Engineering is a skilled trade. We need our own union like every other skilled labor group.
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.
BuT nO OnE WaNtS tO WoRk AnYmOrE1
Yeah, when you’re having fun pissing off people, people are pissed off.
Who would have guessed?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This line of reasoning is baffling anyway. Amazon is spread out over multiple geographical locations, it’s not like remote meeting will go away
For this kind of thing to stop, people need to get real. We need someone to take it for the team and crowbar this guy’s knees.
Words don’t have meaning to these people. Logic, Reasoning is beyond comprehension.
Aren’t we at a point finally where maybe after so much debating, arguing, compromising and negotiating that has fallen through that maybe a lick of violence is the answer?
I can tell you if we took a crowbar to at least 10 Executives, throw 5 CEOs out from the highest windows and entrap 20 middle managing power-tripping pricks. I’m sure this would be a huge U-Turn for these people.
Why commute to work when you can just become a terrorist and spend all your time in prison?
Well I guess in your world view, it’s okay for them to steal everything out from you both physically and mentally even if it’s illegal. But to do anything back, then it’s just unfair. Pffft…
You say that but that’s literally how we got all the ‘good’ stuff we enjoy as employees now, in the US at least. Guys wbacj then literally went to war against the bosses and physically forced them to the metaphorical table.
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.
I mean that’s a relief. Could they not leave before?
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.
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.
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
All that stuff together is probably only one salary per team, except for the Union. I think the Union is the winning idea.
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.
Ok waste paper, mhmm, coffee, yep, microwave, good thinking—
FORM A UNION
Woah, woah calm down Satan.
This guy RTOs.
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….
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?
I’m sure the other leg can make up for it, and it should be grateful for the extra work.
negative press
pretty fucked up that quiet firing via RTO bullshit is less negative press than just laying people off
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.
There are many at-will states that can fire you on demand (if done carefully) and there’s nothing you can do about it.
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.
That only works in places with actual worker protection and labor laws, which disqualifies pretty much all of the USA.
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.
Create the metrics that show RTO reduces productivity. It’s the only thing they even pretend to care about.
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.
Continue starving the beast. It’s how these people treat the government.
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!
Shocker.
