If the cloud is so great why can’t you work remote?
Do not give Bezos ideas about uploading brains to the cloud. He would make AWS CloudEmployee, an employee-as-a-service product that lets you scale your business up or down, without expensive layoffs and bad PR.
“Amazon employees says cloud boss can eat shit”
Why quit when you could get paid to sabotage the company from inside and maybe get a swipe at performing a bezonian head removal ?
although it’d be nice, that’s how you end up in prison.
never fuck with a rich assholes money.
Naw you just wait to get fired and then submit unemployment for the job changing past what was agreed with
You mean Amazon is bad to their workers?
Yet another thinly veiled stealth lay-off by a technology company. Amazon’s cloud boss Matt “The Prat” Garman will indeed see some departures, as intended and desired. However, that first wave will be of their most talented, who feel confident they will land on their feet elsewhere, leaving those that simply cannot leave (yet) or those that will cozily under perform. When Amazon applies the inevitable followup reductions (subjectively based on their internal review process) to remove the latter, and the former buckle under the load or also leave, Amazon will be left with lower-middle talent at best.
The more I see of business “strategy” among this layer of “leadership”, the more I’m convinced it is just a game of Jenga with talent, resources, infrastructure, security, quality, etc; pulling out as many pieces as possible in the drive for short term/sighted gains until a company collapses under its own dysfunctional “efficiency” and “success”.
It’s the culmination of “next quarter is someone else’s problem”.
This is absolutely it. The C-suite and senior management are made up of sharp people. They absolutely know this will trigger an exodus and a large bag of fire-able workers. They don’t care that they’re likely to lose a bunch of talented, hardworking staff. Its all been accounted for. At worst the results of a mass exodus will only impact their bottom line in a few years. They just need this years numbers to look good and line to go up.
Can the Amazon prime boss leave instead?
Another company that lays off it’s talented people first, due to the meddling of a CEO where he has no business to.
I forsee an Amazon brain drain about to happen.
This makes zero sense… If you’re a cloud company why can’t employees be in the cloud
Because real-estate is physical money.
But that’s something I don’t actually understand, since real estate would fall under the sunk cost fallacy. Ie, if you’ve invested in real estate, the cost is spent already, right? Whether someone comes in that building is irrelevant. The costs spent to maintain, heat, clean, power the buildings, on the other hand… It’s just not really obvious to me. Seems like fewer people would cost cheaper, no?
If you’re using that real estate as collateral for loans, it needs to maintain its value, or you’ll have to put up more collateral
as a client this this tells me they aren’t all that confident in their product
Them fixating on nerd asses in seats wasn’t creepy enough to sway you yet?
No they purport to sell cloud services, but require their cloud employees to be onsite.
What if 37 000 employes leave amazon same day ?
Hopefully, they would start a rival company. That would be fascinating to see.
What if 37,000 employees sign union cards same day?
Watch Amazon sue them or something lmao
Engineering is a skilled trade. We need our own union like every other skilled labor group.
I agree. I’m in pre-sales working at an AWS partner and honestly our whole team is treated as dispensable.
I have been laid off from every job (5 in total) since the pandemic. We are a subhuman commodity. Companies that are hiring now are exploiting the market by offering lower salaries.
Meta and Amazon are in their hiring season and they’ll start their layoffs again next spring or summer. And somehow, everyone forgets this fucked up cycle keeps happening in perpetuum.
We need to stop being afraid of mentioning the U word. We need better protection and rights as employees.
At Amazon literally every employee is dispensable. They have a firing quota.
Edit: to be clear I’m talking about the Amazon divisions outside the warehouse. They make managers fire a certain percentage of people on a regular basis.
And they are smart enough to put us at the very bottom of the management ladder, even though we’re not actually management. That way we can’t legally unionize. In the U.S. at least.
That way we can’t legally unionize. In the U.S. at least.
This must vary state-by-state, or have exceptions, because I could name examples of them (but I would rather not dox myself).
It’s not every company, but that is what mine did. We’re “management” but we don’t manage anyone.
Given how “business-friendly” the US has become, I imagine there are all sorts of loopholes that only work in favor of the corporation.
There doesn’t need to be loopholes anymore. The SC will just blatantly rule in favor of companies.
