Amazon is blocking promotions of employees who don’t comply with its return-to-office policy, leaked documents show::Amazon has updated its promotions policy to enforce its office attendance policy.
Some day I want to understand why this topic is so difficult especially for American companies.
thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I kind of don’t get what’s going on here. I’d think your options would be:
a) Go back to the office, or
b) Stop working there
Like you’d either say to your boss “Look, this work from home thing is really important to me, so I need to look for an opportunity where I can continue to do that,” or your boss would say to you “Look, you keep not showing up to work, so we’re gonna let you go.”
It seems like any period where the company says “Okay, everybody back to the office” and some people say “Oh yeah I’m just gonna ignore that” has got to be pretty short-lived, right?
Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 11 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 11 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.
xkforce@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Loyalty and obedience prized over competence once again
tankplanker@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
vinniep@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think this is very likely, though it’s also prolonging this whole exercise by avoiding the dramatic conclusion and spreading the pain out over a longer time.
If every manager at Amazon woke up tomorrow and said “screw it, we’re enforcing this policy”, that would result in a mass firing event of quality talent, and Amazon would feel the pain of their policy decisions and either have to swallow that and try to move on or beat a hasty retreat and call this whole thing off. It would be a quick and decisive end to this whole debate, but instead we have month after month of employees stressed and angry while looking rebellious and unmanageable, managers stressed and frustrated while looking ineffective, and the senior leadership frustrated and looking impotent.
Someone’s going to win this fight eventually, but everyone trying to find middle ground and skirt the policy just takes what would be one big fight and turns it into many months of slow unease and turmoil that’s bad for everyone. I want the remote people to win this, but sometimes the way to win is the lose on purpose. Let the dog catch the car so he can realize what an idiot he was being.
5BC2E7@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Some middle managers will actually be ok with WFH and have great people working with them. I guess it’s about those scenarios where the management is actually shielding the employees from a stupid policy.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 11 months ago
xkforce@lemmy.world 11 months ago
One day youre going to hopefully learn that just because a company can do x or y does not mean that they should or that it is in their best interests to do so.
UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The problem os that they rely on their employees… go figure… this just means they cant afford to fire these people.