Amazon Rejects Petition from 30,000 Workers Opposing Return-to-Office Mandate -...
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Amazon Rejects Petition from 30,000 Workers Opposing Return-to-Office Mandate
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An anonymous reader shares this report from the New York Post:
Disgruntled Amazon corporate employees are reportedly devastated after a top human resources executive shot down an internal petition that asked the tech giant's leaders to nix its return-to-office plan. Approximately 30,000 workers had signed a petition begging CEO Andy Jassy to cancel his directive that most employees work on site at least three days per week. The return-to-office plan is slated to take effect on May 1.
Beth Galetti, Amazon's HR chief, shot down the petition in a message to organizers obtained by Insider and signaled that the return-to-office plan will move forward as scheduled. "Given the large size of our workforce and our wide range of businesses and customers, we recognize this transition may take time, but we are confident it will result in long-term benefits to increasing our ability to deliver for our customers, bolstering our culture, and growing and developing employees," Galetti said in the memo....
In the petition, which first surfaced last month, Amazon workers argued they are more productive and enjoy a better work-life balance in a remote work environment. The workers also asserted that the three-day-per-week requirement runs contrary to Amazon's stances on issues such as affordable housing, diversity and climate change.... Meanwhile, Jassy has argued that working more days on site will help build effective collaboration and "deliver for customers and the business."
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The problem with this attitude is that the first ones to leave are also exactly the ones you cannot lose: The ones that can snap their fingers and get snatched up by another company because they have a skill set that's in high demand.
And you'll be stuck with the duds that can't just do that and have to grin and bear it.
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You don't have to propagate the brain fart's vacuous Subject.
However, my take to your take is "good". Anything that damages Amazon is fine with me.
But as noted previously, my second and final Amazon purchase was more than 20 years ago. I didn't know what I was looking at back then, but I smelled the evil and nothing I've observed or experienced or learned since then has encouraged me to approach it again. If there are any historians in the future, and if they are writing any sort of books, then I don't expe
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You'll find that the more successful companies are going to be those that cater to their prime assets, and that's gonna be good workers.
I don't know about you, but no matter who I talk to in my circle of friends, everyone is lamenting the lack of skilled workers. Everyone is hiring, everyone is searching, everyone is decrying that they have to hire unqualified people and get them up to speed because it's virtually impossible to even get anyone who knows his shit.
And it's never been easier than to attract good personnel than today. We're not the highest paying company in the field. Not by a longshot. But we offer an unparalleled work-life balance. Seriously, you name it, you'll get it. At this point it's pretty much "work whenever and wherever you want, what matters is your work gets done". There are of course some limitations, e.g. you should be present (or at least telepresent) for important meetings and certain tests can only be done on-site because they don't want to deliver a machine that costs a couple millions and should better not end up in the wrong hands to my garage, but that's the general situation. And the dress code is basically "it would be nice if at least the naughty parts are covered, if that's not asking too much". I remember when I started and asked for the dress code my boss (then boss-to-be) said "Uh... well, I'm wearing my Metallica t-shirt today, but if you don't have one that's fine".
And yes, that's a job perk younger generations want. We can be competitive without paying premium Euro, simply by having kick-ass social benefits and a very great attitude towards formality and work-life. Our higher-ups quickly realized "hey, it doesn't cost money and gives us top performer? Yeah, we want that!"
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Amazon's problem to deal with.
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I, very unfortunately, HAVE first hand experience of exactly that. If you introduce an unfavorable atmosphere in a company, people will start to look for alternatives. I've seen this more than once. And the ones that are good at what they do, that have something to show for, that can demonstrate that they know their shit, they will find something else quickly. The duds who should be lucky that there was a company dumb enough to hire them won't.
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Also, there is no "relationship" between employer and employee. I sell them my workforce. That's business, not a relationship. If I'm not satisfied with the compensation for my product, I take my business elsewhere.
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Amazon doesn't have any good people. If they were good, they would have left already. The turnover rate is ridiculous, the conditions are terrible. The interview process alone filters out anyone who is in demand.
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Well, then they might just get away with that. I know how it would end in my company, though. On the bright side, though, we have some of the best people in the business. And we can keep them only by catering to what they want.
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That is an excellent point.
I give potential employers two interviews to make their case on why I should work for them.
I don't care who you are, two interviews (one preferably) and you're done.
You hear these stories of people doing seven or something interviews to work at FAANG or similar...lol....fuck that !
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Two interviews. Two. Either I know what you can do afterwards or I never will.
First interview is getting to know you and you get to know the company. Who are you, what do you "feel" like, this is where you'll sit with me and a few goofballs from HR and similar idiots for the pesky "human" stuff. You know, money, corporate culture, do you fit in, do you like us, that shit. Believe it or not, yes, that should come FIRST. If you can't work with our style or if we don't "feel" like you fit in with the rest of t
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Jassy, I believe you the second you sit down in the middle of that open floor plan.
