Business Insider reports that some Amazon employees have noticed an increasing number of colleagues are leaving the company over its strict return-to-office mandate.
Amazon’s strict return-to-office policy is pushing more employees into quitting::undefined
Amazon has always been hostile to it’s employees. The culture of “step up or fuck off” permeates the entire organization, from warehouses to executives.
They’ve even had meetings where they express worry over running out of a viable pool of people to hire from. Because they know they are abusive AF and working for them is miserable, so turnover is extremely high. At some point turnover could surpass a population’s ability to absorb it.
It’s economics, but with people as the commodity being valued.
Amazon currently has a wide labor pool to pull from, and so the value of any individual person is very low. As they saturate the market with people who are bitter and angry about working for Amazon, the pool will shrink, in this case, faster than the rate they lose people. There is a critical point where the growth of the “will never work for Amazon” pool of people will grow exponentially, and as they struggle to hire replacements, workplace conditions will improve. They will not improve before that moment, however.
Because Amazon doesn’t see people as people. They see people as a resource to extract value from.
This isn’t a problem unique to Amazon, everyone reading this can probably name at least one company they’ve worked for that did something similar, but Amazon is an outlier for how aggressively they’ve embraced that idea.
This is a problem endemic to capitalism, as Amazon succeeds, more companies will be forced to adopt those practices on order to compete. Reducing the options people have to avoid Amazon like conditions, and lowering the bar for acceptable workplace culture.
The only defense we have against this is to unionize. Aggressively. The current push should look like nothing more than a warning shot.
If you can organize your workplace and get 75% of the employees in the union, you can write your own check. At a word, 75% of the workforce walking out absolutely cripples any employer. They know that, they don’t want the union because they don’t want you to have any power in the relationship. It’s your life, and they want the keys to it. Take the keys back.
This is a problem inherent to capitalism. It only seeks to raise capital and will exploit every resource to do so. As soon as a resource is no longer useful, it is discarded.
True, yes, I think so, too. Though I have heard working for AWS is brutal for a white collar job. Obviously not as bad as being a driver or warehouse person.
I work with it enough as a customer to know how astonishingly broad and deep all the various AWS products and services are. You’d think they’d treat those employees better than they do. That platform is way ahead of the competition.
I worked in support for 3 and a half years and the best part of the job was the people I worked with. Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met.
But they all had the same complaints, incorrect metric measuring, making the workplace hostile by creating a system that pitts people against each other, making what was once a collaborative workspace into a competitive one.
They didn’t use the stick until you were shown to not be able to catch the carrot, and every few months they moved that carrot forward a few inches, making sure you had to work 4x as hard to meet your metrics.
My friends say that over the last 5 years it’s become a shit place to work.
Just go to youtube and lookup videos of programmer youtubers. Everything revolves around “FAANG”. Facebook, Amazon, Air-bnb, netflix and google. They would drown a puppy to be able to work at these places. I don’t get it as it honestly seems very boring and stressful to me.
Edit: just curious why people are downvoting me. I cant honestly see where i was wrong. A lot of programmers i see would love to work for these corporations. Some purely make videos about preparing for interviews for these specific companies. Or is it because i said it seemed boring?
They probably think they are, big companies rarely actually appreciate the work their tech guys do once all the fancy toys are in maintenance rather than development
Modern business is not exactly known for making smart long term choices, they see it as a way to easily trim the payroll to make this quarter’s books look better without thinking about what it’s going to do to future quarters.
I’ve been seeing companies left and right shooting themselves in the foot in the same way, it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out
People are staying because the job market is currently cold, especially in tech right now. Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc are all on a hiring freeze or at least a very slow hiring rate.
However, you better bet that for the 3 days required by me, I’m only going into the office for only 2-4 hours. Showing up around 11/12 and leaving around 2/3. I’ll actually be able to work after I get home.
Is the implication here that only untalented people would ever put up with working in an office?
