The fact that US labour laws are this weak is a travesty. You can just circumvent severance by making working conditions unpleasant and you don’t even need to hide it.
When I started at Amazon during the pandemic, I asked for something in writing saying my job was "work from home". They told me not to worry about it, because I'd be in the system as remote and they would never return to the office anyway.
Point being, they never actually put "work from home" in anyone's contract, so technically nothing is changing. They are simply enforcing the always existing rules.
I don't work there anymore because I wouldn't go back to the office.
exactly, so i would counter with saying that if they're never returning to office, then it can't possibly harm to add it as a clause in to the employment contract.
No company will put this in an employment contract unless they are desperate to hire you, and if they are that desperate to hire you, you're in a whole other league than the people this news applies to.
This is not true. Remote companies and many hybrid companies will obviously make that part of your contract. When the fully remote company I worked for was acquired by a hybrid company, being guaranteed remote was a part of all of our contracts.
I worked for a fully remote company, and even though they did not have any physical offices to even have us come into, they refused to change in the contract where they reserved the right to have you work in a traditional office if they desired. They still are 100% remote to this day
Well yes, if you disregard the fact that the last four years of realising that WFH is not only possible but preferable for workers happened. It's backsliding from a situation that was advantageous for many workers.
For many people it's become non-negotiable that a job offer remote working. If where I worked mandated return-to-office I would immediately begin looking for somewhere else to work.
I don't see how the realization could've happened if they're moving back to the office.
I'm not surprised btw, every remote first company I've been in is stuck. I'm not saying it's inherent, but making it work is extremely hard. Imho it makes perfect sense that a company doesn't want to invest into it - it's not a lifestyle business.
I was hired as remote at Amazon in 2005 (I left in 2010). I have a friend who was part of an all-remote Amazon team formed more than a decade ago. Everyone on the team left after the RTO mandate came down last year, without severance. In my friend's case, it meant a choice between her job and her husband's in-office job 1,500 miles away from her would-be Amazon office. They chose to stay in the place they wanted to live, near his job and their friends and family.
In a company the size of Amazon, there are exceptions to many things, including exclusive in-office work pre-2020. This is more than a revert.
The problem with that logic is that plenty of people were hired as remote during the period when in-office was not mandatory, so it's not "reverting" them to any conditions they had previously. I joined a distributed team at AWS late in 2021 for a fairly new product where the managers weren't even all in the same areas as each other. When the "return" to office happened, we were so spread that we had three separate offices they would accept us going to in person and none of them was even roughly in the same area as me (I live in New York, the options were in Virginia, Texas, and Seattle) and that we'd have to relocate, transfer, or quit. Due to a medical situation, I wouldn't have been able to go into an office even in New York without health risks for my fiancee, and it wasn't clear to either me or my manager what exemption I should apply for, let alone how long it would last without being renewed. My fiancee and I had no intention of moving even when the medial situation got resolved, so given amount of stress that would ensue from having to navigate the internal bureaucracy (which potentially would have to be repeated in the future, depending on the length of the exemption and how the medical situation progressed), and uncertainty that they'd even approve the exemption each time I'd have to apply, it didn't seem worth the effort, and I left pretty much as quickly as I could.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that company policy should have to account for every single outlier, but arguing that circumstances that make "returning" to office extremely difficult are not actually that uncommon people hired under the pretense of indefinite remote work for a given position. One of my teammates (who also didn't live anywhere close to any of the three offices mentioned above) had bought a house just a month or two before we were all told we needed to be in one of those locations. If Amazon truly considered remote work to be untenable in the long term, they shouldn't have built up entirely remote teams in the few years they had to deal with it and hired teams locally with the expectation that they might need to go into an office some day.
Yes, I know they aren't technically under any obligation to respect the fact that people are hired remotely, but that's the whole point being made here; weak labor laws mean that it's legal, but that doesn't make it any less scummy.
Amazon has one of the lowest average tenures in the industry. The number of engineers and teams that existed pre-2020 under those working conditions is tiny (except maybe the leadership teams).
Once you have worked a remote/hybrid software job with a remote team you can’t put that genie back in the bottle (or something like that, that DHH said).
I have no direct experience, but apparently this is an historical problem. Way before the pandemic a friend of mine relocated to USA (from Italy) and started working for AWS as a product manager.
She did not last much and eventually jumped to another big company. Sure the job was challenging in AWS, but what she was complaining the most about was the speed at which people were leaving and being replaced.
