Historically, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc were very office-centric. Their in-office perks were pretty much legendary and they always tried to instill the company culture built around being together in an office space. They invested heavily in real estate for this very reason. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that they are pushing for full attendance back in the office. They will gradually go back to a 5-days a week in the office, mark my words.
For smaller companies, this is great news. And not just this Amazon news, but the whole push of the bigger companies to force people back to the office. We were not able to fully compete with Amazon, Google or Facebook on salaries, but now we are in the position to offer attractive flexibility options (i.e. 100% remote) to people who value their time and work-life balance more than money. Engineers' salaries are very high already, and not everybody needs the absolute high-end salaries offered by these huge companies. I believe this might help spur more innovation and create attractive workplaces outside of the FAANG companies, as some of the very best talent will now have viable reasons to work for smaller companies and help them grow.
It's really horrible for people who joined Amazon last year, believing that they will be able to work remotely forever. Let this be a cautionary tale to everybody who decides to work for FAANG in the future.
When did Amazon have office perks? Afaik the intention was always to have the worst possible office experience in the name of frugality, thus the door desk
Corporate mythmaking extols the cheap desks Bezos et al would construct out of sawhorses and reclaimed doors. IIRC -- or at least, as I was told -- they actually tried to mass-produce "door desks" when they first moved into their new offices, but the price was, somewhat ironically, exorbitantly more than buying something from Hermann Miller. (See also the windows that opened to reduce A/C costs, which also increased facilities costs.)
> Corporate mythmaking extols the cheap desks Bezos et al would construct out of sawhorses and reclaimed doors
I did a 'virtual internship' at Amazon during COVID, and the mythmaking is just as strong of a koolaid at any Muskcorp... these billionaires are the height of hypocrisy (Elon Jet, and Bezo's Yacht contradict thier talking points) but make it a priority that thier underlings must accept as gospel and makie it a talking point in the ethos of what makes these companies what they are.
The traditional Amazon desks are typically a piece of wood cheaply fastened to four legs. Think less ornate wood desk and more something a beginner might do as a one day diy project to get into woodworking.
It is especially horrible for new Amazon employee because of their tiered stock vests. You might have left your great job because Amazon offered you half million signing bonus but you won't last long enough to get even 30% of that.
That's not how Amazon's comp works. The sign-on bonus is prorated over the first two years to fill in the "gap" before hitting the normal RSU vesting cadence. Someone hired one year ago leaving today would "only" vest 5% of their RSUs, but they would have received ~35% of their initial RSU value in cash over the last 12 months. Someone hitting their second anniversary would "only" vest another 15% of their RSUs, but they would have received another ~25% of their initial RSU value in cash over the last 12 months.
I don't think wanting your employees and teams back in office is necessarily unreasonable, but the public back and forth on this is bad. People might have made long term decisions with huge financial consequences based on your statements. It's definitely not in line with one of the company's core leadership principle of "Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer."
In my 30 years of vacuous corporate principles that were clearly not followed or cared about by management or the employees, that has to be a new high bar.
Which is hilarious given that Amazon tries to "raise the bar" in every hire, although in practice of course that means they keep making the interview process more abusive and degrading in the usual one-upmanship cycle that is hazing.
Wow, you're right, it was instituted in July 2021. In that time three of my friends have fled Amazon and told me nothing but nightmares about it.
I applaud Amazon for fervently raising the bar on at least one aspect of their business: completely morally bankrupt "corporate principles". I anticipate continued success in this arena in the future.
> believing that they will be able to work remotely forever.
A lot of people turned the pandemic into what they wanted it to be. Some people wanted movie theaters to die, some people wanted to wear masks forever, some people wanted to believe in a conspiracy that they'd be forced to wear masks forever, and some people wanted to never have to work in an office again.
But the pandemic was always going to be a temporary situation, and should have been treated as such, no matter how much people wanted it to become their pet transformation of society.
> Historically, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc were very office-centric.
