Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/08/26/amazon-is-piloting-teams-with-a-30-hour-work-week/

by djacobs • 10 years ago

362 283 10 years ago

krisdol4• 10 years ago

The folks I know at Amazon may have been in the office for a normal amount of time, but they worked long night after long night from home. If they're approaching a 30 hour work week as a reduction from 40, it's bound to fail. They have to realize it would be q reduction from 60 or 80

citizenflynn5• 10 years ago

And my team at Amazon almost every day has only 4/5 engineers at the office because one is taking it easy working from home. Sometimes people take hour lunches and leave after 7 hours. Sometimes they want to finish something and stay later.

gtrubetskoy• 10 years ago

In which way is "working from home" "taking it easy"?

radiorental• 10 years ago

Punctuation and order are not prerequisits for making a point, but they help. Sometimes sleep deprivation manifests itself in strange ways sometimes.

rdtsc• 10 years ago

Don't work for Amazon but work from home. I don't take it easy at all. It can be even harder than being in the office because it is hard to stop working. So have to be vigilant about that.

Now not burning gas and time and nerves stuck in traffic every day and being able to have lunch with my family is a nice bonus. But if that is considered "taking it" easy, a potential employee wouldn't benefit from that either, that would be time and resources just wasted (I guess car mechanics and gas stations would benefit from that at some point).

BookingPotions5• 10 years ago

That's true sometimes, and makes sense in the salaried way. But to take a reduced pay you would need to be guaranteed reduced work.

Also, you sound disgruntled, why don't you do the same if you feel your team allows it?

yeukhon• 10 years ago

I agree. First, this is a team made up of part-time workers, not full-time workers, which is not what I was expecting by reading the title. So working 30 hours a week is really really not that special, consider they are PART TIME.

Regardless, there are weeks people will have to pull extra hours to complete work, such as during product launch week.

If this were a program made up of full-time employees, I would be interested to see the number of overtime hours this team will accumulate. Otherwise, I don't see what's so interesting about this experiment.

BTW, I work extra hours because sometimes I just want to work extra hours. Sometimes, I just want to pull extra hours to get the most boring stuff out of the way.

Instead of a 30-hour pilot, make Friday a half-day for everyone.

citizenflynn5• 10 years ago

It is special in that you have proportional salary and full benefits. Many part time jobs have substantially reduced pay and benefits, unlike this.

pm215• 10 years ago

It's special in that currently getting non-full-time work as a software engineer is pretty tricky (you can often arrange to drop down to part time at your existing company, but getting a job at a new company on non-full-time hours is much harder). So if it catches on and the opportunities for part-time workers become more numerous that's great for people (including me) who don't or can't work full time.

BookingPotions5• 10 years ago

I agree about the hour spread. It should be something like a max hour per week, but that you can partition as you see fit.

tdumitrescu• 10 years ago

3/4 pay for 3/4 butt in seat time. Seems like Amazon is getting a great deal here!

citizenflynn5• 10 years ago

It reads like they still pay full benefits though. This is usually around 20% of salary and makes the comparison unproportional.

skybrian2• 10 years ago

Hard to say without doing the experiment.

On the one hand, you get more people thinking about the problem for the same amount of money. (And most people do sometimes think about work problems off the clock.)

On the other hand, more people means more coordination, communication, and disagreements. There's a reason people like small teams.

imh• 10 years ago

Compared to the alleged 80 hour norm, it's 3/4 pay for 3/8 of the butt in seat time. If it's truly just 30 hours per week, that's a great deal for the workers!

sangd• 10 years ago

This is an excellent step to getting people more motivated and productive. I don't find working more hours improve my life in any positive way. It's much less satisfying as I want to commit some hours to learning or creating something new.

smb062• 10 years ago

I think what they really mean is "30-hour workweek while being physically present in the office". I would find it difficult to believe that employees wouldn't continue working from home under pressure from management or simply because of tight timelines.

zzalpha3• 10 years ago

Precisely.

Amazon is a sweatshop. The expectation is salaried employees put in ungodly hours.

All this is doing is giving people more freedom to burn themselves out at home, while further blurring the lines between work and life and throwing in a 25% pay cut as the cherry on top.

It's like the opposite of Google campus life, but with the same goal.

ycombinatorMan2• 10 years ago

I hope most places arent

BinaryIdiot• 10 years ago

I've worked at places exactly like this. You go to the office, get work done, get home after an 8+ hour day...and then work until midnight. It's exhausting and honestly not healthy. I gained a majority of my current weight doing that and went to the hospital twice for what ended up being severe anxiety (physically thought I was having a heart attack; worst pain ever).

