Amazon moving to five days a week in-office
Posted by carterdmorgan@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 109 comments
Posted by carterdmorgan@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 109 comments
RetroMistakes@reddit
I skip over the job openings from Amazon, and have done so for years. Everyone knows their character as a company (or lack thereof). Everyone knows the company culture is awful. And if you're smart, you've projected that whatever pay band they're pitching to you, it's not worth the cost to your mental health and quality of life.
khaili109@reddit
Yea they might give you an offer, have you relocate, and then rescind your offer lol
Shihai-no-akuma_@reddit
Kinda late. But they aren't the only ones. Friend of mine got an offer for Meta, UK and they rescinded their offer too. It's not like Amazon's the only one pulling that kind of shit.
Scarface74@reddit
I am fortunately not at Amazon anymore. But I don’t see the functional difference for me of having to be in the office one day a week versus 5.
Either precludes me from living where I want to live - a relatively low cost of living area with no state income taxes. It also means I can’t work for a week at my parents house.
There is no compromise for me. Either it is fully remote or it’s a hard no.
If they want me in an office, pay for me to hop on plane and put me up in a hotel. I have no issue with a business travel during the week - been there done that.
azure275@reddit
That’s very not true. I work hybrid. I live an hour from my office, go in 3 days a week. Not being on a highway for 2 hours more than 3 times a week makes life so much easier
Doesn’t mean remote isn’t better or that for you hybrid is untenable but it’s a huge quality of life difference if you had to take that job
Scarface74@reddit
The short version of the story is that in mid 2020 I was living in metro Atlanta, had a 3200 square foot house I had built in 2016 for $335K
A recruiter from Amazon Retail reached out to me about an SDE position that would have required me to relocate to Seattle after COVID lifted. I told her I wasn’t intereses in relocating and then she suggested I apply for permanent remote position at AWS Professional Services.
You mean no relocation and no “leetCode grind”? Why not?
I had a friend who had moved to Seattle to work in Finance at Amazon a few years earlier. His home was more than twice as expensive, older, and smaller. Then he got Amazoned and stuck trying to find another job paying enough.
There was no way I would uproot my life to work at Amazon knowing about their reputation. When I got Amazoned last year, I interviewed for remote positions and had a job within three weeks with no disruption to my life.
its4thecatlol@reddit
Amazoned == pipped?
Scarface74@reddit
Yep
AishiFem@reddit
This is the best thing ever. It shows the importance of working at the office. Hiring offshore need to stop.
thecodingart@reddit
This is Amazon. Software engineers need to stop working for this terrible company.
beige_cardboard_box@reddit
They still have two work from home days. Saturday and Sunday.
opobdtfs@reddit
Jokes aside, I imagine employees can come Saturday and Sunday to count as a badge-in day, work from office 3 days, work remote 2 days, to make the best of an atrocious situation.
If anyone asks, pretty sure the definition of a "week" is 7 days, not 5.
tracethisbacktome@reddit
they have compliance mechanisms in place to make sure you hit your days. the way they’re currently set up, you can game the system like you described since your manager doesn’t get the fully granular badge data (and probably doesn’t gaf where you work from). but if you start missing days and get flagged, people higher up the chain get involved, and they have access to full badge data, may not know you personally, and are less likely to be ok with you BS’ing the RTO policy. ask me how I know 😂
No-Goose-1877@reddit
For 500k a year? No thanks, Mr Bezos will have his bootyhole pearl tounge installed if he so wishes.
Edit: i wish i did 500k. This is the median salary only in the imaginary circlejerk of some faang folk in reddit.
topological_rabbit@reddit
I'd consider going back for 2 million a year, 5-year-minimum contract.
They'll never pay that so I'm never going back.
dudeaciously@reddit
This might be the wrong thread, but do dish on the specifics of why you hated it so much.
topological_rabbit@reddit
Manager fucked me over by having me put tasks I couldn't finish yet due to waiting on requirements from other teams into "backburner" status, which meant they showed up as incomplete instead of blocked, which meant he could secretly put me in "coaching" status which gave him the power to block me from jumping to another team, which I only found out when I tried to jump to another team.
Combine that with coworkers deliberately witholding information to make it harder to get what I needed to work on tasks, but done in really sneaky ways so it didn't look like they were doing that, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to catch on (and why I tried to jump to another team once I did) -- the way they got ahead was making themselves look relatively better by clawing down everyone around them.