What's ironic about this, is that when I worked at Google in Mountain View about ten years ago, easily 80-90% of my meetings were via video conference. Even folks who worked on the same campus preferred to book a conference room and dial in, rather than walk or bike over to another building. Not to mention my colleagues in Zurich, Dublin, etc. (SRE teams at Google are split across timezones, to make on-call less painful.)
The office has become a real hot potato. The crux of it is that demand is down and staying there, and cities, companies and individuals are all winners or losers, but the losers can try to lose less by passing the cost on to someone else.
And big tech has the cash to absorb the blow of forcing everyone back to the office, but it marks them permanently as a dinosaur firm, a place where there used to be A-rank people but they all left for somewhere more flexible.
In the previous era it was hard to avoid pursuing a high capitalization play - either building or merging into a more consolidated firm - because the low interest rates meant that if you didn't do it, someone else would borrow up to do it and weaponize that against the little guys. And real estate was part of that, it was an added-value benefit to build out a bespoke campus with a huge parking lot and to bus in your employees. This is more of a "tide's going out, see who is swimming naked" environment where marginal cost structure dominates and you can opt to have only a small office in a downtown core and get the fire-sale prices and the benefits of public infrastructure, or just go all remote.
Facebook/Google had ALLEGEDLY good office space. For google I think it was just good food.
Otherwise, let's look at the nitty gritty:
OPEN FLOOR PLAN: absolutely sucks. It's amazing that people are nostalgic for cube farms over floor plans, cube farms were a massive downgrade from actual offices. Basically, take mass distraction from people around you coupled with a paranoia that you can't do anything non-work related (and remember, the vast amount of office jobs are busywork per recent HN stories) without fear of it being seen and judged.
CATTLE-LIKE BATHROOMS: People never talk about this. You know what I REALLY like about WFH? Taking a shit on my own toilet. Taking a shit next to someone else sucks. If you are a remorseless public bathroom shitter, I take my hat off to you, but I think it sucks. I'll do it if I have to, but still. But I don't like cleaning up the toilet seat from some other asshole who left it in terrible shape, or figuring out if the neighboring shitter had curry for dinner last night.
FOOD: The food you have at home will probably beat any Google food options practically speaking. Might not be good for the waistline. For your typical corporate cafeteria, I'll take my fridge. Oh yes, I have my own massive personal fridge at home. I mean, I have a fucking kitchen, with all the spices/cooking pans/etc. No one stealing your food and all that sociopathy. Ok, maybe Google has a leg up on this, or at least they did at one point.
PARKING: The commute thing is obvious. But if you live in a northern climate with a serious winter, parking is the worst part of going to the office. These companies make GIGANTIC office buildings, but don't build underground or heated parking. Instead, concrete slabs and have people trudge through zero degree weather, and get in their cars both ways. It makes commuting 3x worse. If I WFH, guess what? Don't even deal with that. I have a garage.
I mean, an office isn't torture, obviously. But if businesses can't figure out how to at least make them a bit more appealing after what amounts to decades of steady degradation in the experience (I watched my mom at Bell Labs go from her own office, to an office with several people, to a cube farm, and I went from various flavors of cube farm (your own cube with high walls to cube shared with 2-4 people with high walls, to the low wall cube, to "open floor plan") then those investments will turn into writeoffs.
And of course other things died along the way: corporate fitness centers, lockers, office supplies, ability to print, etc.
Honestly the commute trumps all of this for me. Sure open office is a pain but whatever I’ll make it work. Can pack a lunch if necessary, and shit at home.
Two hours one way? I’m not sure I can do it. Could I at least be located in the office closest to my house? No, that won’t be possible, how could you possibly communicate with your team. Just a giant middle finger.
> Historically, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc were very office-centric.
Their in-office perks were pretty much legendary and they always tried to instill the company culture built around being together in an office space.
The in office perks of Amazon are legendary? Free bananas and lukewarm coffee is more insulting than nothing. It's like tipping a waitress two dimes.
I don’t know if my experience was far outside the norm but I don’t really think of legendary office perks from Amazon. We had free drip coffee (not espresso) from Starbucks and that was it.