In case anyone has missed it, they’re done with loopholes, done with being sly and coy. They are saying the quiet parts, they are marching proudly, they are confident and unafraid. We need to make them afraid again.
The right wing and its corporate masters are done hiding in shadow. Loopholes and subterfuge are for chumps when you can just change the rules without consequence.
Classifying employees as management without having actual management duties is a violation of federal labor law. You might be owed back wages/overtime. Could be worth looking into. A class action lawsuit against a previous employer I had led to hundreds of employees getting checks for thousands of dollars, even after lawyers took their fee.
Some technical jobs can be legally classified exempt from overtime. That is different than being classified as management.
“Skilled labor” is such a bullshit concept
There are jobs that take weeks to learn, jobs that take years to learn, and there are even jobs that take a decade+ to learn. You ain’t putting the three-week old newbie in the latter two roles.
That’s true, but it devalues other labor which can be similarly/more difficult or skilled. I skimmed this article, but it seems to convey what I mean:
https://www.shrm.org/executive-network/insights/reshaping-narrative-time-retire-term-unskilled-laborI understand what people mean when they say “skilled labor” and I don’t think it’s intended negatively normally fwiw
Depending on your country, that is the norm. Engineers here have at least 2 national unions to choose from, finance have a couple of unions, same with teachers, admin staff, etc. etc.
As usual, this is probably just US being victim of 'merican exceptionlism.
Why don’t they just keep working from home and get fired? Instead of having to quit themselves?
It’s the US, they get fired on a whim…
Getting fired with cause doesn’t come with severance and looks bad on a resume.
Getting fired with cause doesn’t come with severance
Yea this is fucked and needs to be fixed.
You don’t put that you were fired on your resume though…
HR departments aren’t that lazy…
No, but it’s illegal for them to do much of anything except confirm employment periods.
Sort of like how it is illegal for companies to fire or mistreat workers for trying to unionize?
The uncomfortable truth is that our laws protect the rich (including their companies), but rarely bind them and bind workers, but rarely protect us.
Constructive dismissal says what?
Never quit in these situations, or they win.
Do the absolute fucking minimum you can, or even less so you piss off management, until they have to fire you, which they can’t outright as after a certain number of years they have to give warnings and trainings first.
which they can’t outright as after a certain number of years they have to give warnings and trainings first.
I mean, says who? There’s currently only one state in the union that requires cause before you can fire someone. The real issue with firing people is that without a documented cause, that person can collect state unemployment, and the number of people who go on state unemployment from a single company has a financial impact on that company.
There are many at-will states that can fire you on demand (if done carefully) and there’s nothing you can do about it.
That only works in places with actual worker protection and labor laws, which disqualifies pretty much all of the USA.
There are two ways to quit: How management wants you to or because you’re forming a union.
That’s stupid. Don’t get fired for cause, that only hurts you. Spend your time looking for a new job, then quit and leave ASAP.
Split the difference, spend as much of your time on the clock job hunting and doing the bare minimum. Then quit without notice mid shift for the new job.
I work for a real shitty company with a lot of people who do things just to justify their jobs. This leads to stupid mistakes happening that can cause MASSIVE disruptions for the entire workforce. One such stupid mistake happened this week and caused my team (and several others) a shitload of unnecessary work. Yesterday a guy on my team who works in an already understaffed office had enough and told me that he’s done, and quitting. I can’t blame him, he is in a very shitty situation and I wouldn’t have stayed as long as he has… but if he walked out it would have put that entire location, the rest of our team both locally and extended, in a much worse situation. What it wouldn’t do is hurt the company or the executives.
I’m all for people finding better jobs and leaving toxic environments, but it really does no one any good to pick the absolute worst time to walk out. That’s petty and will burn a lot of bridges, and depending on your situation and industry could come back to haunt you down the road.
if he walked out it would have put that entire location, the rest of our team both locally and extended, in a much worse situation. What it wouldn’t do is hurt the company or the executives.
That’s not your problem, that’s the company’s problem. You still get paid the same. If you have issues, take them to your supervisor, and go on with your life.
Unfortunately that’s not how it works.
Boss turns around and says “new responsibilies. Get after them.” You’re especially fucked if the work is the type of tasks you are already responsible for.