I now work at a much better place where I feel more valued and my work life balance is simply amazing in comparison.

whateveracct2• 10 years ago

I work 40 hour weeks at Amazon as an SDE and never feel pressured to put in more. I don't take my work with me. It varies by team ofc I'm sure there are bad ones.

abbasaamer2• 10 years ago

"Amazon is a sweatshop"

I wouldn't agree with this broad generalization. I work in Alexa and the work environment on my team is pretty awesome. Lots of freedom to try new things, good work life balance, and generally a high level of respect for engineers. I turned down Google to come here and I have no regrets (though not to imply that Google isn't equally awesome).

chaostheory• 10 years ago

I like choices. I don't mind choosing where I will work. I don't think this is a bad thing.

dzhiurgis• 10 years ago

And Jeff Bezos is proud of this culture. He turned sweatshop definition (watch Recode interview) around into a good sign of a culture they want to promote (cost cutting).

While I would not like such workplace, it sort of makes sense. It's similar to what Elon Musk said once - if you work more then everyone else, over time it becomes noticeable. Perhaps Musk shops reward you better?

crazy_ant4• 10 years ago

The expectation is salaried employees put in ungodly hours.

I am not US based and I've always wondered about this. In virtually every other western country, it doesn't matter if you're "salaried" or not - your employer is legally prohibited from not paying overtime. If your employment contract says you work 9-5, then anything outside those hours must be compensated, often at a higher rate (1.2x-1.5x is not uncommon in many European countries).

In the context of the US labor law, does being "salaried" functionally equal "being required to work unlimited overtime"?

yazaddaruvala2• 10 years ago

So while this is really good for people that have dependents at home, or other consistently demanding activities. I would not enjoy such an arrangement.

The arrangement I'd be most excited by is a team with forced three month sabbaticals yearly (or honestly even 6 month sabbaticals). Of-course with the normal amount of vacation time added as well.

The way it would work is: Say a team is supposed to have 8 people. Hire 25% more people and schedule sabbaticals such that there is always ~8 people working. Additionally, you could ensure that there is never a time where two developers go more than 2 months without working together.

Benefits: Increases the supply in the job market; Reduces income disparity; Improves employee work-life balance.

rdl• 10 years ago

Also ensures good handoff on projects -- if you work 60h/wk for, say, 8 weeks to ship something, and 40h/wk for 2 weeks before/after to handle turnover, and then are basically AFK for 8 weeks, you'll probably do a pretty good job on handing it off.

(My personal ideal is ~8 days on (12-16h/day), 6 days off, and then a month or two off twice a year.)

dilap• 10 years ago

fantastic idea

monort• 10 years ago

Do you do extended vacation between jobs?

radafor3• 10 years ago

This is one of my most preferred potential arrangements...but I think the problem is that it actually benefits the worker more than the company - why hire the extra two when you can leave them unemployed and hang the threat of unemployment over your eight?

ebbv• 10 years ago

I hate to be cynical (really, I do) but this seems like a clear attempt to soften Amazon's current public image as being a horrible place to work. It seems like all surface/headlines and no real substance. The headline makes you assume "Oh employees are going down to 30 hours a week but still being fully paid." because in order for this to be really noteworthy at all, it would have to be, right? But that's not what this is. They are basically just knocking people down to part time but keeping benefits, apparently?

That doesn't seem like a good deal to me. I don't want a 25% pay cut for 25% fewer mandatory hours of work. As other commenters have pointed out, unless this comes along with a reduction in responsibilities and/or increase in staff, the same amount of work still needs to be done. And most exempt employees already work more than 40 hours a week.

Add to this the fact that the Washington Post is owned by Bezos, and this just seems like a clear PR stunt to me, and a lame one at that.

draw_down2• 10 years ago

I'll agree on the reason why they're doing this, but I've actually always wanted this deal, or something like it. Less hours for less pay, which as a software professional would still be pretty good money. The challenge is having that be accepted by the organization, which most American companies won't because we're all supposed to love what we do or whatever.

If you're supposed to still accomplish the same amount of stuff in 75% the time then that's just clearly not going to work. Can't fit 10 pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.