"During the meeting, which is known in internal Amazon lingo as a “fishbowl” meeting, Jassy declined to share data that motivated his decision to require employees to return to the office. The CEO told his charges it was a “judgment” call."
Typical executive hubris; engineers can’t wipe their ass unless they spend 6 months gathering data on which TP to use, but an exec wants to upend thousands of employees‘ lives? No data necessary, of course!
Alternatively, there is data, but he doesn't want to cite it, as it would reveal the actual, underlying reason for the decision, and he doesn't want to admit to it.
I totally can’t get why he (Jassy) and these other CEOs can’t just level with people and say “we need to keep our tax breaks and we’ve invested a lot in corp real-estate. We need you to come back.” People would be upset and rightfully so, but more upset than the myriad excuses they make up for this? We’d at least appreciate the honesty.
And if they truly were striving to be the world’s best employer they might actually pay for your parking or give a RTO bonus.
I suspect a big part of the decision is the investment Amazon made in the real estate. It's also possible they have some favorable tax deals with the cities they operate in, given how much money their employees spend at local businesses near their offices.
Remember the craziness that ensued a few years ago when they announced that they are going to choose a city to build their second HQ based on tax and other incentives they would receive from the local governments? They would not be able to generate such a frenzy if their workforce was allowed to work remotely.
They are basically stuck with the office culture at this point.
A friend of mine lives about 25 minutes from a very large Amazon office via public transport, but he is being told to relocate to the other side of the country. Other members of his team are being assigned to different offices, so this will end up being an in-person remote job (if he sticks around - not likely).
I don't know why you're being down voted, it's a fair enough question.
Most people overrate their abilities and are expendable -- I suspect Amazon also sees this as a convenient way of getting rid of people who no longer hustle and enjoy the lifestyle of WFH.
> If your definition of hustle is stack ranking I look forward to carrying the industry when you burn out and get out.
I keep trying to bide my time, but all the industries outside of tech I could rely on have been absolutely wrecked by COVID. Remote first companies get 500+ applicants per role and you're lucky if you ever get more than an automated application acceptance these days.
I'm seriously going to pivot to Cyber Security in the hopes that I don't have to deal with office politics, or tech bros with deluded aspirations of C-level rank trying to grind their way to the top of middle management (at best) at this phase of my career (former boot strapping founder that's over and seen enough of disarray the VC and hype machines cause) that lets me just save by not living and commuting in a high CoL area anymore.
I still think I have one more startup in me (one day) so burning out for a corp is not how I want to go out in order to in the right cultural fit in some PM's eyes.
> Cybersecurity IC here. We have all of that, and more.
Damn... as an IC are you forced into the machinations on a daily basis or can you actively avoid it by choosing to work remotely even if TC is lower than otherwise could be?
I'm pursuing an AI and ML degree and given where we were 6 months ago I have to be honest with myself and fully admit it feels way more smoke and mirrors driven by hype than anything I have ever experienced even in the early days in Bitcoin (which is saying a lot after ~13 years). And unlike in Bitcoin where we have a liaise fare attitude and selective contribution and forks are a thing to be encouraged, most corps do not see value in what made it what it is today, thus take a very dim light on just 'opting out' of things like office politics as means to get ahead and grind/hustle culture.
Get the work done, have excellent communication skills (planning, reliability, accountability), and finding good remote/TC work shouldn't be much of an issue (even in this climate).
The personal computer was a fad. The internet was a fad. Bitcoin was a fad. AI is a fad. Its going to take more than 6 months to materialize. Hang in there.
BEWARE. Cybersec is often 90% sitting in meetings and 10% filling out boilerplate excel sheets for control assessments and stressful project management (dealing directly with the megalomaniac VP/SVPs in your company).
The ‘cool’ Cybersec roles like red/blue teaming are much more rare than what I mentioned above, and firewall/splunk stuff is often offloaded to Network teams, especially in this economy where companies are trimming fat and consolidating roles.
I say this as someone who went to Cybersec and left because I’m a technical guy who enjoys sitting at a terminal and building things, learning new tools, sifting through FOSS docs, etc.