I know it’s not a commonly heard notion around these parts, but unlikely as it may seem, some people genuinely don’t mind working in an office. Some even prefer it. Has nothing to do with talent, everything to do with preference and the level of compensation they get for doing it.
Also don’t discount the 40-50 crowd with kids still in high school age. I know someone extremely smart for our org who likes in person. I don’t know if it’s a break from the family, seeing different faces, being used to the way things were in the past, or the fact they’re in a slightly more isolated role now.
I say all this to say there are probably some who want the office culture but we (our team) tries to ensure we have a social event once a month where we all “clock out” a couple hours early and go hang out. They are also not trying to push everyone to go back to the office and respects most people do enjoy WFH. Just trying to give another perspective on some people who enjoy the office (not me though, fucking love pooping in my own toilet and using lunch to do what I want).
Is the implication here that only untalented people would ever put up with working in an office?
Not directly. The Dead Sea Effect says “those who can find an acceptable new job the fastest will leave first”. That usually means the super-stars and more-talented, but the residue behind all that evaporation isn’t all salt. Some people, even the most employable, will stick around, while their benefit/cost/risk/tolerance kind of equation still allows it.
For some people, RTO doesn’t hit their cost and tolerance all that hard. The more unsuitable a person’s home environment is for work and how easy their commute is, that’ll greatly affect forced RTO acceptance and the Dead Sea Effect.
I disagree with the layoff angle. Know who’s quitting? The talent that can find another WFH job. Know who’s staying?
OTOH, maybe Amazon’s big enough to survive the brain drain.
Amazon has always been hostile to it’s employees. The culture of “step up or fuck off” permeates the entire organization, from warehouses to executives.
They’ve even had meetings where they express worry over running out of a viable pool of people to hire from. Because they know they are abusive AF and working for them is miserable, so turnover is extremely high. At some point turnover could surpass a population’s ability to absorb it.
And then the problem will correct itself.
It’s economics, but with people as the commodity being valued.
Amazon currently has a wide labor pool to pull from, and so the value of any individual person is very low. As they saturate the market with people who are bitter and angry about working for Amazon, the pool will shrink, in this case, faster than the rate they lose people. There is a critical point where the growth of the “will never work for Amazon” pool of people will grow exponentially, and as they struggle to hire replacements, workplace conditions will improve. They will not improve before that moment, however.
Because Amazon doesn’t see people as people. They see people as a resource to extract value from.
This isn’t a problem unique to Amazon, everyone reading this can probably name at least one company they’ve worked for that did something similar, but Amazon is an outlier for how aggressively they’ve embraced that idea.
This is a problem endemic to capitalism, as Amazon succeeds, more companies will be forced to adopt those practices on order to compete. Reducing the options people have to avoid Amazon like conditions, and lowering the bar for acceptable workplace culture.
The only defense we have against this is to unionize. Aggressively. The current push should look like nothing more than a warning shot.
If you can organize your workplace and get 75% of the employees in the union, you can write your own check. At a word, 75% of the workforce walking out absolutely cripples any employer. They know that, they don’t want the union because they don’t want you to have any power in the relationship. It’s your life, and they want the keys to it. Take the keys back.
Agree with everything you said. They will also aggressively replace human workers with robots, AI, etc.
These technologies should make life better for working people, but in general I fear they will not. They’ll just concentrate the wealth even faster.
This is a problem inherent to capitalism. It only seeks to raise capital and will exploit every resource to do so. As soon as a resource is no longer useful, it is discarded.
Not just Google.
We’ve had “Human Resource” departments for decades.
Preach it!
That’s mainly for their blue collar jobs afaik
True, yes, I think so, too. Though I have heard working for AWS is brutal for a white collar job. Obviously not as bad as being a driver or warehouse person.
Working for AWS is definitely not for everyone. It’s pretty rough but generally you’re treated better than Amazon retail.
I work with it enough as a customer to know how astonishingly broad and deep all the various AWS products and services are. You’d think they’d treat those employees better than they do. That platform is way ahead of the competition.