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by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25, 2023 @05:04PM (#63399049)
He literally has his own floor in the Seattle office that's blocked off by security. I know someone who accidentally ended up there when they were knew (big oops for security) and was basically interrogated for 2 hours by security over it. Nice welcome to the company.
The guy is an almighty hypocrite, he basically has his own high security penthouse on site.
The real driver for this is the mayor of Seattle has offered significant tax incentives for bringing people back to the office there to bring more business to Seattle town centre shops etc., so those workers in Seattle who are pissed off at the return mandate are refusing to use public transport, car pooling in and buying their dinner locally near their homes and bringing it in with them to make a point. Jassy's argument of "We need to help businesses local to the offices" falls flat when that necessarily means at the expense of businesses close to people's homes.
Amazon is going to have severe productivity issues; you don't piss off 1million workers to no effect. That's not how managing a company works.
He's trashing the company, Bezos for all his faults was a far more competent CEO. Amazon is really struggling under Jassy, but that's what you get when you make a literal mouth breather CEO of a company with 1.5million people in it.
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Hopefully they vote that mayor out. Here in SF, Breed has only been quietly talking about tax incentives.
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To continue the passive-aggressive protests, sit your ass at your desk but continue to do everything via Zoom, email and instant messenger. Never look at anyone's face in person. Continue to work "remote" and don't give them the chance to say that the in-person environment is better.
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It isn't better. It is worse. The only way open-floor is even bearable is by having noise canceling headphones. And depending on who is sitting next to you, a noseplug.
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You don't even need to, staff are throwing their own policies back at him. A lot of people are in global roles, working with people across the world. Someone in Seattle might work with people in Australia in Europe. When they worked from home that might mean doing 4 hours work at 8am, having the day to yourself, then doing 4 hours work at say 6pm or however you want to work it - they could work flexibly.
Now they're doing 9 - 5 on Seattle time when in the office. That means no liaison with anyone outside the
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From what they've told me about their jobs, it seems obvious work-life balance has never been a consideration for the execs... unless of course it's their own. Very long hours and frequent haranguing seem to be the norm. The money was very good, but the conditions sucked.
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If you have the financial means to do so or have something else lined up, then quit if you don't like it.
As an at-will employee, the the most powerful tool you have is to quit and go somewhere else or start something on your own.
Inertia keeps people at companies like this. They're betting on it.
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Kudos to you. That is probably the hidden agenda item. I should have included that in the original post, but overlooked it.
As mentioned in a post above, the problem is the the employees with the means who don't like it are likely the ones that make an impact in the organizations will press the eject button first.
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This is insanely stupid. The ones leaving are the ones you should try to keep.
If you want to get rid of people, fire them. If you let people quit on their own, you lose the ones that actually do the work and get stuck with the ones that are even too lazy to quit.
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I have no sympathy for someone who demands to work from home but their employer says otherwise. If your skills are such that you can negotiate that into your contract then go for it. Otherwise shut up and show up.
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> If your skills are such that you can negotiate that into your contract then go for it.
It sounds like you weren't able to negotiate that. Self burn, hahahaha.
--
Tiffany Dover: 2 year hide and seek champion -
Dear boss.
I found something new.
More of money
Less of YOU.
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Only the government is obligated by law to listen to petitions. Private companies have little in the way of appeal or petition. They don't have to give a shit
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They don't have to, but they should at the very least ponder the implications. Those 30,000 are probably not exactly the warehouse drones that can easily be hired and fired. Every company has key personnel that you can't easily replace.
A company I happened to know very well thought that they could do with half their SAP department. So they fired half of the workers there. The rest noticed two things: 1, they are in VERY high demand everywhere and 2, they are now tasked with working twice as much for the sam
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Private companies will listen if there is a danger that 30,000 workers will quit en masse. But I don't think it would be a good move for those people. Imagine your next interview you have to say to your new potential boss that you are so opposed to going to work and that you preferred to quit in protest. But now you want a job - but not the kind for which you need to actually shower and go to. Yeah, very impressive!
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..in other countries ?
For example, in Australia there are strong workplace relations laws and employees cannot be treated as slaves, subject to the bosses every whim.
The onus is on the employer to prove their case why employees need to return to the office if they've been working just fine from home for the past three years.This has been tested in court and the employees have won.
My boss literally cannot force me back to the office. Now, obviously both parties must negotiate in good faith. I *might* be convinced to go back in maybe a day a fortnight for the right "sweetener", but if my boss said " four days a week or you're fired" there would be hell to pay and he'd lose.
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That's because you work in a civilized country. Not a the only major industrialized country with at-will employment where the employer can say:
"I'm altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further" (Apologies to George Lucas.)-
My employer went from three floors of a very expensive city skyscraper office building down to one floor, and I suspect the CFO and Board are very happy with the savings. Headcount has increased too, and staff retention.