Cybersec teams are often filled with people who major in things like Economics and History because the only skill needed for those roles is a good vocabulary, project management, and 6-8 months of entry level technical skills/certs.
Yes, I AM bitter, but I’m damn sure not lying. Avoid any compliance focused Cybersec job if you actually have technical skills that are worth a damn.
To all the people who were hoodwinked into taking this type of job like I was: Its not too late to get out. I did. You can too.
Surely there has to be a job somewhere were you can do Kevin Mitnick-sque stuff and have to get paid in bitcoins in some back alley transaction behind Defcon. :)
I've seen so many $10's of thousands wasted on pentests which are just nmap/nessus scans wrapped up into a nice PDF. I wish there was more in-depth stuff going on.
It's undeniable that the CEO would realize the outcome for such employee churn. But is it really true that this is a desired outcome from said CEO, and is done for the benefit of the company?
Employee churn, esp. of the type that replaces long tenured employees with new ones, are often productivity destroying. Good employees that have in-depth knowledge and high capability is worth their weight in gold, and yet they are the most likely to be able to leave under such a churning condition. Losing those sorts of employees are a loss which may not show up in metrics in the short term, but surely it will affect how productive the company will be in the long term.
> During the meeting, which is known in internal Amazon lingo as a “fishbowl” meeting, Jassy declined to share data that motivated his decision to require employees to return to the office.
And here I thought I didn't need to tap the sign anymore. Here's another link on the chain [0]
I think the conceptual theory of the do nothing Management is bubbling up here.
Maybe not the CEO, but office management and head count, office politics and derivative work likely makes a large portion of day to day work. Without an office, there's probably a lot of useless management.
Maybe they're like oil to the engine of business or, like blinker fluid.
Bravo to the folks sticking to their guns and not giving into this. I wish I can but I'm in a single breadwinner and not in a financial position to do so.
53 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadFor smaller companies, this is great news. And not just this Amazon news, but the whole push of the bigger companies to force people back to the office. We were not able to fully compete with Amazon, Google or Facebook on salaries, but now we are in the position to offer attractive flexibility options (i.e. 100% remote) to people who value their time and work-life balance more than money. Engineers' salaries are very high already, and not everybody needs the absolute high-end salaries offered by these huge companies. I believe this might help spur more innovation and create attractive workplaces outside of the FAANG companies, as some of the very best talent will now have viable reasons to work for smaller companies and help them grow.
It's really horrible for people who joined Amazon last year, believing that they will be able to work remotely forever. Let this be a cautionary tale to everybody who decides to work for FAANG in the future.
I wouldn't call it the worst possible office experience.
I did a 'virtual internship' at Amazon during COVID, and the mythmaking is just as strong of a koolaid at any Muskcorp... these billionaires are the height of hypocrisy (Elon Jet, and Bezo's Yacht contradict thier talking points) but make it a priority that thier underlings must accept as gospel and makie it a talking point in the ethos of what makes these companies what they are.
Google and Facebook's in office perks were legendary. Amazon's in office perk was free bananas. This is a meme on Blind.
>So it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that they are pushing for full attendance back in the office.
Yeah except for the part where the CEO has publicly flip flopped on this issue several times in the past few years:
Late 2021 - "We're going to let individual teams decide": https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/amazon-offering-t...
September 2022 (less than a year ago) - "I don't really believe that we're going to end up coming back to the office" https://www.cnet.com/tech/amazon-has-no-plan-requiring-worke...
I don't think wanting your employees and teams back in office is necessarily unreasonable, but the public back and forth on this is bad. People might have made long term decisions with huge financial consequences based on your statements. It's definitely not in line with one of the company's core leadership principle of "Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer."
In my 30 years of vacuous corporate principles that were clearly not followed or cared about by management or the employees, that has to be a new high bar.
Which is hilarious given that Amazon tries to "raise the bar" in every hire, although in practice of course that means they keep making the interview process more abusive and degrading in the usual one-upmanship cycle that is hazing.
Wow, you're right, it was instituted in July 2021. In that time three of my friends have fled Amazon and told me nothing but nightmares about it.
