5 day RTO is a stealth layoff. This is a feature, not a bug.
Amazon tech workers leaving for other jobs in response to return to office mandate
Submitted 1 month ago by reddig33@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://fortune.com/2024/09/29/amazon-employees-angry-andy-jassy-rto-mandate/
Comments
OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 1 month ago
jonne@infosec.pub 1 month ago
It’s like reverse stack ranking. They’ll be left with the people that couldn’t find another job.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
and the people who know exactly how to waste time in an office.
Snapz@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A.k.a. Twitter and the elon filtering moment
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Brain drain is the perfect way to end monopolies.
DrDickHandler@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This is false.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yep this has been the modus operandi for businesses who want to reduce workforce without having to pay for layoffs.
Stupidmanager@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Like many companies, they overhired in the last 4 years. Some of these people are due years of severance (my offer listed 2months for every year after 1 year), not to mention the vested stocks and other bonuses granted during this insane hot hire period.
So how do you remove people not loyal to the company? The most hated mandate ever. Amazon is a company that doesn’t need people in the office. This is nothing more than screwing people over.
foofy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No rank and file US-based employees at Amazon are getting years of severance. They don’t do that.
aaron@lemm.ee 1 month ago
So they’re not paying severance to employees they fire?
Scribbd@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Quiet firing, if you will.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
If Amazon don’t think that remote work is productive, then they don’t think they’re losing anything. I don’t even know how “stealth” this is at all. They must believe that those individuals could be productive, because they are trying to keep them working in office. I’m not sure why anyone thinks a company like Amazon would try to be “stealth” about a layoff anyway. They don’t need to.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You don’t have to fund severance if people leave on their own.
zbyte64@awful.systems 1 month ago
So they don’t have to pay severance or other state penalties for doing an actual layoff. They aren’t thinking of talent with this move.
Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
I am pretty sure working from home has proven to be more productive, so I think other factors are at play here. I worry that returning to the office might be the only way to keep the capitalists from trying to send our jobs over to poorer nations. If the tapeworms think the job needs to be done face to face then it is much hardet to send those jobs to India or S. America.
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Amazing.
They order people to work in different offices than before, far away from before, or in offices that did not even exist before. They order people to work in offices who have only worked at home before.
And they call it “return”, and everybody seems to accept the audacity.
Nobody laughs out loud into their faces and calls them the dirty liars that they are.
1984@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Because people who suck their tits need their milk.
sleepmode@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yeah this attrition is expected by Amazon. IBM and others did this earlier. If enough people choose to RTO they will do “real” layoffs and get a pat on the back in the news for not letting as many people go as they would have had to before. Optics I guess. IIRC this is the second round for Amazon.
Some are saying companies are doing this to keep their property values up but I think that’s only one facet. What I don’t see being called out often is companies doing this are hiring replacements overseas in tax havens and/or where they can pay less for talent. Real kicker is, those hires wind up being remote anyway to the anchor offices.
pseudonym@monyet.cc 1 month ago
We should refer to this instead as Go To Faraway Office
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Now this is a good point. During the time of remote work, everything became organized around it. In fact my employer just closed the local office I belong to, because everyone is remote and it just isn’t getting used. If they suddenly decided on RTO and asked me to work at an office 60 miles away that would not be a “return” nor practical in any way. I’m sure Amazon know this but are just saying “oh well,” because really they can’t do kick to solve it. It’s going to be a painful transition but I guess they’ve decided they are ready.
GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Just as planned - Amazon Execs who aren’t planning to rehire them anyway.
They do this shit to cull you.
Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
It’s sort of a strange approach, because this will leave you with the workers who can’t find employment elsewhere.
chakan2@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Exactly…they won’t be picky about raises or working conditions.
exanime@lemmy.world 1 month ago
By the time that negative effect kicks in, the execs already cashed in their bonuses and are on their way out of the sinking ship
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Executives do not see workers as people with skillsets. They’re numbers on a spreadsheet. And having ten highly paid workers quit “voluntarily” makes the numbers do good things.
Actually, they’re not even numbers on a spreadsheet. They’re data points in a graph. Executives don’t have time to understand numbers, let alone people.
DrDickHandler@lemmy.world 1 month ago
People exaggerate this claim. Amazon already accounted for some talent leaving and the benefits obviously outweighs the con. There is nothing strange.
paddirn@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That was probably the intent. It works as a soft layoff. Do something wildly unpopular, knowing that a bunch of employees will quit. The ones left will pick up the slack, because obviously if they had anywhere else to go they would’ve left with the first group.
jewbacca117@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Seems like a great way to lose all your talented employees
Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Unfortunately a dollar in cut costs is more valuable than employee talent these days.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 month ago
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Which is why everyone who thinks they’re clever to call this a “soft layoff” is not as clever as they think. Amazon isn’t shy about doing layoffs and dismissing low performers. An unpopular decision like this will frequently eject the most capable employees because they are the ones who can most easily find other work. Meanwhile the dead weight employees stick around because they know they can’t find other arrangements as good.