But anyway, yes, I'm sure it's either a PR stunt or bound to fail or both.

thesimpsons1022• 10 years ago

never heard of a bag that has a weight limit instead of a volume limit.

randyrand• 10 years ago

When I was at amazon I was routinely putting in 170hr+ work weeks. It was impossible.

ojknkjnsdf• 10 years ago

What?

zzalpha3• 10 years ago

I'm gonna assume you meant 70+, not 170+, unless you're a time traveller...

Or you really did mean it was impossible, in which case... math checks out.

flamedoge• 10 years ago

He was doing 4 men's jobs, but not even close to 10xer's 400 hr/wk

danielhooper• 10 years ago

Doing what?

strictnein• 10 years ago

Time dilation

ww520• 10 years ago

Do you get overtime pay? I assume you meant you are on-call 24x7.

briansteffens• 10 years ago

Pff I do 171 hour weeks

Alt-F4• 10 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

pjmorris2• 10 years ago

'Amazon is piloting 25% pay cuts'.

I wonder if the group that does this will be viewed as lesser, e.g. work on less interesting projects, be less likely to be promoted, than the "40" hour employees.

andrewguenther4• 10 years ago

The pilot is a team-wide thing. You won't have a 30-hour employee on a 40-hour team. 30-hour employees will work with 30-hour employees under a 30-hour manager. I think that will help offset some of this, but it does put a limit on what projects you could work on. For the pilot, anyway. I'm interested to see how this pans out.

pjmorris2• 10 years ago

I recognize that 'You won't have a 30-hour employee on a 40-hour team'... my point is that, unless they segregate them in another building, probably another company, the pilot teams will interact with the non-pilot teams... and, at some point in the hierarchy, will be managed by 40-hour people.

As jaded as I sound, I do think there's a place for workplace flexibility. What would really tell me the executives are committed to it: Calculate their actual FTE's - average work week hours divided by 40 - and make sure there are at least that many physical FTE's.

Spooky232• 10 years ago

There's no reason why you cannot do that. Our contractors get fixed hour allocations, and often will strictly work to the hours they are paid for (we won't pay overtime without approval).

A few of my folks were angry about this and claimed to be working 50-60 hour weeks. My response was "there's a easy solution to this problem". They cut out the excessive OT, which was mostly unneeded, and not too much changed.

Encaitar• 10 years ago

This might be a team wide thing at Amazon but I have seen mixing the two in a single team. Its called reduced hours and can be very helpful for people coming back from maternity leave (as well as others).

nommm-nommm5• 10 years ago

We have our 30hour employees and 40 hour employees on the same team. No reason they can't mix. We even have a couple part timers too.

vibrato2• 10 years ago

They are piloting it on internal HR software which I think says a lot.

To me this seems like a purely PR driven move after the lambasting their culture has taken lately.

Bluestrike2• 10 years ago

I see that as a good thing. If you're going to experiment on your employees and try to change your workplace culture, low-profile projects that--while important--often aren't 100% mission critical are a good place to do so.

A major problem in HR or payroll software or something similar might cause some massive headaches for your employees, but it won't be as noticeable outside the company as a major outage or problem affecting customer data.

mabbo2• 10 years ago

I'm biased as I'm an Amazon SDE. That aside...

Amazon experiments. It's not about bold PR moves to make waves and attract attention. It's about trying everything, even ideas that might sound bad, and seeing if they actually work. This? This is the same idea. Try it out on something less important (HR software, sure, why not) and see what happens.

In the worst case, a bit of internal software is late. That's a low-cost risk to see if you can find a way to reduce developer costs efficiently.

jchendy7• 10 years ago

They are piloting it on internal HR software which I think says a lot.

There's a tendency for people to think that HR software and other internal tools are less important than public products, but if the company is allocating employees properly, that doesn't really make sense.

The engineers working on this HR software all passed the same technical interviews that everybody else did. Amazon could have easily allocated them to some flashy consumer product, but management decided that it's important to have a team working on HR software. So either somebody made a horrible miscalculation when they decided to build the HR software, or this work is equally valuable to all the other work happening.

grecy• 10 years ago

'Amazon is piloting 25% pay cuts'.

Great!

Let's be honest - most working professionals (especially in Software) earn more money than they need. I think it's much better to have more time - time with you family, time to be outdoors, time to be healthy - than it is to have more money

daxorid• 10 years ago

Indeed. And even if money is your motivator, here is an extra 10-20 hours a week to work on one's side project. Do not see the downside, here.

gedy• 10 years ago

Say that in 20 years when you are looking at how to retire for the next 20-30 years with no pension, and from companies who don't want old people.

gfody• 10 years ago

Something about this bothers me. Time-keeping is already not straightforward for an engineer. Because the work is done in our heads and doesn't necessarily stop just because the workday is over. You don't have to be sitting at a keyboard for your head to be grinding on a problem. More often some problem takes hold of you, occupying some mental bandwidth even while you're away, at home trying to enjoy time with your family or whatever - technically you're still working, your mind is preoccupied, you might not be able to sleep or when you do you dream about the problem.