Sure, you can say no, or slow play it, but that just means you’ll either get a shitty review or get fired.
I’m not justifying this, I’m recounting what often happens.
Downvotes are hilarious. Doesn’t matter if you line it, it’s how it happens around the world.
The downvotes are because you’re the kind of rug your boss cleans his boots on, making it worse for everybody in the company. You’re the problem employee.
Nope, just aware how the real world works.
When this happens my response is to go find another job
No where in my comment did I say I felt it was a good thing, or acceptable. It’s just common. You assumed I am cool with it cause it fits your worldview
Edit Tell me: you think you’re just going to say “no, I’m not gonna take on new or increased tasks” , and come out successfully at the end of the year? (In review, raise, or continued employment?)
The only move is to leave or do the work
Except I don’t still get paid the same. Someone walked out last year and put the whole team in a tailspin and the rest of the team paid for it when review time came around and since we missed so many deadlines due to staffing issues no one got any sort of substantial raise. And missing your once-a-year raise doesn’t just impact your pay for that year, it impacts it for every year going forward.
I’m not sure I’d want to work somewhere that penalizes me for someone else’s faults.
Have you considered finding a union to bring to your workplace?
So… most workplaces? Most companies have department wide goals and metrics that don’t change just because half of a department walks. Even in good workplaces, hiring to “right size” a team takes time, and most of the time the work still needs to be done, and there’s only so far management can stretch until it starts impacting external customers.
It sucks terribly. It’s not fair. Life isn’t.
So admitting that it’s constructive dismissal?
They don’t have decent worker rights in the US so this shit means nothing.
You’re not wrong. Best case would be finding a labor-friendly judge and that would likely get appealed to the USSC, comprised of conservatives and neoliberals, would almost inevitably rule that labor protections only apply to those whose net with is in the top 5%.
At the all-hands meeting, Garman said he’s been speaking with employees and “nine out of 10 people are actually quite excited by this change.”
Just imagine the conversation between the CEO of AWS and some random employee.
„What do you think about the return-to-office policy I propose, Cog #18574?“ „Great idea Mr. Garman sir, really smart move from your team. Incredible thinking and leadership from you Mr. Garman.“
continues to tell people that 9/10 employees he talks to are excited to return to office.
The other 1/10 gets fired for not being a team player.
He has to be straight up lying. There’s no way 9/10 are excited to be ordered back into the office. If that were the case, they’d have been in the office already.
That’s a very good point that I’ve never really thought of. It’s not like anybody was keeping them from going back into the office. If they wanted five days a week, they would already have been there five days a week.
If 9/10 were already voluntarily coming into the office every day, I could see it. Of course it would only be 9/10 of the people he bothered to speak to it about, and maybe he only spoke to people that were already there.
As to why they would care if they were already there, well one guy in my team goes in every day of his own accord. He applies pressure to everyone on my team to be there with him every day, in spite of the stated WFH policy. So everyone but me goes in every day because I’m the only one that is willing to disappoint him. I’m reasonably certain that guy would love a forced into the office every day mandate, to force me to be there too. Then he could stop making passive aggressive comments about how people who didn’t come in must not care about the work as much as they should at every opportunity.
9 out of the 10 he talked to are brown nosers and tell him what he wants to hear.
Unless they were preselected micromanagers who like to bully their employees.
Nobody I’ve EVER talked to wants 5 days in the office anymore. 2-3 tops. Even 3 levels above me don’t.
The “anonymous” survey asked this question with two choices: I agree or I’m looking for opportunities elsewhere
I don’t know about everyone else, but if that were my boss, they’d be severely underestimating my capacity for petty behavior.
This is the part not being reported in the news.
Many of us are simply working half as much as we did when we were remote. It’s not worth trying to impress these people. They hate us.
Create the metrics that show RTO reduces productivity. It’s the only thing they even pretend to care about.
Continue starving the beast. It’s how these people treat the government.
I don’t work for Amazon, but when my employer announced mandatory RTO I simply included travel time in my day. At home I could do 8 hours of pure work. RTO days were about 6 hours of work and 2 hours of commute.
Most people would get fired for that.
Most these jobs aren’t the kind you clock in and out.
Yes, absolutely agree.