And this is the standard environment at Amazon. Those good teams you hear about? They're the rarity, not the norm. It's an absolutely nightmarish place to work.
dudeaciously@reddit
Thank you so much for this confirmation, very reliable info. I heard of Amazon managers giving slightly bad reviews to key people, to disallow good people getting promoted out. Your details are even better. Jeez. Not good for mental health.
topological_rabbit@reddit
I thought the horror stories were exaggerations until I worked there. They're not exaggerations in the slightest.
ecethrowaway01@reddit
Engineers who can make 500k at Amazon have a variety of other options lol
Varrianda@reddit
Not really…where else do you go if you wanna make that kind of money as an SDE3?
beige_cardboard_box@reddit
https://www.levels.fyi/leaderboard/Software-Engineer/Senior-Engineer/country/United-States/
Varrianda@reddit
Majority of those companies are paper money
vieldside@reddit
Wow. I can’t even get hired as a junior software engineer lmao. Hopefully I get up there with you guys soon!! Would appreciate any advice!
Loose-Potential-3597@reddit
Learn a common tech stack, deploy a few apps and put them on your resume, get your resume reviewed and apply to 1000 jobs to get your first offer. Then job hop every 2 years til you find a decent place.
vieldside@reddit
Haha appreciate you. I’m on it, sir! Wish me luck!
SilencedObserver@reddit
Time for SWE’s to form a guild like locksmiths and plumbers and such to start requiring fair pay.
sjg284@reddit
Always observed AMZN as the worst Big Tech place to work, so just seems continuation of that trend.
Obviously this is also to force attrition and save them layoff severance money.
-Nocx-@reddit
We're witnessing generationally a period of time where established companies are passed down to people who are inheriting them. They have a bad few quarters, realize the business is not turning the same profits to satisfy how much they've grown, and their knee-jerk reaction is to cut.
The issue is that they begin to cut, but they cut corners despite not knowing where the corner is. You'll begin seeing faulty products in established businesses with previously stellar track records (famously Intel, despite ~~inventing~~ building* Pre-Si) as the inheritors of those empires struggle to figure out what the hell they're doing.
It'll be interesting to see if Amazon is actually too big to fail, or if in this transitionary period a relevant competitor takes market share. The fact that they had a reputation for a particularly brutal environment for laborers - only to continue constraining that labor - is concerning.
sr_emonts_author@reddit
You raise some good points.
My friend who works at Amazon told me one of the issues they are encountering is that they have spit up and chewed out so many talented SWEs over the past two decades that sometimes the only qualified candidates are former employees who have been PIPed out or left due to toxic management.
Regarding Intel, there's an old documentary called Triumph of the Nerds from the 90s (someone uploaded it to Youtube). One of the Intel cofounders is interviewed about the company's success and .it's striking how far and quickly they've fallen.
When I worked at a F50 company, the amount of short-sightedness was so far beyond greed and well into the realm of foolishness I ended up quitting
stoneg1@reddit
Your friend is absolutely correct. My ex team had a role open for 3 straight years, we couldnt get competent engineers to apply, the ones that did wanted wfh (which obviously they couldn’t have). The only hiring i saw in my time at Amazon was new grad and returning employees.
From what i saw as well this already has had a massive impact on their talent, ive seen people getting paid 400k+ push to prod without testing.
renok_archnmy@reddit
Amazons local campus is about 1 hour closer to my apartment than my current employer. I’m not a big fan, but I’d happily take $300k to push to prod and actually test and RTO for a couple of years for the resume boost, equity, and $180k bump in base comp.
But no matter how many resumes I send, I just get rejections.
stoneg1@reddit
Its probably much easier to get in the door now after the most recent rto announcement. I would probably just apply to every single job you see that you’d qualify for, Amazon has high turnover in recruiters so they often suck too, getting your resume picked up is sort of just luck of the draw.
DoggySnack@reddit
so they were willing to lose talent over wfh?
renok_archnmy@reddit
Opens seats to eliminate or fill with more junior staff who are more malleable, passive, dependent, and willing to work for less. Also protest quitting forfeits unvested equity, unemployment, and severance.
Overall, it is purely about cost reduction.
Rainbike80@reddit
That's the thing. They don't think you are talented. It's very similar to a cult. It's complete hubris driven by success. It won't stop until they start doing poorly revenue wise.
A career at AWS is a career built on sand.
I spent quite a bit of time there and I can tell you it's not a place where you will ever feel respected like other jobs. There's always some twat who can make a comment during a doc review and cause strife.
If you need a job sure go for it. But outside of that, you NEED to talk to several people who worked there so you can know what you are getting into.
beatlefreak9@reddit
I think the issue is that they don't consider their real talent to be people that aren't willing to work from the office. Take from that what you will (former Amazonian)
Zoloir@reddit
Meaning, they don't think the WFH devs are talented? the REAL devs are in the office?