Moral of the story, care more about your people, and less about your fancy offices.
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The key problem for a lot of these huge megacorps is that they own the buildings, and suddenly their real estate value plummets into nothingness. So stuffing people into those buildings is a way to keep the company value up.
My company started to do something radical (and considering how conservative we are, that's close to a revolutionary move): They started converting some of the floors to apartments and rented them out to key personnel (let's not dance around the subject: Mainframe and key stakeholders) a
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I agree.
There was a lot of pressure here from the commercial building owners to get people back into the office.
"Won't somebody think of the billionaire commercial realestate job creators?"...
Didn't work.
The flipside is, more money being spent in the suburbs and where people live. So, less traffic into the city cafes but much more into your local area businesses.
Swings and roundabouts.
Personally, screw leaving my house at 7:30 am for a 1-1:15 hr commute through shitty traffic into the city, then parking and
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Altered due to external factors, not because the employers implemented it out of the kindness of their hearts.
I'm afraid the genie is out of the bottle now. It's gong to be very hard to entice it back in unless there's a severe recession or depression, and the employee-employer relationship becomes even more asymmetrical.
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What's wrong with that?
Big corporations do that all the time to their employees because it helps their bottom line. If employees have the means and they don't like the new rules, they'll find someone else who is more accommodating.
Rules cannot be for thee and not for me. If Management does something stupid, they need to be held accountable. If an employee quits without the means to do so, that's equally stupid and they will learn a hard lesson from it.
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Yes, Amazon is going to be in a world of shit over this. Jassy has seen this as a way to make further redundancies without making actual redundancies. That might fly in the US, but they haven't realised they're literally breaking the law in much of the rest of the world by engaging in overt mass constructive dismissal.
He just has no idea that the way things work in the US, isn't the way things work in the rest of the world, so has issued a dictat aimed primarily at their largest offices in the US without co
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Don't like the policy, leave. 30,000 people leaving would be devastating, even for a company the size of Amazon. More particularly, these are the people who know how operations work. Their departure could, in theory, bring Amazon to a halt.
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And that will happen. I don't know who those 30,000 are, but I would assume that they belong to two group (with quite some overlap), first, people who know that they can easily find a new job and second, people who don't care if they lose this one because they are fed up enough to quit anyway.
The young people (under 30) of today are not as money-focused as my generation was. They don't have mortgages, many don't really have some debt weighing them down aside of college woes and, hey, if you don't have anyth
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Seattle downtown is dead. I see hotel rooms going for 100$ a night, that used to go for 300 to 400$ a night. Restaurant scene is dismal. City is threatening to raise taxes on the real estate these companies own.
So they are managing 3 days a week too stave off tax hikes by this mandate. Lots of businesses are going to leave Seattle. Lots of good developers are going to leave companies with mandate.
It's good if Amazon dies. It's a large tees stunting the growth of lots of others. Let it die.
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They want to do their job for pay. Only dinosaurs want them to do it in an office.
The dinosaur is the one that should be laid off.
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Usually the one with the money sets the rules, here it is the employer. If you don't like it work somewhere else.
The work from home crybabies come out in force for every one of these types of articles. It's like a mob at this point.
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If working from home is valuable to employees, then companies that allow it will be able to hire workers for less pay than can companies that require in-office work. Differences in productivity, if any, will be sorted on in the long term in the marketplace.If a company wants me to work in a noisy, unheated warehouse building at the end of a >1 hour commute, then there is a price for that. If they are willing to pay it, I'm happy. If not I can look for a job where the work conditions and pay do meet my requirements. If no such jobs exist, then I'm expecting more than the market can provide.
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The free market never fixes anything. Mainly because it doesn't exist, but also because if it did it would be (and has always proved to be, when attempted) a great way to create problems, in efficiency and civil unrest. Adam Smith was an upper-class twit who knew nothing about how the world works outside of his tiny circle of rich friends. And if you actually read his work, he wasn't even very clear on that, either.
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Are all the layoffs in tech just to scare everyone into going back to the office? To make people too scared of the axe to put up a fight?
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Get prepared and don't fear the axe.
A scene from The Gambler explains this very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJjKP8vYjpQ
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churn that they had an internal memo leaked [theguardian.com] saying they would run out of workers within 2 years - a year ago?
Bold added... Yea these are not corporate employees, but this was after their turnover started hitting 3% a week. I'm guessing it would get a lot more attention if those 30,000 people picketed.
American workers could learn a fuck of a lot from the French. [cnn.com]
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Without collective bargaining you don't stand a chance against a billionaire. You will do what you're told when you're told. And if you don't they will grind you in the pulp using the vast sums of money they have.
I have never understood what made people think that they can compete head-on with someone who has literally tens of thousands of dollars more wealth than them and ownership over what they need to make a living.
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