Amazon CEO Says 'It's Probably Not Going To Work Out' For Employees Who Defy Return-to-Office Policy (apnews.com) 347
Amazon employees have been pushing back against the company's return-to-office policy for months -- and it seems CEO Andy Jassy has had enough. From a report: During a pre-recorded internal Q&A session earlier this month, Jassy told employees it was "past the time to disagree and commit" with the policy, which requires corporate employees to be in the office three days a week. The phrase "disagree and commit" is one of Amazon's leadership principles, and was used often by the company's founder and current executive chairman, Jeff Bezos. "If you can't disagree and commit, it's probably not going to work out for you at Amazon," Jassy said, adding it wasn't right for some employees to be in the office three days a week while others refuse to do so.
Recruitment (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Recruitment (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of companies are notoriously terrible to work for but they pay huge and having their name on your resume makes you appealing to others. So many will tough it out at Amazon for a year or two. There's no shortage of people willing to be treated poorly in order to have that badge on their resume.
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There is no price tag on my nerves.
And CEOs like that tend to go on my nerves.
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I for one have had a few chances to sell my soul to Amazon and double my salary. Pass. Honestly the tech giants are some of the worst places to work in tech.
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"... but they pay huge..."
Actually, it seems as if their pay is simply average, as most of the comp is tied up in stock options with a truly abysmal vesting cycle
Re:Recruitment (Score:5, Interesting)
"... but they pay huge..."
Actually, it seems as if their pay is simply average, as most of the comp is tied up in stock options with a truly abysmal vesting cycle
This is not true for the Magnificent Seven and others. Stock options are rare, as RSUs are now common. For companies with appreciating stock prices, RSUs after a few years is similar in money to non-early employee startup money, but with a far higher probability of success. RSU vesting schedules have varying ramp-ups, with some waiting one year but other starting within one or two quarters. Some come with RSU signup bonuses.
If you're lucky enough for work for one of these companies, the RSUs are more important than base salary. For the Magnificant Seven, we're talking early retirement money if you hit the right years.
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You still have to stick around long enough for everything to kick in and significantly appreciate. If you don't, then you're pretty much down to your base salary.
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Lots of companies are notoriously terrible to work for but they pay huge and having their name on your resume makes you appealing to others. So many will tough it out at Amazon for a year or two. There's no shortage of people willing to be treated poorly in order to have that badge on their resume.
When I hear about these types of situations, I wonder about the underlying cause. "Terrible to work for" seems to magically translate to "badge of honor on resume." Like, do HR departments just think, "Man? They can tolerate the abuse from those assholes? They'll think our place is a cake-walk!"
Why is being able to take constant abuse and mental trauma a net positive in an employee? Something seems to have gone all topsy-turvy here.
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It's not about the next company thinking you can handle abuse. These companies are generally known for taking the best in the industry. It's like applying for a rocket designer job when your resume says you worked for NASA previously. A bit of a, "If they're brilliant enough to work for them then they'd be great to have here." for those hiring. If you work in the tech sector, having names like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, Facebook, and other Fortune 50 companies on your resume will certainly hel
Re:Recruitment (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no shortage of people willing to be treated poorly in order to have that badge on their resume.
If you live in the Seattle area, you might notice that older sysadmin types - especially Linux guys - tend to have certain companies on their resumes. Two of these are Amazon and Real Networks. But it's not because those places got you extra resume credit... it was simply because that's where a large number of admin jobs are/were.
A couple of my friends worked at Amazon (not overlapping w/ each other) quite some time ago - back then it wasn't quite as well known what a crappy place Amazon is to work. Both stayed for less than a year. Both then took significantly lower paying jobs; both said working for Amazon was the worst decision of their professional lives.
Relatively speaking (Score:5, Insightful)
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During the pandemic management actually forbade access to facilities unless t
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Re:Recruitment (Score:5, Interesting)
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Indeed. I expect these people are actively looking at this time. There is no good reason for anybody competent to work for a company deeply stuck in the past.
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Indeed. I expect these people are actively looking at this time. There is no good reason for anybody competent to work for a company deeply stuck in the past.
If most Amazon workers really did have better options that paid at least the same with better working conditions, they would have already left. Even without the pandemic and return to work, Amazon already had a bad reputation for work environment. The reality is that there are far more available workers than desirable positions. Yes, there are superstars that can work anywhere and name their price, but there are few of those. The vast majority of workers have already settled into the best opportunity fo
Re:Recruitment (Score:4, Informative)
The reality is that there are far more available workers than desirable positions
Actually.. Amazon reduces the number of available workers when they add an in-person attendance requirement. Especially for permissions that were completely Remote before and advertised as Remote at the original time of hiring.
