Comment on Amazon tech workers leaving for other jobs in response to return to office mandate

omarfw@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• Brewchin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  To add to what others have replied, Amazon have an institutional belief that everyone who makes it through the Loop is better than 50% of existing staff.

  It could be post-hoc rationalising of back-loaded share vesting, hire-to-fire, and their other many practices, but that’s the position. With that kind of thinking, it makes this behaviour, including it’s consequences, a no-brainer win:win to them.

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• blady_blah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This isn’t what they want to happen. They know it will happen, but this isn’t the goal or objective.

  Amazon is a big boy company, if they want to cut staff, they’ll cut staff. The problem with cutting staff this way, is that they don’t get to decide who they’re cutting. They don’t want to cut talented employees at random, they want to pick the low performers and let them go. This is kind of the opposite of that.

  The higher skilled the employee is, the more likely they are to have been hired remote, and to feel they can find another job also. That means they’re effectively shooting themselves in the foot and getting rid of some of their talented employees for the benefit of bringing people into the office.

  There has been a swing in the business opinion that work from home isn’t as efficient. This is basically the higher-ups falling in line with that opinion.

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  • 0x0@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    There has been a swing in the business opinion

    Depends on where you read that info, it tends to be 50/50 pro/against really.

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    • orclev@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yeah it’s 50/50 because the executives really don’t like it, but the actual data supports remote work being far more efficient. They’re working really hard to cook the books to make it look like the opposite to appease the execs but they can only do so much. Give them a few more years to cherry-pick data and bury inconvenient results and they’ll be back to the same bullshit that justified productivity destroying (but cheap) choices like hot desking and open plan offices.

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  • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think they do actually want to cut the high skilled talent. High skill means high pay, and now that they’ve achieved market dominance in pretty much every industry they’ve stuck their penis into they don’t need talent. Lower skilled, and therefore lower paid, employees can do just food enough to keep everything from burning down just long enough for the C-suite to get their bonuses and cash out. After that, who cares, they’re on to their next grift.

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• orclev@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Quality programmers are a finite resource. Amazon chewed through the entire unskilled labor market with their warehouses and then struggled to find employees to meet their labor needs. If they try the same stunt with skilled labor they’re in for a very rude awakening. They’ll be able to find people, but only for well above market rates. They’re highly likely to find in the long run it would have been much cheaper to hang onto the people they already had.

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  • jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Problem is for a company like Amazon, even if the brain drain will result in obviously inferior customer experience, it could take years before that happens and for it to be recognized and for the business results suffer for it. In the meantime, bigger margins and restricted stock matures and they can get their money now.

    Particularly with business clients, like AWS customers, it will take a huge amount of obvious screwups before those clients are willing to undertake the active effort of leaving.

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  • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Quality programmers

    Bold of you to think that’s what they want.

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    • Kalysta@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They may not want them, but with how many people are switching to things like AWS, they may find they need them.

      And it will ultimately cost them more to find new people when they realize that they’re pissing off their customers with their poor new hires.

      I will be happy to watch them squirm when they come to this realization. Karma is a bitch, Amazon.

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  • 0x0@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    in the long run

    That’s a foreign concept for management, they only see one quarter at a time.

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    • jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      No, they see further than that. Sometimes their restricted stock takes a whole year to be released!

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  • greenskye@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That’s the next executive’s problem. These executives will jump ship with their golden parachutes before any of that affects them.

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    • Jrockwar@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well then bring it on. If feels too big to fail, but if (hypothetically) Amazon were to go under, the world would be a better place.

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  • Sinuhe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    An awakening would mean they would analyze and understand the situation. They won’t. Amazon has and probably always had a bullish “my way or the highway” attitude - ask people what they think, pretend you care, then ignore everything they might say. Upper managers make decisions uniquely based off costs and short term vision, and are never held accountable for their consequences. I worked there for years and you really can’t imagine how bad the work culture is there, whatever you have in mine is worse in reality

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  • omarfw@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The whole problem with companies like Amazon is that hardly anyone in charge of them seems to care about long term sustainability. They all just invest enough effort to squeeze out some short term profits, earn their bonuses and then leave for another company to do it all again. Nobody is interested in sustainability because there is no incentive to. They’re playing hot potato with the collapse of the company.

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    • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They all just invest enough effort to squeeze out some short term profits, earn their bonuses and then leave for another company to do it all again.

      Amazon is not at all alone in this. Much of 2024 capitalism, at least within the tech space, works like this pretty much everywhere.

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      • omarfw@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        100%

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    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Now expand that to the entire planetary economy. Unsustainable short term gains is the entire industrial revolution.

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      • Wanderer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        There has been efficiency gains throughout. Capitalism is amazing for that, far better than other systems.

        The problem is too many people. If standard of living is to increase then the resource requirement is due to massive unsustainable population growth.

        That and the fact the public hate externalities and don’t want them used at all never mind aggressively.

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      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        We kicked “this quarter” thinking into high gear when Nixon permanently increased inflation.

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• eee@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  yeah, the only problem is that this results in the best talent leaving, you’re stuck with people who have nowhere else to go. it’s one of those short-term profits kinda things, which is why Wall St loves it so much.

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  • mrspaz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They have a name for it: Dead Sea Effect.

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    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Ooh, that’s good.

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• GBU_28@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  And they want people off the vesting ramp as early as possible.

  Amazon does 5-15-40-40

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  • jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’ve… never heard of such a vesting schedule. Doesn’t everyone else pretty much do 25%/year ?

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    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s precisely because their working standards are absolutely absurd and unsustainable, so a LOT of people bail before full vesting. AMZN HR intentionally structures the vesting schedule like this because they have numbers to prove it works out in the company’s favor.

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    • 1984@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Amazon is super stressful and I guess a lot of quit the first few years. Maybe the 40% is to motivate them to stay for more hellish years.

      I’m very happy not to work at Amazon.

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      • jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Oh I get whythey do it. I’m just surprised they can get away with it. Also they pay pretty damn well so I guess that helps.

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• TheFunkyMonk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I thought the same. Interesting strategy cutting the people who are good enough to get another job.

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  • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    As long as it looks good on paper, somebody in higher management is getting a bonus for this.

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