) etc...
(side note: seems like those comments are coming from temporarily-embarrased CEOs-in-waiting)
OTOH, looks like reviews of WFH from the IC level are often pushed aside in HN, and it may show a skewed appreciation for the true popularity and benefits of WFH.
While it may not be for everybody, for a great many of us, WFH is the best thing since sliced bread.
And to have that removed for X reasons (whether legitimate or not) will incur a significant pain for those of us who have aligned to (what I consider) an optimal productivity lifestyle. Let that pain be heard, rather than pushed aside as invalid.
[+] [-] soramimo|1 year ago|reply
I totally get that folks don't want to back to the office, but my advice is that, if you have to, try to turn it into something enjoyable (noting that I specifically moved to an area that's bike friendly).
[+] [-] arresin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] fnord77|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nikolay|1 year ago|reply
Soon after Oakley was acquired by Luxottica, they hired a guy to make our lives miserable and let us quit. After he did what he was hired for, they filled the vacant positions with contractors. I still feel sorry we didn't respond with a class action lawsuit for the blatant and widespread harassment - they really deserved it!
[+] [-] andrepew|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] UniverseHacker|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] codingwagie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] floxy|1 year ago|reply
That sounds staggering. Is there a way to verify this?
[+] [-] onemoresoop|1 year ago|reply
Can you expand on this?
[+] [-] vouaobrasil|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zachmu|1 year ago|reply
This is laughable, cite a source or get out.
[+] [-] vouaobrasil|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bluSCALE4|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] robotnikman|1 year ago|reply
Honestly I could care less about pay, being able to work remote like I previously had was so much better for my mental health and well being.
[+] [-] agtech_andy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tibbon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] beretguy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesponddotco|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] onemoresoop|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jbombadil|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianco|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|1 year ago|reply
If people quit themselves, they can get rid of a lot of workforce without having to lay them off.
They lose the chance to choose who stays and who goes, but if your bonuses are tied to quarterly results, it doesn't really matter for a quarter or two.
[+] [-] xyst|1 year ago|reply
Best/good people on the team dropped. Myself included after 3 on-shore devs self “retired”. Team then consisted of soldiers, and a couple of off shore devs that did the bare minimum (ie, on shore fixed many of their mistakes, releases taking much longer than usual). Velocity of team sharply dropped. Organization and team turn over increased greatly.
Occasionally, get a ping from hiring manager to see if I’m interested in rejoining. But, RTO is still in effect so I decline any further discussion
[+] [-] reginald78|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dopylitty|1 year ago|reply
That’s not good for public image and if I were a shareholder I’d be planning for an exit.
[+] [-] 0xbadcafebee|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bilbo0s|1 year ago|reply
At this point, the use of companies like Amazon or Alibaba is kind of necessary to get by for most people. Even those who don't use it, are using it indirectly. Via using apps and sites running on Amazon. Via going to stores supplied by Amazon. And on and on and on. The tentacles are everywhere.
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nyarlathotep_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bunedoggle|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|1 year ago|reply
However I’m pretty annoyed and disappointed by the lack of honesty around its costs. There’s significant costs and benefits to remote work.
COVID was a little bit of a cheat code for WFH. We all built up relationships and repertoires during office work which made the transition to remote much much easier.
Remote work is particularly difficult for onboarding new members and especially for juniors. Slack and Zoom are vastly inferior to face-to-face.
Remote work is great for talented seniors. But there is an undeniable cost to the team.
Of course there are spectacular benefits to remote work. For example being able to hire people you couldn’t otherwise hire!
I’m not anti-WFH. But I am annoyed at all the internet threads that act like remote work is all roses with zero costs. And especially annoyed at folks who only look at how impacts themselves and not the team. It’s totally reasonable for WFH to be net benefit in some cases and net negative in others.
I expect downvotes for this. But that’s super lame. Would rather people engage thoughtfully. Alas.
[+] [-] somekyle|1 year ago|reply
Work is what I do with most of my days. I'd like it to be as engaging and as socially connective as possible. I don't like commuting, but I'm planning for my next job to be in person.
[+] [-] cratermoon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|1 year ago|reply
If the employee is in a position to do that – great. But how many are?
[+] [-] leptons|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|1 year ago|reply
Surely not everybody can do it, but a lot are caught in lifestyle inflation
[+] [-] vasco|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nomad-nigiri|1 year ago|reply
With 300K employees they likely have thousands of zombie wfh employees.
[+] [-] mrgoldenbrown|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] stranded22|1 year ago|reply
Lay offs without payment
[+] [-] lewdev|1 year ago|reply
WFH is so awesome and everybody loves it. Take that away and you know people will leave on their own.
[+] [-] bachmeier|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Yeri|1 year ago|reply
1.5 million people work at Amazon?!