From the outside it might appear like you came back to the office after a nice weekend break and quickly knocked out whatever task it was that was on your mind. But it's not that simple and after unloading that task, even though it's Monday you could be feeling like you need a break because you actually just worked through the weekend on it.

Because of this, I feel like engineers are already massively overworked and/or underpaid when you consider their salary based on a 40hour workweek when the real mental effort can be pushing 60-80 hours a week. Things like unlimited/discretionary PTO, flex hours, and management that understands the balance of overtime and undertime keeps things fair. Establishing a 30-hour workweek just seems like going hard in the other direction.

zeeveener2• 10 years ago

Programmers can suffer from this problem as well as engineers.

The project never fully leaves your mind and often I'll go home and mull over the reasons why things might not be working or how to start another task. No "actual" work gets done, but I'm still working; just as you described.

ender7• 10 years ago

In this context, "programmer" and "engineer" are probably meant to be synonymous.

vectorjohn2• 10 years ago

Nope, you're not working. You or the parent. That's a nonsensical definition of work. Nobody is making you mull things over, you're doing it because you want to, because you find your job interesting. Some may try to claim the contrary, but I'm sure if you're doing something other than a mundane task like driving or cleaning, your mind instantly gets sidetracked from "working". You can't possibly actually be thinking about work in any real sense while you converse with friends and family, read a book, watch a movie, etc.

Do you think carpenters never think about work after hours?

Kenji3• 10 years ago

More often some problem takes hold of you, occupying some mental bandwidth even while you're away, at home trying to enjoy time with your family or whatever - technically you're still working, your mind is preoccupied, you might not be able to sleep or when you do you dream about the problem.

Oh my gosh, exactly this! When I am working on a theoretical maths problem, there is just no end to the work! On the train home, when I'm eating, when I'm taking a shower, it goes on and on (it's especially bad for maths because it's pure mental gymnastics - not even pen & paper needed unless you have specific calculations). I have to make a conscious effort to stop that - but then I have to clear many 'temporary variables' in my mind (losing time and effort) and the problem remains unsolved for the time being. Plus I cannot work on any other intellectual pursuits in the meantime because my mind is exhausted. It drives me nuts.

notyourwork4• 10 years ago

You sound like you resent this which makes me question whether you genuinely like what you do?

vadym909• 10 years ago

While all previous evidence goes towards pointing this to be another way for AMZN to squeeze more out of their employees, I think we could give them the benefit of doubt. I think they may have seen a segment of talented developers saying I don't want to be in this ratrace. I'd rather work 30hrs/week and make $100K to maintain work-life balance. 6hrs/week or 4 days/week. I wish more companies were open to this. It would reduce internal competition. Some of the 60 hr/week employees are gunning for promotions and probably don't care about work life balance. Why should everyone have to compete with that?

jchendy7• 10 years ago

I think we could give them the benefit of doubt

I've found that this is a much less stressful and more productive way to approach most things in life.

Some of the 60 hr/week employees are gunning for promotions and probably don't care about work life balance. Why should everyone have to compete with that?

That seems totally reasonable. It's similar to the way tech companies have a concept of a "terminal level" where it's considered fine to spend your whole career with no pressure or expectations to earn further promotions.

mroll• 10 years ago

While all previous evidence goes towards pointing this to be another way for AMZN to squeeze more out of their employees...

Why would you go against a theory that all evidence pointed toward? I think what you meant is that despite what it looks like at first glance, there could be reasons why this is a good idea. You should present evidence for those arguments, maybe based on personal experience

Twirrim• 10 years ago

If Amazon had a good track record for people working only 40 hours a week, I might be less skeptical about this 30 hour week situation.

There are very few technical teams inside that seem to come even close to that, so I'm extremely doubtful that managers are going to be sufficiently disciplined to keep their staff down to 30 hours, nor employees sufficiently empowered either. It's so hard to see this as anything other than a way to pay people less for comparable work.

dleslie• 10 years ago

I'd love to make $100k USD working a 40h week.

drawkbox• 10 years ago

Agreed, we really need time off after a project ships or major milestones. Usually after a long sprint on a project to ship you just have to start another one and are less effective immediately. Output would be the same or better with breaks after ebbs and flow of pressure shipments and into design/new projects.