The number of available worker depends on conditions offered. Positions listed as remote have more available workers, and Positions that require in-person attendance Or that pay less have a lower number available.
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You would think so but I know a lot of people that love working at Amazon (granted, AWS side)
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> Sounds like a good recruitment opportunity for everyone else
Everyone else is also implementing Return to Office.
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You're propping up a toxic authoritarian culture whose time expired decades ago with the advent of the internet, is actively bad for the environment and the economy, and is one of the final remaining social refuges of Satanism. Nobody was ever fine with it. That's an obvious lie. The COVID lockdowns just proved what the vast majority of people already knew, which is that in an internet-connected society we don't all actually need to commute in order to keep civilization running. The fact that you posted ano
Re:Recruitment (Score:5, Informative)
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Bullshit. Enough of this silly nonsense. Its time to put on your big-boy pants, go to work and start acting like an adult again.
Fuck you dad! I'm 18 and can do whatever I want!
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4 years ago, nobody was working from home and everyone was fine with that. Now, all of a sudden, working from home is an absolute necessity. Bullshit. Enough of this silly nonsense. Its time to put on your big-boy pants, go to work and start acting like an adult again.
Long before COVID I was working remote at least some of the time. Now all of a sudden absolutely everyone has noticed that doing that works just fine and many more people (maybe even you) could do it.
So what you want is stupid people with big boy pants. Be sure to put that in your job posting.
They track by badging in, right? (Score:2)
I wonder how expensive it'd be to hire somebody to just go badge in a couple days a week. You're there, even if you can't be found. ;)
Re:They track by badging in, right? (Score:5, Funny)
Why stop there. Just go the extra step and pay them to do your job to.
Then repeat this several times and simply manage them. We'll call it a "business".
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Then hire an incompetent idiot to manage them and we'll call it a corporation. Your title will be CEO, by the way.
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Also known as "fraud"
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Not if your still doing the actual work you are being paid for it isn't.
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Checked my employment "contract". No such conditions exist, in spite of my employer suddenly insisting I owe them physical presence. Also my contract says a lot of things to the effect of "terms can be changed at any time", "at will" etc. A lot of threats about things that will get me fired (physical presence isn't one of them!). It's not much of a contract.
When negotiating with someone bigger and stronger, there's no real expectation they will keep their word, so there's no real expectation I will keep my
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Maybe there's a Mechanical Turk service that does this.
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How much would it cost? Your job. Your buddy's job. Quite possibly prison time for fraud, as so done else mentioned. They almost certainly have security cameras watching entry doors and badging areas. They can pull other details like what IP addresses you use to access your work resources, whether your laptop's MAC appears on the corporate WiFi, and more. There are a dozen ways to get caught, and the more you try to fool, the deeper a hole you dig for when you get caught.
Disagree and Quit (Score:2)
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because if they fire you, you get severance money. if you quit, you get shafted
Re:Disagree and Quit (Score:5, Insightful)
because if they fire you, you get severance money. if you quit, you get shafted
Also, if they fire enough people, they have to pay more for their unemployment insurance. They know this, and most companies are wary of doing so as a result. If enough people stick together and say, "F**k you," they won't fire them all.
Plus, if they did fire that many people, good luck hiring anyone to replace them. A lot of people I know already refuse to interview there because they've talked to enough former Amazon employees to conclude that the company is a toxic work environment with no redeeming values. A mass firing for refusing to be forced back into the office would likely make Amazon's tech division unable to hire anyone with any actual work experience for the foreseeable future.
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Not if they do severance. That is basically the reason for the severance agreements, you waive your right to file for unemployment.
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Termination for cause (e.g., refusing to report to the office when reporting to the office is a condition for continued employment) usually disqualifies a person from unemployment benefits. A severance agreement is between employer and employee, and is generally not considered by the state agency that administers unemployment benefits unless it provides payments to the (former) employee over an extended period of time; in that case, the person usually qualifies for the benefit once the payments have ended.
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I can't speak for California, but usually a severance offer specifies a lump sum payment that is equivalent of a set number of weeks of pay. And for the period of that payout, you are considered "employed" from the perspective of UI. So if you got 12 months of severance, you can only file for UI after 12 months has elapsed.
Re: Disagree and Quit (Score:5, Informative)
Thatâ(TM)s not always the case. Not even sure if itâ(TM)s mostly the case.
