Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is instructing corporate staffers to work out of the office five days a week.
They must really need another round of layoffs without severance.
Exactly this.
Board and executives must be crying for more yachts and avocado toast.
Fuck… I was doing coffee badging recently. 5 days is a lot to just drive to the office and back. I need to look for other dev jobs in Seattle that actually respect their employees, but the market is gonna be so cold after this announcement.
I have until January 2nd apparently.
At least they still haven’t said a minimum time in the office yet…
There are some excellent employers out there - I wish you the best of luck.
Your employer should respect you and the time you put in to producing for the company - sadly many currently don't.
I'm waiting to see how the industry shakes out in a few months and see where things land.
100% though I'm pissed. The way they've handled RTO has been abysmal.
I'm somewhere else but have kept Amazon in the back of my mind as a possible next place, partly out of curiosity to see what it's like from the inside. The culture has some fun elements. No longer. This moves them out of the 2nd tier and into the 3rd, and honestly I'd wonder about anyone there who's not chained to a visa.
Do you imagine you can wait out layoffs and people quitting, then go back to remote once their quiet quota is reached?
They didn’t do that for the past 3 years. They hired 15% more in 2023.
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.
Why do they want to get rid of people?
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.
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.
Rampant over hiring.
People need to stand firm against the needless RTOs and demands to be present in a workplace where your work consists largely of things you can do safely from the privacy of your own home.
Without more mass resignations when companies start to roll out RTOs like this; they will never learn. If you work at such a company; start looking for another job, even if you are willing to work in the office a few days a week. Punish them harshly for enforcing RTOs.
Those resignations are layoffs without having to call them that, there's no downside for the company
Mass resignations are worthless. Announce a strike. Make them fire you.
No bathroom breaks, piss at your desk in a jug!
With one hand, because you better be typing some stuff at the same time!
“We want to operate like the world’s largest startup”
Yeah, that’s not how it works when you get over 1000 people. And it’s definitely not how it works when you get over a million people.
Startups work because the product is small and everyone can be consulted and looped in with ease. Massive companies need thoughtful processes and communication practices to work.
This is hard to do well, and any time someone says they’re going to work like a “large startup,” you’re putting yourself in company with a number of other stupid leaders who have received some dumb advice from 20 year olds at McKensey or Deloitte.
I work for a startup...and we're all remote...lol
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Not that it matters but this change will mostly affect AWS employees which has basically nothing to do with Amazon web store.
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.
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.
Hopefully everyone else watches the fallout of this and don't follow suit.
I'm surprised the insurance companies haven't forced companies to walk back their RTO policies. More sick days, more injuries, more medical expenses.
On the contrary, they will let Amazon take the hit, wait for the news cycle to change, and then do the same thing. You know, for the culture!
Insurance companies can't match real estate prices of the office buildings they own AND the tax incentives large cities are giving them to force their ppl back
tax incentives large cities are giving them to force their ppl back
I can understand some executive being out of touch and deciding that it's worth the personnel hit to do full RTO, but tax incentives would explain a lot more of it. Reading that made me irrationally angry for a moment - because that's super fucked
Thats all the days?!
you can work from home at saturdays and sundays :)
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.
How about you run your face over a belt sander.
Wait. My schedule is 4x10, do I have to come in fifth day?
This is bullshit.
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.
That's called effective dismissal in Canada. It is going to cost them real money if it happens here.
Thank christ my company downsized offices during rona and they couldnt physically fit all of us in if they tried
If you think that prevents this, you're wrong. My company did the same thing, and when they announced RTO, people pointed out that they only had enough capacity for maybe 80% of the employees to fit. Management's response? "I've seen empty desks in (other unrelated building on the other side of campus), I'm sure we'll make it work".
Don't think that something silly like "physical space" or "maximum occupancy limits" will get in the way of a stupid decision.
Mine downsized a bit too but that didn’t stop RTO either.
Mine too, but now I'm worried they'll just sell off the remaining assets and close the doors.
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?
I like the term neofeudalism.
This just in: Valued Amazon employees now in high demand outside Amazon...
I don't know, if I was getting laid off I'd prefer to stay home so I don't have to drive.
Hey Andy! Look up "dead sea effect" and tell us who's gonna comply the most.