No, I think we take Amazon at their word on this one. They are not just fucking around to try to shake 20% of their workforce loose. They genuinely don’t want to do remote anymore.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Why do you think a company like them would do a soft layoff, instead of just picking the low performers they think they should lay off and just dismissing them? What do they gain by leaving it up to chance and the decisions of employees? It could be a lot more disruptive that way, with no control over who leaves or when. If you’re going to say it’s all to save a buck by not paying severance, I’m not convinced that the lack of control and having to deal with the random effects is remotely worth it.
paddirn@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve worked for companies that would leave it up to chance without a second thought. I’ve known people that worked there and Amazon doesn’t seem like it cares about its employees. Does it make sense? No, but there’s alot about corporate America that’s pretty dumb.
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
If it’s anything like my work and their RTO a few things.
- hR is well aware of attrition rates and I bet they’re through the roof
- Any new hires are probably not the best or brightest they could expect to hire
So expect quality at Amazon to decline. It may not be outwardly visible but mark my words for those that are still there it will devolve into a chaotic shit show of overworked employees that are left backfilling work for those who left and the incompetence that came in.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
expect quality at Amazon to decline.
They’ll have to dig a new basement for it to get any lower.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I canceled my Prime membership earlier this year because of that decline in quality. I wish everyone could, but thanks to the loss of retail throughout the country many can’t afford not to have it.
RaoulDook@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Prime is not a money saver. It’s a money waster that tricks you into buying more stuff just because “the shipping is free” but you can often get free shipping without Prime or Amazon. Just wait until you need enough stuff to meet the store’s free shipping threshold to make an order.
curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
I have a feeling the big impact is going to be in other services, namely AWS. Makes me wonder if some new global outages are coming, which are always fun to deal with.
aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Yeah. The rise of a monopoly until it starts to enshitify is interesting to watch eh? Reminds me of Walmart in the physical space. All the local options got pushed out and everyone’s quality was forced to drop due to their economic strong arming.
phoneymouse@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I really do wonder if Amazon will run out of people willing to work for them someday. Their approach assumes there is an infinite supply of workers to burn through. Given everything I’ve witnessed from the company, I’d never work there. Do they at some point poison the labor pool against them?
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 month ago
We’re constantly producing new people that don’t know any better
EnderMB@lemmy.world 1 month ago
When I joined Amazon, I was told that for some roles in the US Amazon received more applications than corporate employees worldwide - so I assume 1M+.
That number has probably reduced significantly, given we’ve now had two rounds of RTO. I know some recruiters are really struggling to find external candidates to join, and rightly so, but I don’t doubt that Amazon can find someone to fill these roles, or can find someone outside of North America or Europe to take that role.
The FAANG acronym was the worst thing to happen to tech, because people will flock to Amazon to say “I worked for FAANG”. Prestige is a powerful thing to some, and they’ll deal with some insane shit for the clout that comes from being here.
(FWIW, I’ve been at Amazon as a software engineer for close to four years now, and I’ve noticed zero improvement in opportunities afforded to me)
daddy32@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You could also think this applies to all corporations in some degree. But no, there’s a fresh batch of bright eyed optimistic people out of school every year.
Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I saw an article a year or two back that talked about this very thing. It was actually management people at Amazon saying that they predicted they would be “out of employees” before the end of this decade.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I never understood why anyone works for them at all. And I’m not even talking about warehouse workers. I’m talking about the tech staff. Amazon is known as a cutthroat workplace that drives people like a hammer drives nails. I would never choose to go there.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I know some tech workers who really want to return to office full time along with everyone else. They miss the old way. It’s not everyone, and it’s definitely not me, but it’s a legitimate position. I guess now they know where they can go.
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I honestly don’t see an issue with the people going back to the office because they want to work from there. I just want others to stop trying to force me to do the same.
This sort of thing seems to have always been a plague with a set of the extroverted sort. They seem to feel the whole world should for whatever reason cater to what makes them happy and us introverted types that do not like the social activities that they do should should be made to enjoy it. For our own good.
The older I get the less patience I have for those sorts of games. Which could become an issue for me professionally I suppose.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I know some people like this too.
To be fair, a nontrivial number of them are middle/upper management, but it’s not the entirety of the people I know who want this.