I applaud Amazon for fervently raising the bar on at least one aspect of their business: completely morally bankrupt "corporate principles". I anticipate continued success in this arena in the future.
https://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-employees-biggest-compl...
with a lower price if you purchase a reserved instance
A lot of people turned the pandemic into what they wanted it to be. Some people wanted movie theaters to die, some people wanted to wear masks forever, some people wanted to believe in a conspiracy that they'd be forced to wear masks forever, and some people wanted to never have to work in an office again.
But the pandemic was always going to be a temporary situation, and should have been treated as such, no matter how much people wanted it to become their pet transformation of society.
they are allowed to use this pandemic as a trigger for transformation. Some of the transformation, such as WFH being an accepted trait, is a good one.
Just like how the black plague transformed society in the past, the pandemic is doing so too - just with more deliberate focus.
What's ironic about this, is that when I worked at Google in Mountain View about ten years ago, easily 80-90% of my meetings were via video conference. Even folks who worked on the same campus preferred to book a conference room and dial in, rather than walk or bike over to another building. Not to mention my colleagues in Zurich, Dublin, etc. (SRE teams at Google are split across timezones, to make on-call less painful.)
And big tech has the cash to absorb the blow of forcing everyone back to the office, but it marks them permanently as a dinosaur firm, a place where there used to be A-rank people but they all left for somewhere more flexible.
In the previous era it was hard to avoid pursuing a high capitalization play - either building or merging into a more consolidated firm - because the low interest rates meant that if you didn't do it, someone else would borrow up to do it and weaponize that against the little guys. And real estate was part of that, it was an added-value benefit to build out a bespoke campus with a huge parking lot and to bus in your employees. This is more of a "tide's going out, see who is swimming naked" environment where marginal cost structure dominates and you can opt to have only a small office in a downtown core and get the fire-sale prices and the benefits of public infrastructure, or just go all remote.
Otherwise, let's look at the nitty gritty:
OPEN FLOOR PLAN: absolutely sucks. It's amazing that people are nostalgic for cube farms over floor plans, cube farms were a massive downgrade from actual offices. Basically, take mass distraction from people around you coupled with a paranoia that you can't do anything non-work related (and remember, the vast amount of office jobs are busywork per recent HN stories) without fear of it being seen and judged.
CATTLE-LIKE BATHROOMS: People never talk about this. You know what I REALLY like about WFH? Taking a shit on my own toilet. Taking a shit next to someone else sucks. If you are a remorseless public bathroom shitter, I take my hat off to you, but I think it sucks. I'll do it if I have to, but still. But I don't like cleaning up the toilet seat from some other asshole who left it in terrible shape, or figuring out if the neighboring shitter had curry for dinner last night.
FOOD: The food you have at home will probably beat any Google food options practically speaking. Might not be good for the waistline. For your typical corporate cafeteria, I'll take my fridge. Oh yes, I have my own massive personal fridge at home. I mean, I have a fucking kitchen, with all the spices/cooking pans/etc. No one stealing your food and all that sociopathy. Ok, maybe Google has a leg up on this, or at least they did at one point.
PARKING: The commute thing is obvious. But if you live in a northern climate with a serious winter, parking is the worst part of going to the office. These companies make GIGANTIC office buildings, but don't build underground or heated parking. Instead, concrete slabs and have people trudge through zero degree weather, and get in their cars both ways. It makes commuting 3x worse. If I WFH, guess what? Don't even deal with that. I have a garage.
I mean, an office isn't torture, obviously. But if businesses can't figure out how to at least make them a bit more appealing after what amounts to decades of steady degradation in the experience (I watched my mom at Bell Labs go from her own office, to an office with several people, to a cube farm, and I went from various flavors of cube farm (your own cube with high walls to cube shared with 2-4 people with high walls, to the low wall cube, to "open floor plan") then those investments will turn into writeoffs.
And of course other things died along the way: corporate fitness centers, lockers, office supplies, ability to print, etc.
Two hours one way? I’m not sure I can do it. Could I at least be located in the office closest to my house? No, that won’t be possible, how could you possibly communicate with your team. Just a giant middle finger.