How do they come to these conclusions?? Some kind of nepotism type scam?
scoopzthepoopz@reddit
They don't want anyone happy. Probably deals with taxes or real estate or just elitism. If the bottom line with one way is indiscernable from the other way somebody is getting cut in OR they're just intolerant anybody but the c suite gets to enjoy life at work. Chance to indoctrinate people to corporatism.
Fun-Dragonfly-4166@reddit
If and when I apply to Amazon I won't make a big deal about WFH. It is obvious that won't get me a job there. It is also obvious that they are ass hats who have no regard for my well being. So I can just say I will 5X and then not do it. They will probably fire me, but is not that what they were going to do anyway?
stoneg1@reddit
You can .25x and not get fired, Amazon is about politics. Thats why you have people working their ass off and getting piped, they are not playing politics. For a year i worked 20 hours a week and got the highest ratings by just playing politics hard.
angryplebe@reddit
Define "play politics"? Is that just working on managements pet projects?
stoneg1@reddit
Thats part of it, working on projects that have visibility and trying not to work on ones that don’t. Another way i would do it was making sure to sell the projects i was working on as more impactful and difficult than they were.
commonsearchterm@reddit
why are you deciding to work on projects that you have to lie to sell on instead of working on projects that actually have value?
angryplebe@reddit
Work generally falls into maintenance and new work. The former keeps the metrics in the right place, the latter should move them in the right direction. Only things that improve numbers are generally considered valuable work (both from the business perspective and from your career perspective).
stoneg1@reddit
Amazon just dosent have enough projects that actually have value. Youll get to work on one occasionally but most projects are for ktlo
Fun-Dragonfly-4166@reddit
I believe that but politics is work. If one has no skill in politics then amazon is going to be a lot of work.
Unless one decides pre-emptorarily that one does not give a fuck because layoffs are all but inevitable.
Singularity-42@reddit
Not at Amazon, but I'm about to get PIPed for failing at politics and also by associating with people that fell out of favor with the new management. I was one of the top performer in the 10 years I've been here. Any tips on how to learn to play politics?
I always considered politicking unproductive and a waste of time, but the truth is I'm here to get paid, not to do meaningful work.
skesisfunk@reddit
I mean step one is making sure the person you report to likes you. If that person ever changes then its back to step one.
Singularity-42@reddit
Yeah...my former boss that is a very good friend of mine got fired a couple of months ago under very hostile circumstances.
The thing is if the market was good I would be looong gone. They are pulling this shit only because they think they can get away with it.
skesisfunk@reddit
Its gonna shift. Everyone is holding their breath now because of the looming federal reserve rate cut and the looming election. Those things will be resolved in a matter of weeks and the job market is likely to improve in the wake of that.
Rainbike80@reddit
I really hope you are right....
TracePoland@reddit
Also a lot of companies that were very stable and had a good thing going on as private companies went IPO during Covid, which now put them other trajectory of endless shareholder pressure in search of the mythical infinite growth. A good example is Unity Technologies, they had a great thing going on with mobile games and indie games and a stable, profitable model. Then they went public - shareholders demand infinite growth of revenues and stock price, they respond with a new predatory pricing model, start bleeding market share massively to FOSS Godot, are forced to do deep cuts because of it and now they've reversed the new pricing model completely, except their market share and reputation have been left in tatters and it's not something that can just be undone like that.
topological_rabbit@reddit
I lasted all of six months there. It's the most horrific, sociopathic, backstabbing environment I've ever been in.
The only advice I have for people applying for jobs there is: DO NOT WORK FOR AMAZON.
franktronix@reddit
Also beware directors+ that come from there, they can poison company culture.
FinishExtension3652@reddit
My last company had a CPO and a CTO from Amazon. The latter was ok, but the former make sure to let everyone know their names were on so many patents with Jeff Bezos.
The two then got into a war which resulted in a 7-8 figure payday for one, and layoffs for a huge chunk of the company
marco89nish@reddit
Managers will have to do anything possible to keep their employees now because loosing 10% of ICs will mean extra 10% cut in managers (on top of 15% planned). So, it's going to be very weird in Amazon for a while.
resumethrowaway222@reddit
They're focusing on getting rid of managers specifically. That means they are being smart. The most useless people stack up in middle management.
Tomicoatl@reddit
If engineers didn't throw a tantrum any time they needed to update a ticket or talk to someone there would not be such a need for managers.
d3fnotarob0t@reddit
The solution isn't useless managers. The solution is dev leads who get work done and also have the authority to tell the complainers to stop whining and get their work done or else. There is a difference between leaders and managers.