I was laid off earlier this year, given a severance package, was told in no uncertain terms by the company that I was still eligible for unemployment, filed it, the company did not dispute it, and was paid until I secured a new job.
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In this case there certainly is. They are handing the workers the stipulation.
If you mean the employment contract, most employment contracts don't specify that, it's true. It wasn't a consideration. HOWEVER - drag it in front of a court, and I'm pretty sure that the court would conclude that if you've been employed with them since before the pandemic, the expectation of working in the office was known, and there's no reason to conclude it has been nullified permanently.
Unless your contract says specifically
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Would be interesting to try it. My contract states what is expected from me concerning my job, what is expected of my knowledge and skills. It even states my location of work in terms of what town I am expected to provide my services (funny enough, this was originally a worker's protection measure to keep companies from simply reassigning you to a different office without your consent), and I will provide those services in the town stated. That can at any time be tested if the company so desires.
It does not
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The fun bit is, that goes for both sides. Saying "Dear boss, I found something new, more of money, less of YOU" is also plenty to just get up and quit.
Until recently, this wasn't exactly an option many people had.
But times are a-changing.
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Disagree and flip them off.
Fire me if you want to. Go ahead.
Why you would want to work for Amazon or Meta (Score:5, Informative)
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It's like that old joke "I like going to school, I like going back from school, it's the time in between that sucks".
It's similar here. You like getting hired by them, you like getting fired from them, the time in between is what sucks.
Disagree and commit (Score:5, Insightful)
In this context, it sounds like "Suck it up, buttercup," but in a highfalutin way. Imagine a bunch of Wall Street bankers laughing and saying, "And then we told the employees that they should disagree and commit," and you basically have the right idea about how their employees are going to interpret this.
Mr. Jassy, do you want unions? Because this is how you get unions. The only reason you're able to get away with such outright employee abuse is because the government is too thoroughly captured to stand up to you, and the employees don't care enough yet to unionize. But go too far, and you won't like the end result.
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"Suck it up, buttercup" only works if you're not in a situation where your employee can just flip you off and instantly sign up with someone else and probably for a better salary.
We're moving into a seller's market with employment, especially with highly qualified employment. And companies that don't notice that in time will be stuck with useless crap as employees. Because the good ones have gone to places where they are not treated like buttercups.
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The tough thing is getting to a union without getting in bed with any of the established swamp unions out there.
Re:Disagree and commit (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason you're able to get away with such outright employee abuse is
Requiring folks to come back to the office and resume former office policy is....abuse? Are people so entitled they believe telework is a right now? Look, if these folks signed contracts recently or when they onboarded that permitted them 100% telework and the company is renigging on that then I'm with you, but otherwise...yea, suck it up, buttercup.
Re:Disagree and commit (Score:5, Insightful)
Were it not for the pandemic, you might have a point. But there are real risks associated with being physically around other people right now, particularly if the offices happen to be poorly ventilated open offices. Amazon's offices spaces are notoriously (in the Seattle area, where I lived and worked until recently) not exactly fantastic in that regard. I can see the reluctance to RTO based on that alone.
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In this context, it sounds like "Suck it up, buttercup," ...
I find it confusing. "Disagree *and* commit" makes me think: commit to my disagreement. I think "disagree but commit" sounds closer to what Amazon means: disagree, then get back to work. Maybe they should simply say exactly what they men instead of trying to be clever wordsmiths.
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Any project entails numerous decisions to be made along the way. Somebody who becomes disengaged the first time something doesn't go their way because whatever happens after that "isn't their fault" is not a valuable team member.
Disagree and Commit actually sounds liberating in a way, because you don't have to pretend to agree. You just have to get the job done.
OverEmployed? (Score:2)
Amazon will be broken up like AT&T soon, don't worry your pretty little head "Jassy".
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It's more likely that they will end up with a ton of duds for employees, with everyone who amounts to anything long gone to places that don't try to play hardball when they have nothing to offer in return.
You can only bluff your way so far 'til someone calls it.
Short term (Score:5, Insightful)
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The push to put asses in seats has more to do with real estate dislocation than anything else.
WSJ has been trying to justify RTW by showing how it's hard to convert office space into living space.
The same way people were trying to make money off of all of the bubbles in the recent past, this real estate loss is being fought by making people go back to work. Same tactics and propaganda. It'll fail, but see what is happening for what it is.
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It has to do with insecure managers who can't do their job.