Buge3• 10 years ago

Well these workers get 75% salary, but still get full benefits. So they get more than 75% overall value.

brianwawok2• 10 years ago

And they likely do more than 75% work in those 75% hours as your marginal utility goes down after perhaps 20 hours a week.

jchendy7• 10 years ago

On the other hand, I'm a software engineer who is able to keep a clear separation between work and personal life, and I would very much appreciate the ability to spend fewer hours on work.

Though as others have suggested, a 3 month vacation every year might be an even better approach to a 75% work schedule.

jdavis7032• 10 years ago

And you wouldn't worry about people plotting on either how to get you fired, or I suppose in the "best" situation loosing out on working on the good/funner projects? From what I've seen from other people taking extended time off from work, it is super dangerous. Hell, I took three extra days for Thanksgiving and found myself removed from an interesting project and placed on some maintenance tasks afterwards.

wallacoloo• 10 years ago

This is interesting to me, because I have never experienced anything of what you describe when working for somebody else. Maybe it's because I work in an office, and so there's a very clear change in environment that affects my ability to focus on different things: office=paid work, anywhere else=not paid work.

In any case, what you describe seems like a pretty big limitation to me. If your employer isn't asking you, or pressuring you, to do more work, then they really shouldn't be held responsible when you do. I wouldn't paint my neighbor's house without having been asked to and then be upset with them for not asking me to (and therefore not paying me to) paint their house. That's nonsensical, but it's also an analogy with limited applicability.

crazy_ant4• 10 years ago

That's cute but not how the world works. Employers will rarely explicitly ask you to do free overtime because that's illegal in many jurisdictions. What happens instead is this: an unrealistic deadline will be imposed and you will be expected to meet it. How you will go about doing that is up to you, but it usually assumes working overtime if you want to keep your job.

dav43• 10 years ago

This is true of many more jobs, jobs that require you to think and use judgement. This isn't just engineering jobs.

fratlas• 10 years ago

Yes, especially for those jobs that already require 60-80 hour weeks (doctor, IB etc). We get paid well for our hours.

ared38• 10 years ago

This is hardly unique to engineers though. Almost everyone whose job involves coming up with ideas and thinking through problems does some of it in the shower.

notyourwork4• 10 years ago

I agree with your general premise but disagree with the conclusion. I think this gives you an ability to commit to delivering less which results in less deliberation outside of your primary work hours.

Frankly though, if you love what you do you always take your work home with you (mentally anyway). So at the end of the day, there is no on/off switch for engineers (along with other types of careers) so although engineers are some of the highest paid you want them to be paid higher?

I am not saying I would disagree but also not saying I think I am under paid by any stretch of the imagination.

boardwaalk• 10 years ago

I'm not being facetious, but this might be a personal problem (not being able to get your mind off of work). For people who experience this, something like meditation might help, seriously. I certainly wouldn't fault an employer.

I'd love a 30 work week (if I wasn't trying to fast track towards retirement): those 10 hours (or more if working 4 days and not having to commute one weekday) would be entirely mine.

logicallee• 10 years ago

gfody's description reads to me like a description of genius-level work. it's not "not being able to get your mind off of work". it's, wow, you're a genius for being able to do this at all - it's not some fungible thing anyone could do instead of you. yours sounds like the description of more fungible work, that could be done by someone else and for which hours may even be a good measure. it just doesn't sound like you two are talking about the same thing.

crazy_ant4• 10 years ago

I'm not being facetious, but this might be a personal problem (not being able to get your mind off of work). For people who experience this, something like meditation might help, seriously. I certainly wouldn't fault an employer.

It's not that most people can't take their mind off of work, it's that they often have to meet various unrealistic deadlines, or else. It's not their own choice, insofar as they want to keep their job.

guy_c• 10 years ago

I think this applies to many roles, not just engineering. I could imagine a copy-writer getting stuck on some exact word choice, a salesperson mulling over every reaction and word from a previous meeting. A designer taking in everything the see.

jfoster• 10 years ago

Does this mean you'd consider a 60 hour work week an improvement? Is 40 hours the perfect number for some reason? At what point are we just resisting any change to the status quo?

nilkn4• 10 years ago

I'm skeptical of claims that developers are underpaid. Maybe I feel differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub and am not faced with the prospect of buying a multimillion dollar cottage, but when I compare my life as a software developer to that of more or less anyone else I know, including doctors and lawyers, I struggle to find a single person who seems to have a more comfortable life than me.