Tomicoatl@reddit
You have just recreated the manager role.
d3fnotarob0t@reddit
No I don't think I have. Managers who just manage do not directly get work done. They watch other people do work and fill out paperwork about it and try to analyze how they do work and report about it. They also spend their time in unnecessary meetings that could have just been an email. Even if you gain some marginal efficiency from constantly monitoring your employees and reporting on them, that efficiency is overshadowed by the fact that you have a 5 person team where 1 person doesn't produce anything.
In comparison, a lead who does work may only need to spend 1/3 of their time managing people and 2/3 of their time producing.
Life_is_a_meme@reddit
Yeah, everybody on my team was surprised when we saw the typical tone-deaf letter by Jassy. If they give me assigned seats next to some random people I don't know, I'm going to take calls from my desk. We can't build a culture when I sit next to people in different teams I have never heard of, but I know that will happen, and we will be worse for it.
renok_archnmy@reddit
Fish in the microwave every day, eat it at your desk, have a speaker, and generally just fart and burp constantly. Get a doc to sign off on IBS or something so they can’t tell you to stop.
ben_bliksem@reddit
That bit where he mentions he started at level 5 some 27 years ago and how the culture enabled him to be awesome so it must still be the the case for all of you in 2024...
I threw up a little. What a fucking dinosaur. Life was different in the 90s.
At least he is addressing useless managers, but only after many others have done so already. You're a follower, not an innovator my man.
renok_archnmy@reddit
lol
agumonkey@reddit
Now let's see if every CEO will follow
d3fnotarob0t@reddit
They just might. They can have their office appointed as finely as their mansions and get to work in minutes on their helicopters.
renok_archnmy@reddit
Wasnt there a tech CEO recently bragging about RTO and his commute and how all his employees should welcome it and be happy about it - from like LA to SF (or reverse?) by private jet…
phatjordan@reddit
why does this keep getting posted. the only ceos that will follow are the ones who want a sweatshop. competent ceos aren’t looking to amazon for guidance.
crav88@reddit
thinking about cancelling prime just because of this (i'm not an employee, just care too much about remote and trying to stop the RTO trend).
Scarface74@reddit
You realize all of the BigTech companies are headed in that direction?
crav88@reddit
yes, i'm not dumb. Also, I don't pay any other of their big tech counterparts (and don't really use them).
Scarface74@reddit
So you don’t have a smart phone? It’s either Apple or Google?
Do you run Linux? If not, it’s either Apple or Microsoft.
Do you use LinkedIn or GitHub - Microsoft
Do you use any of Meta’s properties? - Meta
crav88@reddit
I was waiting for these...for sure someone was gonna try.
-Degoogled android. research it.
-yes, i run linux. Any microsoft or apple services are blocked at the machine firewall level (portmaster, etc - no data collection allowed).
-Do you use LinkedIn - hibernated. Not really updated or used for 8 years. GitHub - employers account, so i didn't pay and didn't use any of my info, except for my first and last name. When i need a private repository, there's gitea self hosted or other options like it. This is also a good tip: never use your main private github for your employer's projects. That way they don't have a case if they ever try to say that you kept access to some of their code after leaving.
-Meta’s properties - no facebook, no instagram, tbh have to use whatsapp because it's the default communication method where i live. But it's also the least lucrative to meta.
I like and prefer to self host many of the apps i need myself. It's good learning and even better to really own your data, for the most part.
TracePoland@reddit
GitHub is still hiring for remote roles and some teams don't even do Leetcode.
crav88@reddit
i'd gladly take their money if remote. I'll just not give my personal data to them, or use personal projects there!\
renok_archnmy@reddit
Amazon = forced attrition.
HellaReyna@reddit
I see lots of rage posts by current Amazon SWEs in my LinkedIn circle. It’s funny and sad cause the amount of traction and sharing these posts have are too high to ignore. Some guy said some of his team just departed even though they were hired as WFH and remote. Seems like possible lawsuit really
All of this could’ve been avoided if Amazon wasn’t ran by a draconian asswipe
itsallfake01@reddit
Worst case scenario, amazon stock jumps in 6 months and the rest of the companies start contemplating. Fuck…
Dapper_Tie_4305@reddit
Amazon continuing to be the sweat shop of the tech world.
DirectorBusiness5512@reddit
WITCH: "hold our beers"
dudeaciously@reddit
Hold our mango lassi. (I can say that, I am Indian.)
montblanc6@reddit
You know mango lassi is a drink westerns think is what Indian drink. I find it so fascinating that mango lassi is always on menu in Indian restaurants in US. Where in India no one knows or cares about mango lassi. Like why is that!
Intrepid-Telephone41@reddit
That’s a lot of foods.
