I bet he isn't in the office 5 days a week...
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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I’ve been fully remote since COVID and have successfully argued for my team staying fully remote. I don’t for a second buy that a team works better in person, provided you make the right changes to your culture to ensure remote works.
I’m a fan of remote.
But come on, thats false equivalence and you know it. Of course a CEO isn’t in his office 5 days a week; mostly likely he is travelling 3 weeks out of 4 and the last week he is actually in his nearest office. You would expect a CEO to move around their business. If they sat in an office every day they wouldn’t be doing their job.
Look at the job description and then decide if a role can be non-office-based.
So your saying it's not appropriate to have a blanket rule for everyone demanding everyone work in the office 5 days a week... False equivalency my arse. His job description is "make number go up". He could do his job from a small office next to the sales guy. On what planet do you think defending the CEO will make a difference when your employer decides they need more control over your life?
I’m saying that many jobs require frequent travel. Software engineers will need to attend meetings in other offices, salespeople will be out with potential customers, customer success staff will embed in other offices, people at all levels and in all functions will need to travel. CEOs need to travel too; if you think the CEO of Amazon or similar sized businesses can do their job from a small office, I would wager you haven’t been very close to the demands of C-level in a business that size.
What makes you think I’m defending Amazon’s CEO to somehow protect my own future? I’m arguing that many jobs require travel, and that’s also the case for any CEO.
I personally work in a fully remote business that has never been anything but fully remote. I’ve made my bed and I’m laying in it very well thank you.
What does this have to do with the article and my comment? Everything you are saying contradicts the CEOs position. My comment simply highlighted that his blanket rule would probably not apply to him. Explain the false equivalency you are referring to because I have no idea who you are comparing. Clearly you have been a little too close to these overpaid hacks, because you are clearly drinking their kool-Aid. Do you honestly believe this guy puts in an 8+ hour work day? Sure... CEOs are renowned for their work ethic. Please do continue to tell me how much more knowledgeable you are on this issue than I.
How are they retaining staff?
They retain them for the 4-5 years it takes for signing cash and signing stock units to all run out, at which point many people start to get itchy feet.
My brother is high up in AWS. The options don’t run out. They keep coming so that you’re pretty much handcuffed.
He has a really nice house and all that but he’s been stressed out a lot the past few years and he’s normally as calm as a Hindu cow.
Well, that’s probably because he’s hit the cap on base salary. After a certain point in Amazon, the majority of your income at Amazon is derived from shares.
That said, after the signing shares are yours after the first 4-5 years, you’re down to the yearly grants they hand out, which come the year after they were granted, in quarterly amounts.
Also, if your brother is high up, he probably got more shares this year than usual, as Amazon announced that only certain levels and below were getting salary increases. Higher up only got shares.
Correctomondo. Got more shares and more grey hairs.
“It’s true what they write. The company has turned super bureaucratic since the pandemic when everyone hired like crazy” - from him just now
Their convoluted salary and options package was one of the driving reasons why I declined a job there.
Sounds like they want a round of layoffs but don't want to pay severance.
They won't. They'll just substitute them. The idea is trying to force every company do the same thing, as making people work locally makes them more dependent on their local company and less likely to jump to a better job.
Then you can lower salaries (not rise them) and destroy benefits. Also you can enforce dress codes to make it look like a dictatorship country like North Korea.
Amazon is kinda known for burn and churn. They like have the appearance of a good place to work by not having a dress code, letting people bring dogs in, and being the kind of place that has beer on tap. None of it is worth the burnout though
You know, at some point, you gotta assume they'll eventually hire and fire/lose all the usable talent they have access to, and shit like this will prevent them finding new talent. Until some exec "invents" WFH as a perk...
you gotta assume they’ll eventually hire and fire/lose all the usable talent
I'd like to think that, but Amazon has the benefit (at least in the US) of operating in a country where most people need 2-3 jobs in order to live, so it's either churn-and-burn or starve.
God, that's bleak
Yeah, it is.
Could even get Trump reelected in a few months. Super bleak.
Odds I've been hearing for Trump being re-elected are about 3.4 to 1.
The thing about an operation as big as Amazon is that one or two people work on one component of one thing. If the folks who work on that one thing both bail, it doesn't slow down Amazon or any of its constituent components overmuch. The way things are architected it can chug along for quite a while until somebody else is tasked with learning about and maintaining it.
They tend to hire a lot of recent graduates, at least when I was there. People that simply don't know better.
Nah. So long they remain the largest comoanies in tech, the FAANG companies have an endless buffet of overconfident and naive new grads to feast on. Entitled kids who will excitedly walk through the door and proudly display their comoany golf shirts to anyone they can trap in a corner while explaining how they're remaking and reinventing ways to squeeze and manipulate customers in the name of shareholder value.
This is, unfortunately, true. The kids of some family friends are trying in the worst way to get in at Amazon or Facebook to make their bones. They figure that they can build their brands by surviving there for four or five years (Amazon's reputation for burning through people like toilet paper at Wing Wars is well known in the tech industry, and respected), sock money away because they still live at home, and get a jump on the good life.
I can't tell 'em what to do. They asked for my advice and gave it. What they do is their problem.
Harder on the corporate side, but this has been an issue in the warehouses.
This is just another layoff in disguise. Make it miserable, so people leave without severance.
I thought it was for real estate value
Both of these things can be true. You can't discount the rich and their ability to do evil in multiple dimensions with one choice.
They are retaining staff by paying more than most other companies, but they also have a reputation for running their workers into the ground by overworking them. Many burn out pretty quickly.
When I was there actual salaries were lower, but they gave out a lot of RSUs. Good ole golden handcuffs
I see Amazon is trying something else for their 2024 attrition strategy.
Yeah - they call it URA, for "unregretted attrition". Tell me that doesn't sound like a shitty way to manage your people.
annual turnover rates at Amazon warehouses reached 150%
Crazy. Crazy that that works as a business strategy.
What a bell end
Fuck Andy Jassy.
Asshole.