She told me that she often had to schedule meetings with people from other teams/departments, sometimes 2-3 weeks in advance to find a free calendar slot, and when it was finally the date for the meeting, it often occurred that one of the invitees did not show up, without any prior notice, only for her to discover that the person resigned.
So very often she had to reschedule the meeting with different people and wait another couple of weeks for them to be available. This made it very frustrating and difficult for her to get things going, as she was a product manager for a product that required a lot of cross-team collaboration.
I post this every time this topic comes up. But WFH and remote work ability are an exception to the rule in almost every industry/job type other than tech (and sales). Effectively everybody else goes someplace other than home to do their job.
I love it, I prefer it, but I recognize that I am lucky to have a career that can offer it. If my company demanded RTO, I would have to weigh the option and perhaps choose to separate from the organization if I couldn’t make the pros/cons work for me.
In the US employment is effectively always “at will” for the employee. The employer has some regulation that protects the employee, but if they are essentially willing to pay you, and are providing a safe environment to you, what is so wrong with that? They aren’t torturing you.
Tech workers who complain and demand some sort of regulation/intervention against RTO need to realize that those complaints fall on deaf ears to literally everybody other than that tech worker audience. If you want to effect change, quit and deprive the company of your labor.
That's the wrong way to look at it IMO. It's a way that spreads divisiveness and has an unstated pro-business bias.
I think of it as tech workers tend to get treated as people in some ways instead of cattle, and we should work to ensure that everyone gets those benefits. In other words, it's not a privilege that should be shamed or guilted, it's that tech workers are able to demand basic respect on some things.
No, it’s reality. Outside of a pure tech audience, literally no one gives a shit that your company wants you to RTO. I work from home but visit customers in all sorts of industries—manufacturing, finance, healthcare, insurance, retail. All of them are in office now or at a bare minimum hybrid, but with at least 3 days a week in office. So if the standard for most people who work is some portion of their time away from home for their job, then you are treating tech workers like people if you want them to RTO.
It’s divisive to demand WFH for a single class of worker.
> Outside of a pure tech audience, literally no one gives a shit that your company wants you to RTO.
good point, with the exception of seattle as a whole. eastside light rail is not complete yet, and the DoT is closing all but 2 lanes of I5 in the middle of seattle for 10 months in 2025. The traffic is going to be horrific, and it will offset any potential short term gains that would otherwise have been had from increased real estate prices in downtown. they should have stayed 3 day until the transportation infrastructure was complete.
> It’s divisive to demand WFH for a single class of worker
... which nobody does. Rather people simply imagine they do, because they're intellectually lazy.
We go through this same conversation again and again and again. "Oh Starbucks workers make 15 an hour now?? Who do they think they are! I work construction and only make 12!"
"Oh Bucees gives three weeks vacation? Well I work much harder and I don't get any!"
"Wait California gets salary disclosure?? They're such wusses, I don't need that!!1!"
Of course we can go even further back, hundreds of years, and just replay those advancements but I'm tired. The point is that if you want improvement you PULL UP, not PUSH DOWN.
Shitting on yourself with the intention of making other's already shitty situations look not-that-shitty isn't valiant. It's pathetic, across the board. We should PULL UP each other, not PUSH DOWN each other. Then we all end up higher. You want to be fair BUT better - not fair but worse.
You are never going convince someone whose job will never be able to shift to remote that you are pulling up anyone but yourself with a crusade for WFH. You just won’t get the sympathy because having to write code in an office is not equivalent to working in a sweatshop and frankly everyone seems to know this with the exception of the opinionated tech class.
So you should realize that you are your only advocate in this fight and if you can’t convince your organization why RTO isn’t in their best interest, your option is to find a company that is friendly to your remote working needs or settle in to your new normal…which was the old normal for most tech workers until March of 2020.
You absolutely will, you guys are just incredibly short-sighted.
I know because I worked food service for a decade. I've worked hard jobs where I'm on my feet 9+ hours a day. People in those positions are shockingly class-conscious. In my experience, much more so than software engineers.
Software engineers have a tendency to fall into Delusions of Grandeur, IMO. They might convince themselves they're not working class because instead of making 60,000 they make 100,000. So, then they justify a ton of different mistreatment because they think they're unique.
It's self-destructive, of course. You gain nothing by being content with RTO. You also gain nothing by exhibiting company loyalty. You gain very little by moving up. The waiters, cooks, and bathroom attendants understand this. The software engineers are still working on it.
