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.
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.”
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….
Yeah but that’s FUTURE you’s problem, not current you, so it’s totally fine!
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.
Yup! And anyone can cauterize a wound, so you don’t even need the extra expense of a hospital trip!
I’m sure the other leg can make up for it, and it should be grateful for the extra work.
Just sell the body to some other rube and move into a new one that still has both legs. It’s easy. What are you, poor?
This is true, and it’s weird because these same companies used to hire like crazy because only growth mattered. Finally real financial discipline is being applied. The tech company I work for is open about the fact that revenue-per-employee is something like half of FAANG companies and they want that to change.
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
Ok waste paper, mhmm, coffee, yep, microwave, good thinking—
FORM A UNION
Woah, woah calm down Satan.
This guy RTOs.
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.
All that stuff together is probably only one salary per team, except for the Union. I think the Union is the winning idea.
FORM A UNION
Ok Tyler Durden, that’s about the only reasonable proposal.
negative press
pretty fucked up that quiet firing via RTO bullshit is less negative press than just laying people off
It’s just less visible/explicit. It’s still bad press when it gets noticed and called out like in this thread, it’s just sneakier.
Probably. But this way you have no control on who quit, with a good probability that are the better ones.
True, but execs see statistics, not people. And maybe it’s cheaper to rehire the good ones with a higher salary than deal with severance packages.
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.
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.
Trust me, I don’t want to work here either, but having spent 6 months looking for a job and eating through my savings and knowing that I’m in no position to do that again anytime soon, I don’t exactly have many options. And yes, I’ve considered a union, but I also don’t want to end up unemployed again so I’m not going to be the one to champion that.
what the bootlicking shit is this?
Ok…that’s not bootlicking…that’s a legit plea for some poor fuck in the poorest of situations.
I’ve been in situations where I know I’m about to fuck my coworkers over and I let them know beforehand. Management can eat my dick however.
Bob, you might want to take a sick day on Wednesday…why?..just do it…here’s my linked in info.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully know that it’s bootlicking shit and I hate it… but I have a family to support, bills to pay, etc. It is soul crushing and someone purposefully picking the most painful time to walk out only hurts their coworkers, because even if you choose to take a sick day when they walk out, the next day you still have to go in and deal with the mess left behind.
damn your tongue must be strong af from all that bootlicking you do
You know what, fuck off. Who the fuck do you think you’re trying to impress? I know my fucking job sucks, I know the company I work for sucks and I know that almost everyone who works for this company is suffering. So what, fuck me for not wanting to make it worse on everyone else who isn’t in a position to just walk off the job? I wish I lived in your dream world where you never have to do things you don’t 100% agree with, it must be nice, but for me I’m living in this shit and I’m trying my best to take care of the people who count on me. So let me say, just to be clear: fuck you.
no, fuck you
It’s not stupid as you put it. If you know the laws of where you live, it makes perfect sense.
That only works in places with actual worker protection and labor laws, which disqualifies pretty much all of the USA.
I work with several European tech teams and when staffing issues happen the other devs absolutely have to carry the slack.
Indefinitely? Cause that’s how it usually goes this side of the pond.
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.
There are two ways to quit: How management wants you to or because you’re forming a union.
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.
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.
Yes, absolutely agree.
Most people would get fired for that.
Most these jobs aren’t the kind you clock in and out.
Continue starving the beast. It’s how these people treat the government.
Create the metrics that show RTO reduces productivity. It’s the only thing they even pretend to care about.
Engineering is a skilled trade. We need our own union like every other skilled labor group.
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.
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.
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.
“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
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.
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.
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.
Yup. We recently had a complaint that a collaborative meeting was difficult for people on call, so our solution was to make it 100% remote. The meeting is still collaborative, but now everyone has an equal opportunity to participate.
We do 2x in office, 3x WFH, and it’s the perfect ratio IMO. Value of in-person time:
- questions get answered quickly - easy to tell if someone is available for a quick question, and faster response than Slack
- in-person collaboration - screen sharing works, but actually being able to point and type has a ton of value
- casual discussions - chat about upcoming projects over lunch or a coffee break long before they’re actually important, which can make future meetings smoother
All of that can be done remotely, and we certainly do a fair amount of that, but it’s nice to have a little in-person time. That said, my WFH days are sacred because that’s when I actually get work done.
The worst meetings are the ones with people in a meeting room and people online. All in person or all dialled in (even if from an office desk).
Yep the 2 in 3 out is what we do. We do have one day where we all try to be in (Tuesday) to just get the face to face time. Seems to working for us. Plus since most of the conversations are on slack, I can go back and verify what I thought was said. That’s SO convenient.
We do TW in office, MThF WFH. I don’t see a point in coming in on different days, so if you have to miss Tuesday or Wednesday for some reason, you don’t have to make it up later. We occasionally have a company meeting on one of the other days, in which case we’ll often agree on which other day is optional (or we just come in 3 days that week).
And yeah, it is super nice.
These people aren’t interested in hearing dissenting opinions. I’m sure they’ve already heard arguments for it. They just don’t care. They’d rather cut costs by doing something many people won’t tolerate so that they leave and then figuring it out after the fact.