I'm not the highest paid person I know, of course. My low six-figure income can't compete with $300k+ salaries that many surgeons get. I couldn't afford the $1.2M Mediterranean mansion that my dentist lives in. And I'll never get the sort of pay package that big law firm partners can command.

But I'm not performing life-altering surgery. I didn't even have to go to medical school, let alone complete a residency.

I didn't have to start up my own dental practice. And I'm not in my hypothetical dental practice every Saturday morning at 8AM taking care of patients who couldn't make it during the week or couldn't afford to take off work.

I never had to go to law school. I didn't have to pass a single licensing exam. I took out no loans to get to where I am. And I was never worked 80+ hours a week as a young associate.

I worked less than these people to get to where I am, and I continue to work less than them. My work is easier than theirs too. It's less stressful. Even if a problem does consume me for days, including outside of work, it's just not that big of a deal. I started making this income when these other folks were doing nothing but accruing debt. My lifetime earnings won't be all that different from theirs because I got such a tremendous head start.

If I look at friends who are not in any of the above three professions, not a single person comes to mind who makes as much money as I do. Many make half as much as I do but have much more stressful jobs, fewer perks, etc.

And yet apparently I'm underpaid. I don't buy it.

icelancer• 10 years ago

Underpaid is an interesting term, I guess. When you think about it, software (in its many forms) isn't like retail or hard goods; it can be sold - usually - an infinite amount of times. The upside is massive since all hard overhead is eliminated. Where then should that overhead go? To management?

It's all about ratios, of course. If the owners/management of a company are grossly overpaid in comparison to the workers who produce - especially if physical overhead is nearly eliminated - then yes, developers are indeed underpaid. And I would posit this is true in many areas of software development. Perhaps not your situation, but overall? I buy it.

lettergram• 10 years ago

You can usually just do the math. Let's assume last year I decreases the loading time of our website by 50%, taking it from 2 seconds to 1 second. This reduces the drop off rate of customers (people who switch websites before it loads) by about 15%. That means a 15% increase in overall sales.

Now let's assume it was a $10 million a year business. That means it's now making $11.5 million dollars a year because a software engineer optimized the loading time. That engineer probably makes $100k or so, and he might get a 10% raise since he did such a good job. The remaining $1.49 million gets distributed amongst execs and investors.

Hardly seems fair, when most executives have no idea what's going on, and provide zero value add for that case.

ta_donk_gt• 10 years ago

As an opposing anecdote, I've spent a significant percentage of my software development years in the medical arena. The overwhelming majority of doctors that I have worked with do not work as hard, anywhere near as many hours, or under as much stress and the overwhelming majority of software developers I have worked with.

The stressful period for most doctors is getting into medical school, getting through medical school, and getting into and through internships and residencies. That is roughly 10 years or so, and during that time it is absolutely at the pace and pressure I see in software development..but once they finish, for most of them, it is pretty smooth sailing. Those at the top of the game are a different story, but that's true anywhere.

The real difference is that doctors have a powerful lobby that artificially limits their numbers, essentially providing a benefit similar to unionization. You can't massively up the numbers of doctors being trained in the U.S., and you can't import massive numbers of foreign workers to increase supply. No matter how many capable people there are, the numbers will remain artificially constrained.

Software development doesn't have this protection. The only lobby in software development is regularly pushing for massive increases in supply through various channels. Doctors' salaries have continued to rise year after year..not so sure software development salaries will fare as well in the coming years..especially after we convince software devs they are already overpaid ;)

Gorbzel• 10 years ago

What I don't buy is why it's okay to generalize your imposter syndrome to an industry as a whole.

"Maybe I feel differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub"

Read: "I can afford to live in a comfortable place and not a closet, so let me generalize such that no dev can afford to live in historically relevant software hubs either."

Next, lest this selfish hot take get too tonedeaf, time to write off our 6 figure privilege! Since this is a recent accomplishment, let's ditch any sort of humility toward the the talented software minds who came before who made the efficiencies of our day jobs possible. Instead, we'll roll with some terrible analogies to completely non-sequitur professional industries!

• I'm not performing life-altering surgery, because emotional hyperbolic appeals will distract from the fact I base my insight into the most valuable industry in the world on 7 paragraphs of anecdotes. Forget that the fundamentals of medicine and the practice thereof bear almost no relation to that of computer science and software development.

