Amazon’s CEO has told workers “it’s probably not going to work out” for them at the tech company unless they are prepared to come into the office at least three days a week.
Andy Jassy made the statement in a meeting where he made clear his frustration that some employees were not coming in three days a week, despite that being Amazon’s official policy. The comments were first reported by Insider.
He said: “It’s past the time to disagree and commit. If you can’t disagree and commit … it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon because we are going back to the office at least three days a week.”
Yeah… any time people wonder why a workforce won’t “just unionize”: It is because of shit like this. The moment a person is slightly inconvenienced or needs to compromise, it becomes “Fuck them. They didn’t work hard enough. Why should I suffer for that?”
For primarily remote companies? Yeah. There are plenty of people who love to work on site and you can work toward hiring and relocating them. I interviewed three candidates for an on-site sysadmin a few weeks back and we sent an offer yesterday. Great person and I look forward to “meeting” her when I head in for a planning meeting next month.
But that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about companies that were primarily on-site that became hybrid or remote because of the pandemic. Which is a very different situation.
Because, using my example: In 2019, I spent maybe 10-12 hours a week in fancy rooms that didn’t have internet access. And, depending on the week, I might help out with fixing issues where physically touching hardware is beneficial another 1 to 6 hours (wasn’t entirely my job, but I had the skill set and didn’t mind helping out).
Suddenly? The vast majority of my co-workers have a MUCH better work life balance. They are spending time with their kids, not having to commute, eating much cheaper (and better) lunches, playing POE over lunch, etc. But, because I had done some paperwork a few years prior, I didn’t get that. Instead, I got to instead spend 20-30 hours a week in the fancy room (because it would be so easy for me to just do the 10 or 15 minutes of work that twenty other people needed to do…) and the rest of my time was being full time “check if it is plugged in”.
And I am not gonna pretend I wasn’t immensely pissed off when I saw the company slack full of people who were ENRAGED over the idea of having to come in two or three days a week. You know, in my off time because of being in an airgapped room for most of the week. Again, it is “demoralizing”
So yeah. The people who do want to be completely isolated and never get to do anything “fun” will eventually take those jobs. But you also lose a lot of institutional knowledge. And yes, you run the risk of losing the people who can do their jobs entirely remotely. But the vast majority of people still live in the area and can do a hybrid work week. As for the rest? It is a lot easier to hire a new remote employee than someone with the credentials and skillset to do the on-site work…
And considering my old field is relatively small: I know most of my counterparts. Hell, I play Warframe with a couple of them. And we all had similar stories of suddenly getting the shit end of the stick AND being ridiculously isolated. Like, my buddy Greg at REDACTED was outright ignored for a “leadership” role in a new effort for what was literally his specialty because most people making those decisions had “kind of forgotten about” him.
What a long winded way to disprove the entire point you’re making. You’re the little crab in the bucket pulling the other crabs down not the hero you see yourself as. If you’re that unhappy with what happened did you ever bring this up to management? Put any effort into it at all? Because according to the info you’ve provided so far it sounds like all you did was silently seethe and now want to take all that pent up anger out on your coworkers for finding what works for them and the company as agreed upon by both parties. Do you have this same amount of energy for other people’s salaries//benefits packages? Clearly with the attitude displayed no one should be making more than what YOU decide they should make regardless of any other agreements with the management and worker.
Your solution is putting the onus on your coworkers to make your work life less “isolated”, not on making your employer update your job description and pay to account for new responsibilities, hire someone for all the random crap that was getting saddled on you, or give you the freedom they had. They and people criticizing you for that aren’t the crab in the bucket impeding worker solidarity.