Amazon India Chief Tells Employees To Maintain 'Work-Life Harmony', No Emails and Phone Calls After Office Hours (indiatimes.com) 70
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon gets trashed on the international stage pretty often for its inhumane work conditions in its warehouses. However, it seems the Indian arm of the company is trying to do better, at least according to the latest announcement from Country Head Amit Agarwal. According to Business Standard, in an email to senior staff members this week, Agarwal has reportedly asked employees to leave themselves enough time to spend at home, and maintain a healthy "work-life harmony." He's told employees to stop taking calls and emails after hours, and specifically that, "No business decision should be made between 6 pm and 8 am." It's still unclear whether this decision comes from Agarwal or from the company's global leadership. Likely the latter, considering there's been no such chatter for US employees. It'll also be interesting to see how long this plan will hold, given the sheer size of the e-commerce portal. In the email, Agarwal also said that responding to emails while on vacation is "not cool."
It didn't come from the global leadership. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's for damn sure.
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Probably not, however he seems to be allowed to manage his own little kingdom in the Amazon Empire.
A lot of the discussions seems to make good business sense, because with management making decisions off hours, it just creates confusion, as not everyone will be able to respond to it.
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Well, then reality hits. (Almost) every software developer in Amazon is in an oncall rotation, and even if yo're not oncall you can still be called in if you're the expert on whatever's broken. This sounds more like "managers can have better work-life balance, engineers still have the pager go off at 3AM every night.
Re: What about (Score:1)
You have no idea how India is changing, some of the new metro areas are world class. India will keep getting better, the US keeps getting worse , and there will always be shitty comments on Slashdot
Re: What about (Score:1)
This is just one of 100 smart city projects going on in India right now. Yes 100.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j1zPLR6DPKk
No wonder the world thinks that Americans are morons. Please educate yourself , I know it costs a fortune in your country
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Holiday emails (Score:4, Funny)
"Responding to emails while on vacation is not cool."
Sent from my sun lounger in Cancun.
Re:Holiday emails (Score:4, Interesting)
Responding to emails while on vacation is not cool.
I have generally found that occasionally checking in while on vacation helps me schedule more vacations more freely. Otherwise it is harder to find a week where my wife and I can both take time off. The majority of vacations I never respond to a single email, but being able to leave during a busy time in a project knowing my team can handle anything because I am available just in case makes the whole process of taking a vacation far less stressful.
Or perhaps you could just say I am too indoctrinated into corporate life.
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And your systems are likely too brittle.
That is certainly true, but until our CTO secures a mandate from the board to replace about two decades of duct taped systems, that won't change. Four years of new projects being done better certainly helps, but all our technical debt will never go away.
None of my senior developers or architects have to worry about holiday check-ins, but more senior roles require more responsibility.
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Yeah, I want to see how quickly that rule gets thrown out the window when Jeff Bezos sends someone on his team one of those infamous ? e-mails.
working with india. (Score:2)
I assume that this could not be universal, as they must have some people working at 'night' which would be the daytime state side.
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Thats the part any normal nation will do.
Sort of. In the US and developed countries, developers don't work at night. For anything mission-critical, the night crew is normally just a skeleton crew that can fix somewhat minor problems. Anything big they call up someone on call, at home.
Real shift work only happens in industries that need the extra productivity. The shipping industry is a prime example. My wifes son used to work at UPS doing late night shift work. It's necessary because the trucks come i
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Bwahahaha!
Can't tell if this is trolling or simple ignorance.
At Amazon, you are in communication at pretty much all times. And you'd best be able to log on regardless of your location or the time of day or whether you're the on-call or not.
Same is true for other on-lines, though, none seem to be quite as aggressive as Amazon is.
They have labour law there and can't firesome for (Score:2)
They have labour law there and can't fire some for just saying to no do an 80 hour day also working on holidays = X2 pay.
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Hmm. 80 hour day. Could you direct me to the person that has accomplished this? I'd really like to know how to increase my daily productivity even further. 24 hours simply isn't enough!
an 80 hour day is when you work four jobs at the same time for 20 hours a day.
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I worked a 32 hour day once.
8 at a client's location in Sydney, 18 travelling (over the dateline), 6 in Sacramento. The accountants wanted to argue.
the US really needs more of the EU labor laws / OT (Score:2)
the US really needs more of the EU labor laws / OT
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That's communist talk.
I work 5 jobs and have a shit home life, that makes me morally superior to the Euro-weenies who spend most of their time with their families/friends and get to spend waaaayyyy too much time enjoying their lives. And don't get me started on the Frenchies. They raise their kids IN PERSON not via text message. Pure laziness. They should be at work all day long!!!
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Blame this on Chamber of Commerce and ALEC (Score:3)
What we have in the US are powerful business groups who "nominate" our legislators for re-election through private campaign donations. Until all elections are financed by public funds, none of this will change: employment-at-will, binding arbitration, noncompete clauses, and reform of overtime for exempt employees.
No after-hours emails or meetings... (Score:2)
I guess that means that all of the burden of evening/early-hour meetings with them goes to the people in other hemispheres.
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You are a horrible boss. Work performance should be evaluated on what people do on work time, what they do on their free time it's their own fucking bussiness, not yours.
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Re: Typical act from management (Score:1)
Reminds me of a meeting I was in where a manager asked why it was taking a long time for me to finish a project. I replied with my meeting-heavy schedule for the next two weeks.
Their expression was priceless. Awe and confusion followed by three minutes of struggling between extending their (aggressive) deadline or freeing me up from those meetings.
The latter won over. Interestingly those meetings went well without me...
"Former", not "Latter" (Score:3)
It's still unclear whether this decision comes from Agarwal or from the company's global leadership. Likely the former, considering there's been no such chatter for US employees.
"Former" refers to the first of two earlier mentioned list items (Agarwal, in this case), while "latter" refers to the second (global leadership, in this case). If it were the latter, that would suggest there would be "chatter for US employees".
In other news... (Score:2)
The next day Amit Agarwal announced that he was voluntarily leaving Amazon "to spend more time with his family".
Sounds just a tad extreme.... (Score:2)
A couple of points I'd like to bring up about this
While in general, I do agree that this should be the ideal, at the very least, if the company has clients overseas, there's a pretty good chance that the clients' business hours aren't going to always coincide with the company's. Practical business sense demands more flexibility than some hard-and-fast rule like like "no business decisions after 6pm" .
Secondly, it can
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You are committing the strawman fallacy... when I say that it should be occasionally, I meant that it would actually *be* occasionally.... not something that they merely say and then don't actually mean, which is what you seem to have implied that I meant. I was suggesting that a company treat its employees fairly, and not say "occasionally",
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A work ethic doesn't mean unbridled attention for eight hours during traditional office hours.
It means getting things done, delivering strong outcomes for the company.
That could be done in office hours. It could be done at home. Most programmers are fucking awesome at fixing bugs while having a shit; they don't claim overtime for this, but in return they don't expect their manager to get upset when they check their email.
I'll work from 7.30am to 2pm, go home, cuddle the cats, call a colleague in another ti
What this sounds like to me.. (Score:2)
Why stop there? (Score:2)
I vote for no emails or phone calls DURING office hours!