• Wheee! I love talking about dentists with mansions. I got my teeth cleaned last Saturday, and I've never had to be on call for any sort of systems admin role. Speaking of things I've never had to do, thank god I come from an ever increasing minority of people who can afford to live a comfortable lifestyle without taking on student loan debt early in life.

• I don't need a graduate degree to get precious time in a lab with equipment I absolutely must have to do my job. Unclear if I've ever met anyone who's tried to further themselves with a IT licensure, but since those aren't in vogue any more, I'll just make dreamy comparisons to one of the most antiquated, regulated industries out there. I've worked less, but people I know are stuck in debt forever working 80+ hour weeks in BigLaw!

Despite the option of a meaningful career alternative to the above, developers shouldn't try to build on their gains. Let's just foreclose even the notion that there are people working out there who are underpaid because they don't have coworker peers, or they are just the "IT guy", or are a woman or minority, or because some doctor, dentist, or lawyer has an idea.

"My lifetime earnings won't be that different because I got such a tremendous head start" ...so why should I try to build others up?

In these kind of discussions, I often point out how software is pretty unique in that due to supply/demand, there's no labor unions or collective bargaining. But maybe it's a good thing, because I'd never want you speaking for me when it comes to how much any of us are being paid.

barrkel• 10 years ago

Plenty of people work much harder than dentists, lawyers etc and get paid an order of magnitude less. Supply and demand sets prices, not worthiness or fairness.

Personally, I feel like I sold my teenage years as a price for my edge in tech. I'm not always sure it was worth it.

erklik2• 10 years ago

I sort of agree with what you're saying but just wanna point out that you may not have gone to school and have have a loan etc.

But many many software engineers do. Many of us go to uni and study a traditional degree and therefore, have a lot of loans etc as well as spend 3 to 4 years in University.

Also, learning for a software engineer is pretty much forever since the moment you stop learning is your downfall in software development.

frostburg2• 10 years ago

Honestly, medical school is intellectually easier than a compsci degree, even if it takes more time and more rote learning. My friends who are doctors tend to have terrible work schedules which they can hardly escape, on the other hand. Not that this actually matters a lot in compensation, given that in the circumstances it probably doesn't have a lot of effect on the supply of doctors.

dikdik• 10 years ago

Looking at people who seem "more impressive" in their work is not a way to gauge your worth. It's really as simple as that. Surgeons appear (and have the social capita) of being the utmost important, but salaries have little to do with that. In the digital age, where dotcom millionaires and billionaires can easily be minted...everyone should strive to take what is rightfully theirs. Because capitalism.

galfarragem• 10 years ago

Completely agree. I know several overworked and really smart individuals that struggle to make a decent living. Not surprisingly all of them happen to work in different fields.. By the other hand, all developers I know have an easy life. Is it a coincidence?

Hardly ever you'll find anybody saying that earns too much or works too little. Be humble and enjoy.

cema• 10 years ago

I agree with the main message: we are not underpaid. Considering the risks we are taking (both in life and in career) we live comfortable lives indeed.

A side note: when you said "I didn't have to pass a single licensing exam" I immediately thought of the way our profession tends to have that kind of exam every time we interview each other. A big part of interview for a software developer is based on the exam-type material; this is very different from the way other professionals, even engineers, have their interviews. (Does not contradict your message, just a note.)

dv_dt• 10 years ago

I'm always surprised when we have this double standard of valuation of people vs companies. Companies rarely sit back and independently say - hey my products are making too much of a profit margin, maybe I should lower the price? On the flip side, there is this push to beat down the valuation of people - or at least to apply a completely different set of measures on the income of people. Why does it matter if the income is generated by something "too easy"?

If anything there is an argument that labor in the overall economy is undervalued, and it is destabilizing the long term strength of the economy.

Retric2• 10 years ago

A doctor impacts one person at a time, a software developer can impact millions. Now, people are bad when dealing with large numbers, but regularly adding removing stress from millions of people will shorten / lengthen people's lives.

For less used software this might not seem like a big deal, but targeted software can have a larger indicidual impact even if it's only making 50+ people redundant.

ekianjo• 10 years ago

Sorry but why do you think the mental load of work after work applies only to developers? I can tell you it applies to a bunch of jobs that have nothing to do with development.

GarrisonPrime2• 10 years ago

Good point. This is one reason why I advocate a fee-per-service model over an hourly one. Potential client wants XYZ done, and seeks someone who can fulfill that need. Engineers quote prices, client chooses someone based on price and their reputation and portfolio. Etc.