Manchurian (“Chinese”) in India doesn’t exist anywhere else.
Fortune cookies don’t exist in China.
dudeaciously@reddit
You are totally right. The same thing can be said about butter-chicken, purely a western construct.
But I find when talking to western people about Indian things, I need to be at common terms. I say my own name in a western way, been getting corrected recently.
JamesB41@reddit
That feels a bit dramatic based on this lol. Five days in the office was basically the norm across the entire board ten years ago, and now it's a sweat shop? I get that they have issues but Jesus the level of hyperbole is insane.
theredfantastic@reddit
Even when they were in office it was still a sweat shop according to everyone I know who worked there.
nowtayneicangetinto@reddit
Yep exactly, taking freshly graduated CS majors who spend their lives doing leetcode just to find out they're going to be Amazons bitch until they leave
Cosfy101@reddit
Tbh I’ll do five days in the office fuck it
namelesshonor@reddit
my buddy just quit Amazon recently because they pulled this crap. he told them he would stay on and relocate (so he got an extension on the RTO) and then just quit after he found something else. ✌️
SufficientStrategy96@reddit
Meanwhile, Apple is 3 days in office
pingpongdingdong420@reddit
I don’t know a single friend/colleague of mine who join Amazon and stayed for more than 2 years.
Actually scratch that, after a decade in the industry I’ve met one maybe…
_soundshapes@reddit
Lmfao. Left at the end of last year due to RTO and have recently spoken to a recruiter who was “confident” they could find me a remote approved role.
Obviously didn’t believe them as being burned by the rainforest once is enough to learn your lesson, but just makes reading this news even funnier. Feel like calling her back to get an updated confidence measure.
AzulMage2020@reddit
Is this mandate just for the US/Canada/Europe?? I bet it is. The other international offices were probably already at RTO (if they ever werent in the first place). So , if that is the case, and as so many have speculated that this directive is to get people to quit, who is it aimed at and why??
Pretty easy to figure out isnt it?
HRApprovedUsername@reddit
Well I guess I’m going to cancel that on-site I have with them now
churro777@reddit
lol I have an interview with them next month
CTN_23@reddit
Be egoistic, get the name on the CV and enjoy the first 2 years of sign on bonus.
churro777@reddit
That’s what I’m thinking. I did just have my first child so a part of me is weighing that in whether or not I should work there
CTN_23@reddit
The first 1 1/2 years at Amazon are great (clocking in at 3 years now myself). It's after that time where people realize that it's a dead end. But I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'm looking for a remote role now and the pay at L5 allowed me to not care too much about salary anymore because my net worth skyrocketed at my time there.
ProgrammingQuestio@reddit
How much are you getting paid?
CTN_23@reddit
I'm L5 in Europe
iNovaNoxious@reddit
I’m lucky I left Amazon as they were introducing the 3 office days p/week. Legit 12 hours into this being announced, someone made a petition on internal comms to have this revoked stating “no one asked for this” 😂😂 now this!! Work/life balance = dead
crypto_king42@reddit
A big fuck you to Amazon for paving the way for my company to do the same.
FelineGreenie@reddit
What is this chatgpt drivel
RTO is a mechanism to provoke you into leaving so the company doesn't have to pay severance in layoffs.
It's actually one of the most innovative things silicon valley has done in years
586WingsFan@reddit
Yep, and then after you leave, the job that had to be done in the office can magically be done just as well by someone in South Asia
horror-pangolin-123@reddit
You get exactly what you pay for. Massive savings in engineering salaries are going to get them kindergarden level engineers. They may save 10 - 25%, but will need to put real effort and money in getting actual thinking usable adults, and they sure as fuck won't be able to hire them by the dozen at once.
I have close friends working at two different big companies that dream of hiring dozens of dirt cheap engineers in India and China, but they end up being almost net negative since they require unreal amount of handholding to make the smallest contributions imaginable. Real progress is only being made by decently paid and carefully vetted engineers.
JoshRafla@reddit
This applies to every field including technical sales/solution sales/architect roles. I’ve been hearing for 10 years about how “any day now” Asia/India talent will take over because they work remote and twice as hard etc. Same with LATAM.
Still have yet to see it happen. In fact our company has tried it, and it’s some unspoken truth that these people are very, very below standard vs North American counterparts. Need hand holding and explicit direction for every task - including those with overseas MBAs. They get out performed by US/Canasa recent grads even with their 10 years experience. Nobody wants to say it though because it’s considered not politically correct.
Looserette@reddit
well, only 5 days ??
that means ~~slaves~~ employees can WFH the 2 remaining days - sounds like a good deal