The in office perks of Amazon are legendary? Free bananas and lukewarm coffee is more insulting than nothing. It's like tipping a waitress two dimes.
And if they truly were striving to be the world’s best employer they might actually pay for your parking or give a RTO bonus.
Remember the craziness that ensued a few years ago when they announced that they are going to choose a city to build their second HQ based on tax and other incentives they would receive from the local governments? They would not be able to generate such a frenzy if their workforce was allowed to work remotely.
They are basically stuck with the office culture at this point.
Regardless, Amazon has always been a relatively hostile workplace. Their philosophy towards engineers is to churn and burn them.
I’ll never work in office again unless I need to work with machines or hardware I don’t have access to at home.
Most people overrate their abilities and are expendable -- I suspect Amazon also sees this as a convenient way of getting rid of people who no longer hustle and enjoy the lifestyle of WFH.
I keep trying to bide my time, but all the industries outside of tech I could rely on have been absolutely wrecked by COVID. Remote first companies get 500+ applicants per role and you're lucky if you ever get more than an automated application acceptance these days.
I'm seriously going to pivot to Cyber Security in the hopes that I don't have to deal with office politics, or tech bros with deluded aspirations of C-level rank trying to grind their way to the top of middle management (at best) at this phase of my career (former boot strapping founder that's over and seen enough of disarray the VC and hype machines cause) that lets me just save by not living and commuting in a high CoL area anymore.
I still think I have one more startup in me (one day) so burning out for a corp is not how I want to go out in order to in the right cultural fit in some PM's eyes.
Damn... as an IC are you forced into the machinations on a daily basis or can you actively avoid it by choosing to work remotely even if TC is lower than otherwise could be?
I'm pursuing an AI and ML degree and given where we were 6 months ago I have to be honest with myself and fully admit it feels way more smoke and mirrors driven by hype than anything I have ever experienced even in the early days in Bitcoin (which is saying a lot after ~13 years). And unlike in Bitcoin where we have a liaise fare attitude and selective contribution and forks are a thing to be encouraged, most corps do not see value in what made it what it is today, thus take a very dim light on just 'opting out' of things like office politics as means to get ahead and grind/hustle culture.
The personal computer was a fad. The internet was a fad. Bitcoin was a fad. AI is a fad. Its going to take more than 6 months to materialize. Hang in there.
The ‘cool’ Cybersec roles like red/blue teaming are much more rare than what I mentioned above, and firewall/splunk stuff is often offloaded to Network teams, especially in this economy where companies are trimming fat and consolidating roles.
I say this as someone who went to Cybersec and left because I’m a technical guy who enjoys sitting at a terminal and building things, learning new tools, sifting through FOSS docs, etc.
Cybersec teams are often filled with people who major in things like Economics and History because the only skill needed for those roles is a good vocabulary, project management, and 6-8 months of entry level technical skills/certs.
Yes, I AM bitter, but I’m damn sure not lying. Avoid any compliance focused Cybersec job if you actually have technical skills that are worth a damn.
To all the people who were hoodwinked into taking this type of job like I was: Its not too late to get out. I did. You can too.
I've seen so many $10's of thousands wasted on pentests which are just nmap/nessus scans wrapped up into a nice PDF. I wish there was more in-depth stuff going on.
Employee churn, esp. of the type that replaces long tenured employees with new ones, are often productivity destroying. Good employees that have in-depth knowledge and high capability is worth their weight in gold, and yet they are the most likely to be able to leave under such a churning condition. Losing those sorts of employees are a loss which may not show up in metrics in the short term, but surely it will affect how productive the company will be in the long term.
But churn and burn is Amazon's philosophy. That's why they ask managers to PIP 6% of their reports every year.
And here I thought I didn't need to tap the sign anymore. Here's another link on the chain [0]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36434455
Maybe not the CEO, but office management and head count, office politics and derivative work likely makes a large portion of day to day work. Without an office, there's probably a lot of useless management.
Maybe they're like oil to the engine of business or, like blinker fluid.