The answer isn’t work-from-home, nor is it return-to-office. The answer is: give people a choice.
If you want to work from home, cool, we don’t need to maintain your cubicle, and/or, we can hire more people without needing more office space. If you want to return to office, cool, your space is waiting for you.
A few will retain the ability to switch back and forth, but the majority of people I’ve talked to about it, either want office or home exclusively. Very few want hybrid.
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Hey I can relate. I miss the office too. I was far more productive there and the cooperation and mental space was better there too. But this is a new world we live in, and if you want me to drive to an office, you had better be ready to pay me a fair salary for it.
Oh, you won’t? Guess I’ll go elsewhere.
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
I love going to the office. I started renting a place nearby to do just that.
But I don’t want my coworkers to be forced to show up. That’s silly.
ccunix@lemmy.world 1 month ago
My company announced RTO the same day Amazon did. The Union is up in arms, but honestly the powers that be are handling it pretty well. My boss is happily going to the office for a couple of days a week. She’s a million miles from enforcing it on us though. Exceptions are already in place for people like me (3 hour TGV ride from the nearest office) and even a few people who just said “I really don’t want to”.
I’m sure a few people will leave and not be replaced, but perhaps they were just dead weight anyway. I couple that I know about definitely are.
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 1 month ago
I personally prefer to work in the office, but when there’s no-one else on it. When offices started opening up again, going to the office and having the floor to myself was fantastic. It’s felt like in my college years studying late in the library. I had all the resources I needed and there were no chit-chat in the background or people coming in to talk to me.
VantaBrandon@lemmy.world 1 month ago
RTO = free layoffs
vga@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
That might’ve been the plan all along.
MajorHavoc@programming.dev 1 month ago
pop culture stock picker Jim Cramer points while looking cranky
There’s a sell cue, for any shareholders reading along.
sjh@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Wow, it seems like the return-to-office mandate is causing quite the shake-up! Totally get why folks are jumping ship—flexibility has become such a big deal, especially after getting used to working from home. I read that 65% of workers now say they’d consider quitting if they couldn’t work remotely! It’s all about finding that work-life balance in a job that respects our needs. Hang in there, tech friends—plenty of companies out there understand the power of flexibility and trust!
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 month ago
To literally no one’s surprised, least of all the leadership at Amazon. No unemployment when you quit.
Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I am glad this is happening. Fuck these people. Fuck em’ hard.
spicystraw@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Common theory l, that I have heard is that if business owns their office space then it’s value is inherently tied to profit margins. If office goes unused, value will drop, which affect bottom line, which affects boards willingness to pay out large CEO bonuses. So getting employees back into the office becomes vital for the leadership.
EndOfLine@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I hope a significant number of them get new jobs and quiet quit to get that double paycheck for as long as they can.
nutsack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
sounds cool i am unemployed and fucked
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Burn, baby, burn!
itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Google, Microsoft, hell even Netflix and Capital One, will be bending over backwards for this tech talent.
Look at that Amazon east coast HQ in Virginia, just down the road from Capital One’s HQ. One of AWS’s biggest customers will bendfit from this.Etterra@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Stupid, stupid Amazon. How did they not see this coming? It’s been a trend lately.
geography082@lemm.ee 1 month ago
that’s actually what those pieces of dump wanted lol
omarfw@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Now they can replace them without paying unemployment and pay the new workers a lower wage. This is what they wanted to happen. Mega corporations are a problem we need to solve as a society.
orclev@lemmy.world 1 month 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.
omarfw@lemmy.world 1 month 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.
greenskye@lemm.ee 1 month ago
That’s the next executive’s problem. These executives will jump ship with their golden parachutes before any of that affects them.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Bold of you to think that’s what they want.
Sinuhe@lemmy.world 1 month 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
0x0@programming.dev 1 month ago
That’s a foreign concept for management, they only see one quarter at a time.
jj4211@lemmy.world 1 month 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.
eee@lemm.ee 1 month 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.
mrspaz@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They have a name for it: Dead Sea Effect.
TheFunkyMonk@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I thought the same. Interesting strategy cutting the people who are good enough to get another job.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 1 month ago
As long as it looks good on paper, somebody in higher management is getting a bonus for this.
GBU_28@lemm.ee 1 month ago
And they want people off the vesting ramp as early as possible.
Amazon does 5-15-40-40
jaybone@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve… never heard of such a vesting schedule. Doesn’t everyone else pretty much do 25%/year ?
blady_blah@lemmy.world 1 month 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.
BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world 1 month 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.
0x0@programming.dev 1 month ago
Depends on where you read that info, it tends to be 50/50 pro/against really.
Brewchin@lemmy.world 1 month 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.