Fire the incompetent idiots and hire people who can manage... oh, wait, no, that costs money.
the PHB wants his 80-100 hours in office back for (Score:2)
the PHB wants his 80-100 hours in office back for the people under them.
Easy way to get ahead (Score:3, Insightful)
Show up for work every day of the week, just like you used to. Engage in face to face conversations and discussions. Crack jokes with the team. Be a normal human person.
And hey, presto, you're getting picked for those plum assignments. Because you're there and they know you.
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Why exactly would I prefer that over doing my job? That sounds awfully like something I never signed up for and never wanted to do.
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So you're saying I get more work and the same pay as a result? Lucky me.
More INTERESTING jobs perhaps (Score:3)
Those might not require more effort... ;)
Re:Easy way to get ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup and that's fine. For the rest who'd rather not crack bad jokes with people they are only pretending to care about and would prefer to replace the water cooler talk with hugging their kids and kissing the wife while getting a beverage and actually do better work thanks to that extra 2hrs of sleep each morning... let them have that, either at Amazon or elsewhere.
Ok. Whatever. (Score:2)
NEXT!
Draconian, but effective (Score:2)
To paraphrase Captain John Smith, "Those who aren't in the office aren't getting paid."
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You do know that the IT market is one where employees, at least qualified ones, have more headhunters breathing down their neck than you have qualified employees? I have headhunters writing me poems (I am not kidding) and asking me what they have to tell or promise me so I would at least talk to them. And I'm not that outlandishly qualified.
"At will" employment means jack shit if you have a hard time finding qualified people because they get snatched up by companies that are more willing to cater to their n
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Meanwhile we see rumors of restrictions returning (Score:2)
Use money, not pink-slips to incentize (Score:2)
Why not use a bonus to encourage people instead?
Or maybe a gradual "reverse bonus", a penalty, but not outright fire them. It would disrupt business to outright fire.
Personally I wouldn't work for Amazon unless I run out of options. They've been long known to be filled with Mr. Burns clones. Either some like the abuse, or are desperate.
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You'll notice that a lot of people would actually accept a lot lower salaries before going back to office. And if you overdo it, counteroffers from other 100% WFH places are more attractive.
You can't win that battle.
cloud (Score:2)
Veiled threat (Score:2)
Amazon is increasingly getting a bad reputation as a place to work. It started with warehouse workers and now it's white collar workers as well.
Their stock options are back loaded so that they don't fully vest until you are there 4 years or more. They do this knowing that many people won't last that long.
From what I can see it's a sweatshop. I'm sure their competitors will welcome disgruntled Amazon employees with open arms.
I won't be doing that. Let's talk about my options (Score:3)
Boss: everyone is moving back to the office September 1
You: I won't be doing that, so let's talk about what my options are
Don't give reasons. They are a sign of weakness and give the boss an opening to try to get you to change your mind.
You reiterate: I've already made my decision, all that's left is for you to make your decision.
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Ok. No.
What now?
double standards sometimes (Score:2)
So what? Is it right other employees make middle class wages, while Amazon executives do not? If every employee is being paid the CEO's salary, perhaps we can talk about fair.
The Amazon way (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, "Disagree and commit" like much of the other leadership principles have been "redefined" in a very Orwellian way over the last 10+ years in Amazon, when initially intended to make the point that it is not okay to agree just out of peer pressure and it was fine to disagree, now has become "shut up and just agree".
Having said so, this is a definite veiled threat, but also a tool to avoid layoffs by making people resign on their own. It's the Amazon way
"disagree and commit" (Score:3)
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Tough shit. Don't like it? Go find a new job.
That's not the way it works. The employers have the right to continue working until their employer terminates them. They have no obligation to go find another job just because the employer has decided to change their work policies. The employer has two options: keep employing them under terms that the employees agree to, or fire them and watch their unemployment insurance rates skyrocket and their hiring pipeline dry up.
They probably won't do the latter unless we're only talking about a few employees, be
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Tough shit. Don't like it? Go find a new job.
That's not the way it works.
That's exactly how it works.
two options: keep employing them under terms that the employees agree to, or fire them and watch their unemployment insurance rates skyrocket
Firing and layoff are two entirely different things. Firing someone because they refuse to do their job has no effect on a company's unemployment insurance rates.
Re:This is why we can't have nice things (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone was hired on the premise to do their job. I was never hired to keep a chair from flying off into orbit. And I wouldn't want to do a job like that.
If I wanted to be a useless manager, I'd not be a techie.
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Everyone was originally HIRED on the premise they would come in to work unless otherwise specified.
Get the fuck over it.
