The policy is as much aimed at pragmatic people managers as it is as actual staff. Your boss might be fully aware that they would struggle to replace you and will be quite happy with you working from home so cuts and off books deal as this stops your manager from suffering reduced output for their team while they struggle to replace you.
I have personally been in this situation for the last two decades, I have worked from home pretty much full time across multiple, separate companies. One place I worked post lock down even used the staff who didn’t mind being the office to improve the team average to benefit those who did.
A company wide policy like this will make it hard for the manager to cut such a deal, particularly if Amazon get petty over checking IP addresses and swipe card usage.
Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The whole reason that it works is because the company can’t afford to lose everyone who’s not complying.
But promotion blocking seems like a weak move. If returning to office is enough of a workplace issue to be a deal breaker, threatening people with not taking extra responsibilities or challenges seems like a losing proposition. They’re already willing to lose their job over the issue, and you’ve shown that you can’t lose them, so now you’re gonna make it shittier to remain at the company?
And even besides the perspective that promotions are a benefit, many roles are in place for the company’s sake, to stay organised, are they now gonna not fill those? Or only fill them with external applicants?
Or is the idea to only promote the compliant ones? That would make some sense, at least.
JDubbleu@programming.dev 10 months ago
I work at AWS (won’t after this Friday since I got a remote job), and while I’m pretty low on the totem pole, internally it is very clear what is going on. Leadership is slowly phasing out non-proximate workers. Why? No one knows really, but our best guess is unofficial layoffs and upholding commercial real estate.
It started with RTO 3 days a week for everyone except remote employees in May. Then in September basically all remote employees were forced to relocate to their team hub. This was as much of a shit show as you think. You were given 30 days to decide and 60 days to move. What people did was “decide” on the last day to move, and then drag their feet for the next 60. Then quit without notice as soon as they had another job lined up. Don’t get me wrong the market is rough, but 90 days is enough to find a job if you have halfway decent connections and AWS on your resume. By now my team already lost half of our devs (3/6).
More recently, in waves, they’re forcing people to relocate to team hubs. I’m from the west coast but my team is in Colorado and the second I caught wind of this I grinded my ass off and got another job. When I told my manager he was very understanding but frustrated at the situation. My two teammates were even more frustrated, and one of them is on the west coast too. My team could be one person soon.
Didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant, but Amazon is nuking teams left and right like this and it will catch up to them. As a whole things are breaking more often in AWS systems than usual, and our service is starting to show cracks. Our reliability is down hard because we had a collective 35 years of knowledge leave our org. Amost all of whom were the team expert.
Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah, Amazon has a pretty long track record of burning through employees at all levels. From the outside it looks like it’s very much to their detriment, but I guess they feel differently since they still do it.
Sorry it’s happening to you though. Hope you find a less sociopathic employer!
thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Ohh, so for many employees, it’s not “return to office” at all-- It’s a euphemism for “start going to the office,” which you didn’t have to do before, because your position was remote? That’s actually much worse, wow-- Especially if you’d have to relocate.
Or I guess maybe it’s more like they expect you not to relocate, through the “unofficial layoffs” lens.
That really sucks. I guess it also has some explanatory power for why they are taking these odd half-measures and tolerating non-compliance-- There are people who don’t even live near an office.
Really sorry that’s happening. I hope you find a company that keeps its promises.
xkforce@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Loyalty and obedience prized over competence once again