2y ago

Amazon starting to track and penalize workers who work from home too much

www.theguardian.com Amazon starting to track and penalize workers who work from home too much

Notice sent to employees who were not in office at least three times a week, after other tech firms’ efforts to get workers back on site

Some staff members were alerted on Wednesday they were “not currently meeting our expectation of joining your colleagues in the office at least three days a week”, according to emails shared with the Financial Times. The emails were also discussed on the anonymous corporate message board platform Blind.

27 comments

People have been hailing WFH after COVID as a lasting change. But it has always been clear that non fundamentally remote companies will never accept this as a permanent solution.
Hybrid is a really bad in between, the advantages seem marginal (more flexible remote days, less needed office space) to the disadvantages (people will still be mostly remote in meetings, commute times still a factor, work environments need to be duplicated between home and office).
- The real reason they want everyone back in the office.
  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/commercial-real-estate-crisis-empty-offices/674310/
  
  Maybe for a small number of companies in a small number of industries, but most companies rent their office premises, even large companies.
  I've worked at several multinational companies that sold their HQ buildings when they recognised that building management was not a core competence for them and tying up capital in real estate has a significant opportunity cost for them.
  It's no skin off their noses if commercial real estate plummets in value - if anything, it would be in their favour as their rent would decrease.
- To me, the biggest positive about remote work is that you don't have to live in a crazy expensive location. That advantage is mostly gone with hybrid where you still have to come in every week.
  Also, companies benefit from having employees in less expensive locales having lower salaries but still being able to pay more than what the employee would otherwise make in that location. Good way to retain talent.
  
  Im to chicken to move to a cheaper location but remote work is still massively valuable to me.
- environments need to be duplicated between home and office
  My work started """recommending""" that we come in 3 days a week. Not required, just recommended. They expect us to just carry all of our stuff back and forth between work and home every day. We don't have permanent desks. They are shared by design. We need to reserve them from a web page.
  My team has been largely ignoring their """recommendation""" but I know it's only a matter of time before it's a requirement.
  
  I come into the office three days a week (as required for me), but I have a dedicated office. Next year, we’re moving to a much smaller space that will require most of us to reserve a spot from the app. Color me not excited.
  
  Ours switched to attesting in the hr system. You don’t do your 3 days? That’s a paddlin’
- Amazon will discover what the rest of the market discovered, that unless they’re paying a big premium, employees will just go somewhere else. This is the real reason the VC types have been wishcasting a recession: with an unemployment rate that starts with “3” companies don’t have as much leverage as they’d like
  
  Sounds like we're due for a bipartisan bill to solve this by bailing out the in-person companies with money from the remote companies.
- Hybrid works, but you need to make sure that all relevant people are there to make it work. That usually means everyone in a department has to be in on a certain day and that people who interact with other departments are also in on certain days.
  You have to maximize face time to make hybrid work.
  
  @HobbitFoot @alcasa
  full agree, I'm in a hybrid role right now where the customers I serve are remote to my building and my boss and tech leads are full-time remote. So what's the point of my commute
- Hybrid can be made to work is your managers are on board. Where I work we do one or two days in the office a week depending on your circumstances, then once a month we all meet up for a team meeting and that counts as one of your days that week. Works a treat.
- As much as I enjoy working hybrid remote, it is not helping the business in the long run. My coworkers complain that there is less accountability and collaboration. Some can’t do their job properly because team members do not show up. There is no mentoring happening as these individuals pick and choose their days and sometimes don’t come in.
  Hybrid is a bad in between for us and it is showing.
  Now I see my coworkers starting to quit and switching to jobs that demand their employees in every day. Money is one reason but also they miss feeling part of a team which is important in my industry. My position isn’t team based so I’m fine either way and do feel better going in a few days a week so I’m not outcasted!
  I feel my company is the last one in the industry with 3 day a week in the office structure. Not to sure what will change but I do know for a fact more coworkers will be leaving. 😢

- But how can he reach maximum productivity if he's sitting down ?!

Why would all employers make such a big deal of WFH? If I were them I'd let anyone work at home as long as they do their jobs properly I don't care
- Its probably not even about productivity at this point but asserting control. People might start getting dangerous ideas like unions if they arent properly suppressed.
  
  Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Give that man a cigar!
  Control plus the ones who own the office space really, really need to make sure it's being used or it looks bad on the quarterly finances.
  Also, I have to admit there is validity to the benefits of in-person social interaction on certain aspects of productivity when teams are involved.
- I’ve had a few jobs, all at smaller businesses and I am getting convinced employers are often of the same type of people. Very convinced of themselves, extroverted, believing everyone else isn’t giving their best, jealous of their employees time, wanting to create some kind of “team spirit” or loyalty to their business…. Employees not sitting in the office go against everything these people want.

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary Some staff members were alerted on Wednesday they were “not currently meeting our expectation of joining your colleagues in the office at least three days a week”, according to emails shared with the Financial Times.
Some employees reported receiving the email by mistake and were encouraged to clarify their attendance with human resources.
As of May 2022, 48% of tech workers said they were working fully remotely, up from 22% before the onset of the pandemic, according to a study from Morning Consult.
The trend has marked a major shift from the heyday of Silicon Valley, during which tech giants like Google, Meta and Apple spent billions to build massive campuses equipped with perks like catered food, laundry facilities and exercise centers to keep employees on the premises as much as possible.
Workers rights groups say pushing employees back to the office against their will stands only to strengthen the growing labor movement in the tech space.
Hospitalizations due to Covid-19 are up 12.5% in the past week and deaths up 10%, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. :::
- good bot

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