I worked in support for 3 and a half years and the best part of the job was the people I worked with. Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. But they all had the same complaints, incorrect metric measuring, making the workplace hostile by creating a system that pitts people against each other, making what was once a collaborative workspace into a competitive one. They didn’t use the stick until you were shown to not be able to catch the carrot, and every few months they moved that carrot forward a few inches, making sure you had to work 4x as hard to meet your metrics.
My friends say that over the last 5 years it’s become a shit place to work.
We can only hope
Just go to youtube and lookup videos of programmer youtubers. Everything revolves around “FAANG”. Facebook, Amazon, Air-bnb, netflix and google. They would drown a puppy to be able to work at these places. I don’t get it as it honestly seems very boring and stressful to me.
Edit: just curious why people are downvoting me. I cant honestly see where i was wrong. A lot of programmers i see would love to work for these corporations. Some purely make videos about preparing for interviews for these specific companies. Or is it because i said it seemed boring?
AirBnB? Don’t you mean Apple?
Oh its apple? How the hell did i forget about apple… 🤦🏻
They probably think they are, big companies rarely actually appreciate the work their tech guys do once all the fancy toys are in maintenance rather than development
This is known as The Dead Sea Effect.
Modern business is not exactly known for making smart long term choices, they see it as a way to easily trim the payroll to make this quarter’s books look better without thinking about what it’s going to do to future quarters.
I’ve been seeing companies left and right shooting themselves in the foot in the same way, it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out
People are staying because the job market is currently cold, especially in tech right now. Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc are all on a hiring freeze or at least a very slow hiring rate.
However, you better bet that for the 3 days required by me, I’m only going into the office for only 2-4 hours. Showing up around 11/12 and leaving around 2/3. I’ll actually be able to work after I get home.
That’s kinda how I roll currently. Going to office is mainly to bullsh and chat with the peeps about current events and video games.
I can’t get shit done at the office. Way too much distraction
Is the implication here that only untalented people would ever put up with working in an office?
I know it’s not a commonly heard notion around these parts, but unlikely as it may seem, some people genuinely don’t mind working in an office. Some even prefer it. Has nothing to do with talent, everything to do with preference and the level of compensation they get for doing it.
Usually they are the people that don’t have hard skills and/or love to hear themselves talk. They’re the people that make me love WFH.
Also don’t discount the 40-50 crowd with kids still in high school age. I know someone extremely smart for our org who likes in person. I don’t know if it’s a break from the family, seeing different faces, being used to the way things were in the past, or the fact they’re in a slightly more isolated role now.
I say all this to say there are probably some who want the office culture but we (our team) tries to ensure we have a social event once a month where we all “clock out” a couple hours early and go hang out. They are also not trying to push everyone to go back to the office and respects most people do enjoy WFH. Just trying to give another perspective on some people who enjoy the office (not me though, fucking love pooping in my own toilet and using lunch to do what I want).
I’ve met literally 1 guy in my career of 25 years who was both really fucking good and liked being in the office.
They’re out there…they’re just very rare. But if you listen to the C level propaganda everyone misses in office work…and that’s simply not true.
Your perspective is correct. I just hate humoring it because a bunch of PMs and middle managers (useless bodies) pile on it.
Talented people have more bargaining power. The implication is that nobody wants to work in the office, but some people do it because they have to.
Yes?
If you don’t have the skills or experience to sell yourself then obviously you don’t have a lot of options.
Not directly. The Dead Sea Effect says “those who can find an acceptable new job the fastest will leave first”. That usually means the super-stars and more-talented, but the residue behind all that evaporation isn’t all salt. Some people, even the most employable, will stick around, while their benefit/cost/risk/tolerance kind of equation still allows it.
For some people, RTO doesn’t hit their cost and tolerance all that hard. The more unsuitable a person’s home environment is for work and how easy their commute is, that’ll greatly affect forced RTO acceptance and the Dead Sea Effect.