I agree the best INDIVIDUAL option is to find a different company. But if everyone shared my mentality this would be fixed on an industry level. But they don't, a lot share your mindset, wherein they are weak, and they are subordinate. At one of my previous jobs, we fought for breaks. If people such as yourself were around, we probably would've never gotten the right to eat at work.
> I've worked hard jobs where I'm on my feet 9+ hours a day.
So have I and in an industrial laundry no less—picture a big steaming hot and humid warehouse loading dirty shop rags and food service mats into giant washing vats. I can assure you that no point in time was I ever worried about the working conditions of the accounting clerks in the air conditioned offices in their comfortable chairs on their ass all day. Frankly back then, if I heard them complaining about actually having to show up at the office, I would probably grab a handful of greasy and chemical soaked rags with machine shop shards stuck to them and pelt them with them.
Right, and this is incredibly sad and pathetic. Sorry to say. You're bending over and appealing to the wants of the people who exploit you.
Has it never occurred to you that it's beneficial to those who run industrial laundry to make you feel as though you cannot demand better? Because that's what you're saying here - "some people have it worse, therefore I should be grateful and never demand better"
You understand such a mindset is one inherently designed to make you as unsuccessful as possible? This is self-destructive. This is very common anti-union propaganda, for example.
What you're missing is that while you were working in industrial laundry you actually were very privileged. Many, many people worked jobs so much worse than yours you can't even conceptualize it. What, then, do you think they're thinking of you? Perhaps... the exact same thoughts you have? So why not then cut the pay of those in industrial laundry? Why not then whip them into shape? Better yet, let us chain them to the floors, for then maybe they'll understand our graciousness.
There is always a bigger fish. If you believe you're the biggest fish, then not only are you pathetic, you're also stupid.
Well you have degenerated your conversation to insults, which is to be expected when people skate around the edges of Marxism and their optimism about that utopia where people of all classes will willfully give up their human condition for some pie in the sky all for one, one for all collectivism but I am going to respond anyway.
I wasn’t unhappy with my job at the time, I was happy to trade my labor in those conditions for the paycheck I was given. However, if the accountants that worked for the company expected me to support a need for them to work from home, because they felt that their working conditions were less than desirable, I could not understand or support that because—-and this is the important point here—-their working conditions were fine and appropriate for the job they were being asked to do.
I would also understand at that time that some other “worse” position than mine might consider my situation preferable. There were a lot of opportunities that I had that I didn’t take for the very reason being it would have been far worse. I also would not expect those folks to ever support a need for me that they found ridiculous.
But let’s face it, the relative differences between the conditions of say a sewer worker and an industrial launderer are really not as great in condition or pay. But there is a huge difference between a SWE working in a climate controlled office with a 6 figure salary, free drinks, and snacks and a sewer worker.
You want them to be supportive of an improved retirement plan, medical benefits…they can and will get behind you. You want them while they are knee deep in literal shit to get behind your desire to type on a laptop in your comfy living room on a recliner while in your pajamas—I wouldn’t hold your breath for them to grab a torch to burn down your CEO’s offices for that.
If you truly believe what I'm saying is skating the edges of Marxism, you have a mental disorder and you require treatment.
For my own conscious, I'm going to then assume you're being dishonest and don't really believe this.
What people need to realize is that we have two parties in the US: the ultra-capitalists, and the slightly-less-ultra capitalists. I'm not a communist because I'm advocating better working conditions.
> their working conditions were fine and appropriate for the job they were being asked to do
Okay. How do you figure this? You just pulled this out of your ass. Says who? And why?
Does their job require them to sit at one specific desk for 40 hours a week? No, and that's not up for debate. Therefore, their working conditions ARE NOT appropriate for their job.
If the cashier is required to stand on one leg, just for shits and giggles, is that appropriate? No, it's completely unnecessary.
Getting up from your computer, driving an hour, and then sitting down at another computer to do your job is just that - completely unnecessary. You gain nothing, and I do literally mean nothing. It's done purely for a sense of control and ego.
> But there is a huge difference between a SWE working in a climate controlled office with a 6 figure salary, free drinks, and snacks and a sewer worker
There is, but I mentioned earlier your own self-destructive attitude, and this is that.
You are of the same class. You may THINK you're leagues ahead, but you're really not. The reason you THINK you're leagues ahead is because that is advantageous for your employer.
Your employer is such an evil genius they have gotten you to not only not advocate better conditions for yourself, but actually argue you don't deserve better conditions. They don't have to do anything - they can just sit back, and you'll give them head, no questions asked.
I mean, do you really not see that? Here you are, literally advocating and fighting for things that are objectively worse for you. That's not normal behavior, something in your brain broke somewhere along the way.