This line of reasoning is baffling anyway. Amazon is spread out over multiple geographical locations, it’s not like remote meeting will go away
Absolutely right. But the thing is that many so-called leaders will no longer have a raison d’être if there are no more unnecessary meetings and all that fuss. Many of them do nothing all day but sit in meetings, achieve nothing and still feel very important. That’s the misery of the world of work: it’s not usually the best who get into management positions, it’s not the most qualified and certainly not the ones who work the hardest. It’s the most unscrupulous, those who pass off the work of others as their own, people who would never achieve anything on their own or in a small company that can’t afford to waste salaries on froth-mongers. LinkedIn makes it clear how this all works, I think: there, too, it is not the competent people who really understand their work who have the most success, it is the busybodies, the networkers and narcissists. If the competent people set the tone, there would be no discussion about office duties in an IT company. It’s only held on to so that managers can live out their fantasies of omnipotence and post nonsense on LinkedIn.
They are going to regret this?
A company doesn’t remember, and the people who are actually responsible don’t have regrets cuz the other option was to hand over control to someone else (hopefully more qualified).
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”…
Ironically I’ve found it’s harder for people to run away in remote, people don’t disappear from their desks and you don’t have to chase them down. If they don’t message back and it’s urgent, you call and if they don’t pick up a call and haven’t marked themselves as such something’s up. People are extremely dilligent about making sure they use status’ due to the knowledge that people will assume that way.
An office is also a great place to hide away as “busy”; shuffling around, a bit of time at desk, join a meeting and say nothing, coffee, lunch, shuffling, another meeting with low contribution and you’re gone. Doing nothing is just as easy, and less assailable, in an office.
Almost as if there’s a reason that C-suite level people are so adamant about returning to office…
“Have you tried disagreeing on a call! It’s hard!”
When it’s an online meeting, they’re worried about it potentially being recorded. So what they’re really saying is that they can’t verbally abuse employees without there potentially being evidence of it.
That strikes me as a bit of a leap.
The CEO of Zoom explictily stated that he felt in zoom meetings people were being too “friendly” and not willing to have “debate”.
Why would it be bad for employees to be friendly? What employees want to have unfriendly debates in meetings? I think it’s just managers that want that. What kind of “debate” do managers want? Why do they not want meetings to be “friendly”? Methinks they just want to yell at employees and don’t feel comfortable doing it in zoom meetings for some reason…
But the leap you’re making is between a single statement from one CEO and the nebulous “they”.
I’ve been pretty close to billionaire CEOs in my career and certainly the ones I’ve come across have been well equipped to handle the job, well adjusted and well meaning.
Now you’re talking about CEOs as a nebulous they.
I’m talking about a CEO that said things similar to what an amazon exec said under an article about what that amazon exec said.
Also I work in software development. There has been a clear uptick in negativity towards developers where I work, which happens to be in a similar field to the one in the article.
I’ve also worked with AWS, and I can tell you for sure, they can’t afford to lose their best talent. Their system is pretty janky in many places and their boss should be putting more effort in making better software instead of playing games about forcing people to sit in a specific chair 5 days per week.
I said “the ones I’ve come across”. Thats as “leap free” as I can make that statement.
I agree re AWS; they’ve already got super disgruntled staff and they definitely cannot afford to lose good staff from this.
I mean that’s a relief. Could they not leave before?
Don’t worry. They will.
That’s the intention behind that back to work decision.
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.
Yep. The best people will leave first because they have options. It’s called the dead sea effect
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.
Don’t clog the toilets. It’s not the c-suites who have to clean that up.
Don’t clog the toilets. It’s not the c-suites who have to clean that up.
Nah, use cement, let the C-Staff pay for the plumbers/construction, they’d be more than happy to help out.
If you do, leave a tip with a note apologizing that they got caught in the crossfire.
The toilets should be being cleaned regularly anyway, if they’re not you’ve just highlighted a major sanitation issue for the building.
BuT nO OnE WaNtS tO WoRk AnYmOrE1
Yeah, when you’re having fun pissing off people, people are pissed off.
Who would have guessed?
You mean Amazon is bad to their workers?
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
Accept every phishing email
Put USB sticks found on the ground into your work computer
Open the door for strangers who want to get in the building without a badge
FORM A UNION
(nuclear option) introduce bedbugs to all your bosses offices
Found the guy from the heater + aquarium + massagepad + paper + coffee + toilet paper + soap + HVAC +sugar lobby!
It’s not much but I charge all my battery electronics at work and fill my water growlers too they have a pretty great filter here. I have a bunch of camping electronics. Couple flashlights/magnet lights, couple battery packs, portable rechargeable air pump. I’m thinking of getting one of those big Boi anker power bricks for when I travel.
Nice window behind him there. Good and high up.
Rich fucks are pushing for Russia, why not take the most Russian thing and put it to use. Good call.
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”.
The mentality that the future is always someone else’s problem is proving to be the biggest weakness of capitalism and our species.
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.
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 ?
Naw you just wait to get fired and then submit unemployment for the job changing past what was agreed with
although it’d be nice, that’s how you end up in prison.
never fuck with a rich assholes money.