I don't recall agreeing to any document that specified my whereabouts during the hiring process.
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If you were hired before the pandemic, and you worked in the office, it can be (successfully) argued that you and the employer understood that the job was office-based. You accepted those terms at the time, even if nobody wrote down those specific words. Because no contract can be perfectly detailed, there's something akin to a reasonable person test. And a reasonable person would agree that you knew what you were signing up for.
They probably did not write down that you're permitted to take a piss once in a
Re:This is why we can't have nice things (Score:5, Insightful)
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Everyone was originally HIRED on the premise they would come in to work unless otherwise specified.
Sure. And everybody is free to leave an employer that us deeply stuck in historic working models. Face it: Amazon will have significantly less access to competent people as a result of this and nobody competent has any need to be grateful for a job. Like at all.
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And you never ever ask for a raise because you have been originally hired on the premise you are going to work for a certain wage, right?
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Tough shit. Don't like it? Go find a new job.
Fine. Many will.
Now don't be surprised when the competition who took WFH seriously and trained their managers properly, outperform, outbid, outprice, and eventually bankrupt every competitor still carrying an expensive corporate building on their financial backs.
If anything, the pandemic confirmed how utterly fucking pointless it is to feed some overpaid middle-earth cube farmer to police grown-ass adults in the workplace, as well as any tax benefit the business might get from shelling out a metric fuckton
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The problem with this logic is that many employers extended the work from home policy for long after it was medically necessary to contain COVID.
Many workers used the "But the new X variant just came out, and the vaccine doesn't protect us from that!" excuse long into mid 2022. At that point, the economy started slowing down because of inflation and employers started looking for excuses to cut costs and improve productivity.
I think that is what this is really about. Forcing people to return to the office is
Re: This is why we can't have nice things (Score:2)
Theyâ(TM)re forcing this on people that were originally hired for remote only roles as well. If you love to far from an office you need to relocate as well
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Okay, I get that the pandemic was temporary. But if you could WFH during the pandemic successfully, why can't you do it now?
It sounds just like a power trip to me. During the pandemic, employees who wanted to come into the office were told they couldn't, and now those who don't are told they must. At a company level, one of these arrangements is less expensive than the other, and unless management is completely incompetent, they know which one. Which leaves us with three possibilities:
Our lords and masters are panicking (Score:5, Insightful)
There's vast amounts of money - and debt - in commercial property. If a lot of that defaults, there are going to be vast numbers of very unhappy people who have real power. So they're using that power to encourage employers to demand their employees return to the office, so they can pretend their commercial property portfolio isn't worth nothing...
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"During which it was proven that what the employees had been saying for years prior to that was true, there was absolutely no business justification for them to be coming into the office in the first place."
Not my experience. Work from home is clearly less productive in my observation.
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"The rules were changed/suspended for a while."
During which it was proven that what the employees had been saying for years prior to that was true, there was absolutely no business justification for them to be coming into the office in the first place.
But was it proven? Because a whole lot of companies seem to think it wasn't, and they're spending a ton of money on office space and employee loss in order to bring people back to the office.
"Tough shit. Don't like it? Go find a new job."
Exactly.
I agree people who don't like it can find a new job, including a remote one. They may need to take some kind of discount (or be less picky), and it make turn out longer term that the wage premium to get people into the office isn't actually worth it.
Or even kick off your own Amazon competitor. The thing about Amazon is that they were first but they don't do ANY of what they do particularly well and the tech isn't particularly complicated.
And now you're just being silly.
Sure it's possible to compete against A
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Our products are constantly out of stock. When we send them in to Amazon, they now have us split the shipment to multiple places. Once received, they are then out of stock for weeks as Amazon does another warehouse transfer. Why didn't we just ship to the final warehouses?
Amazon routinely loses inventory. It takes a paid 3rd party solution to download reports every 15 minutes to catch these discrepancies
Re:are they going to pay for parking / fuel and ot (Score:5, Insightful)
are they going to pay for parking / fuel and other costs to come into the office?
Were they paying your parking/fuel costs 4 years ago when nobody was working from home?
Why should they pay that now?
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are they going to pay for parking / fuel and other costs to come into the office?
Yes, absolutely. It's included in your paycheck.
Note that I say this as someone who has worked remotely full time since 2014, but I took a pay cut to make that choice.
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Ok, cut my pay by 10% and I get 100% WFH.
Like I do this for money anymore... seriously...
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And ain't it weird that businesses still fight tooth and nail against getting free office space, free power and free bandwidth?