Folks sometimes think that unions operate by threat of work stoppage and they dictate all terms to the company’s chagrin. However, people who have been at those tables realize that unions operate by compromise. If you unionize with the hope that this will get you 100% WFH, don’t be surprised if you end up with hybrid and your union is telling you it’s a win. And the next time your contract is renewed your union might be trading WFH days for a greater employer paid portion of your medical insurance when it skyrockets.
I am not saying don’t unionize to get WFH, but realize all you are doing is giving them one more item as currency for the next time contract negotiations come around.
This happened to my company a couple of months ago, and this was in Europe. As anecdata the managers implementing this forced RTO with "just quit if you don't like it" as an option were all Amazon alumni.
No one is making the working conditions unpleasant. The company which pays you to do work wants its employees to be in the office. If you don’t like it. Don’t work there.
Looks like all the employees about to lose their work from home jobs are upset and downvoting.
That’s a contract. The vast majority of people currently working from home do not have a contract explicitly stating it’s a work from home position permanently.
Those people who went from office to home during covid will have to go back to the office or they will be fired and receive nothing because they did not fill their role.
This is an extremely pro-business perspective. Just because they can do it doesn't mean they're correct, and we should just bend over and spread our cheeks for them. Certainly, we shouldn't beg for them to fuck us, but apparently some of us are really craving it.
No. This is reality. Business’s provide a service or product. They pay people to perform tasks to deliver the service or product.
Just because you want to work from home doesn’t mean you get to. Blue collar jobs don’t get the luxury of working from home. But apparently people like you feel like you’re above everyone else because you have a white collar job so you’re entitled to work from home.
Get a grip. You don’t get to dictate every aspect of your job. Start your own business if you want to do things your way.
Au Contraire, you should get a grip because you're being very pathetic.
It's one thing to be contempt with actions that harm you. That's just sad. But actively begging for it is nothing short of pathetic.
Call me entitled, I don't care. The reality is people like me end up happy and people like you ensure your own misery. It's so unbelievable that people don't even need to make you miserable - in the event you ever find yourself happy, you will do anything possible to make yourself miserable.
We DO have some control over our jobs, and we CAN demand better. The only reason you have the life you have is because a lot of people before you demanded better. Just for you to be a weak coward who lays on his knees begging for his throat to get used. If that's what you want to be, fine.
Objectively, you do yourself no favors. That's not my opinion, that's what it is. Nobody, and I do literally mean nobody, cares if you work hard or purposefully work at a business you do not like. Blue collar people don't give even half a fuck that you want to have as much, or as little, luxury as them. WFH people will not call you brave because you commute to the office. Instead, what happens is they continue their life MUCH happier than you, and you remain miserable by your own devices, and not a soul on Earth looks your way - not even for pity.
I never said that. I said being against WFH is your own misery, because it's true.
Even if you LOVE the office, you should be encouraging WFH because it's better for you. Less traffic, less driving, higher quality of life for you to reach the office.
But you advocate things that directly harm you. That's pathetic, sorry there's just no other way to say it. It's not a virtue to be self-destructive, it's just kind of sad.
Also business owners do not care if you bend over for them. They're fucking you and leaving before you get up in the morning - talking real sweet to them won't make them like you. Again, you just look pitiful and nobody really cares and nobody is clapping.
WFH is worse. Juniors don’t get the mentoring they need. Collaboration is a fraction of in person. People become siloed. Knowledge is not shared. Knowing when roadblocks occur becomes more difficult. Productivity drops.
Sounds like you’ve worked at terrible companies with terrible people. Instead of finding a good company. Then again I haven’t worked at a company with more than 30 employees and so I get paid well and have access to walk 5 meters to talk to the CEO/Owner.
Right. Again, even if this is your opinion, you should be pro WFH in general because it makes your life better as someone who works in an office.
But you're not, because you're attempting to appeal to what you think people more successful than you (business owners) want. As opposed to what objectively would be best for you. That's pathetic and self-destructive.
If it makes you feel better, most Americans are self-destructive and don't know how to stop. But if you don't advocate for yourself, you should be aware that certainly nobody else is.
I've worked at good companies, and bad companies. The reality is neither care about my well-being because only I, and my family, care about my well-being. You have to understand if you drop dead right now the world will continue without you. The company will not cease operations for even an hour.
Therefore, you must constantly make an effort to live the best life you can, while you can. Purposefully harming yourself with the intention of creating a better perception doesn't help you, especially when that perception is worthless.
