this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 220 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Well, yeah. Isn't the whole point of these foolish office mandates to get people to quit? That way they can reduce their workforce without the cost and negative press of another round of layoffs.

[–] [email protected] 83 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Layoffs are not bad press. Not to the shareholders, the only ones who matter to these types. I used to think "oh, layoffs mean the company isn't doing so good," but shareholders see "they reduced cost but lost no customers, thus increasing value of the company should it be sold."

[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I hate that that’s the case.

I’ve been trying to lose weight, so I chopped off my leg just below the knee. I’m several pounds down, and I didn’t have to stop eating even a calorie. It’s amazing.

The only issue is that now I don’t have a leg and exercise may be difficult….

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah but that's FUTURE you's problem, not current you, so it's totally fine!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And you’re still alive right? /s. Akin to the people who said Musk’s firing of twitter employees was a genius move because the site was “still running” after all that.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago

I'm sure the other leg can make up for it, and it should be grateful for the extra work.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

Go into the office and waste every resource you can.

Plug in a fan + heater + aquarium + massage pad at your desk and leave everything on constantly even when you leave

Print every email and throw it in the trash.

Make coffee 50x a day and pour it down the sink

Flush a whole roll of TP every hour

Leave sinks on in the bathroom

Use entire tubs of soap to wash your hands

Turn on the microwave for hours at a time

Heat/cool office thermometer to force HVAC into overdrive

Open new browser windows until your computer crashes and repeat until the network goes down

Company wide meme emails that everyone participates in (team building) that crash servers and dominate inboxes

Pour sugar/crumbs everywhere so there's pest problems

FORM A UNION

(nuclear option) introduce bedbugs to all your bosses offices

[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 weeks ago

Ok waste paper, mhmm, coffee, yep, microwave, good thinking—

FORM A UNION

Woah, woah calm down Satan.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago

This guy RTOs.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago

You forgot the most important one: deliver just enough to not get fired, but way less than you did before RTO. Then point to the stats and show the massive productivity drop after RTO.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

negative press

pretty fucked up that quiet firing via RTO bullshit is less negative press than just laying people off

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Probably. But this way you have no control on who quit, with a good probability that are the better ones.

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[–] [email protected] 109 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

Engineering is a skilled trade. We need our own union like every other skilled labor group.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 2 weeks ago (16 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't know about everyone else, but if that were my boss, they'd be severely underestimating my capacity for petty behavior.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (27 children)

I’m 47. I’m not a boomer (although I’m probably hella-old compared to most here) and I’d just like to say: What a bloody bunch of boomer-bosses.

“Have you tried disagreeing on a call! It’s hard!”

Grow up man, use the hand up feature and state your case. I work in a fully remote business and we have better meetings here than any office based meeting I’ve ever been in. Calendars are public, confluence is prevalent, slack is the lifeline (thankfully very little email) for everything; with a bunch of “banter”, hobby channels etc. We start every large meeting with a “one personal and one professional highlight” before we commence. I know the people here better than I’ve ever done my office based colleagues.

They are going to regret this. I do not know any developer who would prefer 5 days in the office. None. It’s not like Amazon’s compensation was that high. I really genuinely don’t understand how they expect to recruit.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think you might be surprised. There’s literally dozens of us gen-x’ers on here. (I’m 53).

Luckily I work for a university and the hybrid thing is still going strong. Honestly I tend to get more done when I’m at home because the social aspect of being at work is very distracting for someone with ADHD like me.

And I hope they do regret it. The only managers I’ve seen that push for the RTO thing are the micromanagers who think they are necessary for productivity. News flash, they aren’t. The best managers set expectations, shield their employees from the bullshit above them, give them the appropriate tools and work environments to be successful, and trust them to do what is necessary.

And yes I’d never work for a Google or an Amazon. You’re a cog, a disposable piece of machinery.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

They are going to regret this.

I really hope they do. But now is a good time to put the squeeze on devs. Lots of people are having a hard time finding a software job and they'll be extra reluctant to do a mass exodus.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I do know a few devs who prefer 5 days in the office. But they're absolutely the minority.

Personally, I try to go once a week, but I usually don't because I dread having a day with 50% my normal productivity.

It's just so noisy all the time in there. Open space and really high ceilings for "collaboration"...

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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".

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It’s the culmination of “next quarter is someone else’s problem”.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

If the cloud is so great why can't you work remote?

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 weeks ago

I forsee an Amazon brain drain about to happen.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 weeks ago

I mean that's a relief. Could they not leave before?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

So admitting that it's constructive dismissal?

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's the intention behind that back to work decision.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That's what I don't get though, these people seem to be delusional in that they think that they're a hard worker and looooove in person, so therefore every hard worker loves in person and the chaff will quit. Then they act shocked when their high performers largely leave to pursue remote or hybrid options. It's such a glaring inability to see people different from them as having any value.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

What if 37 000 employes leave amazon same day ?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I asked our CTO at a town hall if there were plans to improve the office my team got moved to because they moved us from the nice office to the city and the back to the previous area but a crappy office. Nope.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

or they could fuck up key services with delayed code breaks before leaving. Programmers working for amazon should consider adding bullshit in the software and saying it was chatgpt

Go into the office and clog all the toilets.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Don't clog the toilets. It's not the c-suites who have to clean that up.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This makes zero sense.. If you're a cloud company why can't employees be in the cloud

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

Because real-estate is physical money.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago

Another company that lays off it's talented people first, due to the meddling of a CEO where he has no business to.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Funniest to me in this kind of debate is having my N+1 manage us from across the country, having two team members in another town, and somehow, my ass being at home 15km from the office makes any difference at all to the daily life of the team? It doesn't. My actual manager, the dude giving us our marching orders, doesn't care. Shit, our N+1 doesn't care either, since he's almost always remote himself!

Only people I've seen actually care seem to be HR, for whatever reason.

I don't even get how any company with several sites has anything to stand on. Makes no fucking sense.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

BuT nO OnE WaNtS tO WoRk AnYmOrE1

Yeah, when you're having fun pissing off people, people are pissed off.

Who would have guessed?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

"Amazon employees says cloud boss can eat shit"

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