Or in a simpler sense: You need someone to perform weekly maid service? $X please. You want a foundation dug and poured for your new satellite office? $Y please. Hourly wages in many cases are just inviting abuse and drain employee productivity and motivation.

Of course a flat fee would be rather difficult to implement in direct customer service sectors. Hiring a cashier to process a certain number of customer check-outs or a certain amount of purchases for a flat fee would be problematic, because there's no way of knowing how long that would take (so the employee can't schedule the rest of their life) and the employer wouldn't want the employee to have much control over what time of day they work.

nommm-nommm5• 10 years ago

Don't bring your work home with you on a regular basis. It requires effort because it's easy to bring your work home with you no matter your job. Keep work at work.

abalashov4• 10 years ago

In addition to that, I'm frankly not sure that a 10 hour/week (2 hour/day) savings is going to be worth a 25% pay cut to most people.

I'm not saying two hours per day (or an extra weekday or whatever) is entirely trivial, just that one has to be very fastidious and organised to take advantage of it. Even so, the economics of human task-switching and overhead, particularly in high cognitive load professions like software, are such that the marginal utility of two extra hours is going to be low. Life is not a spreadsheet, where one gets home at 3 PM and $ENJOYMENT or $NECESSARY_ERRANDS immediately commence. I'd probably just catch a breather for a few hours, if lucky, or catch up on the traffic from other life stressors gnawing at me.

Is that worth making 25% less? I don't know about that. I suspect most people would just negotiate a "75%" salary that still makes them reasonably happy.

Roboprog• 10 years ago

If they are fair and honest about this (not handing out 40 or 50 hours work and calling it 30), I think that 4 days * 8 hours per week would be pretty nice.

I did a 4 * 10 job one summer when I was a teen. It was REALLY nice to have Friday as "recovery" day before the real weekend started.

I'm not sure how my family would tolerate me being gone 4 * 10, though.

scrabble• 10 years ago

what bothers me about it is the 75% pay, because I could never imagine not putting in additional hours.

Were I only getting 75% of the pay of a full time worker, you can be sure I'd never put in a single additional hour.

I could say that a drop in my hours to 40 / week would be nice, but I'm the one who chooses to work longer hours. There's no expectation of longer hours where I am. I'm also usually not productive 8 hours in a row every day, sometimes significantly less than that. It ends up being very much a give / take scenario.

posterboy• 10 years ago

The unit of measure for work is not time. It's work. The measurement in units of time is related to a constant output of energy, ie. work. If you find that too rough an estimate to be applicable, that's fine, but how does that warrant more pay? Anyone could claim eating, staying healthy and taking the required time to relax after work are also work related, just e.g.

angmarsbane• 10 years ago

I don't believe this applies to just engineers alone. I suspect teachers, marketers, almost every other, if not every other job has problems that require a mental effort in off-work hours in order to solve.

spectrum1234• 10 years ago

This is fantastic news. It's absurd that it's basically impossible to have a successful career working a bit less than full time. This is way overdue in the modern world and hopefully becomes an option in more companies going forward.

malcolmgreaves• 10 years ago

There's a 25℅ reduction in pay. This policy is another one of Amazon's "screw the worker" policies.

crucifiction2• 10 years ago

Working 75% of the time for 75% of the pay is screwing the worker?

chrisper• 10 years ago

Do you mean 25% or something else (since you did not use the % symbol)?

Actually, I did a bit research and it seems the symbol you used is not even a mathematical one. It stands for "care of" and "signifies an intermediary who is responsible for transferring a piece of mail between the postal system and the final addressee."

So you can, I guess, disregard my question.

freestockoption• 10 years ago

I thought Amazon employees were routinely burned out. At least that's the perception I get from reading the news. Maybe this is to help combat it?

What's next? Unlimited PTO? :)

jerkstate• 10 years ago

Yes, it seems like this move is to help combat the perception that Amazon employees are routinely burned out.

partiallypro• 10 years ago

I've been told by people that work for Amazon that they can barely keep their teams properly staffed and working over is just a common occurrence, I doubt a 30-hr work week is viable for a company that is more or less (now) a logistics company. Doing so would require higher headcounts, losing money, or both. Not a viable solution, even with the automation push Amazon has.

The only type of companies I could see getting away with this would be pure software companies or agencies. Otherwise, I can't see it fitting many models or personal finances.

jchendy7• 10 years ago

I've been told by people that work for Amazon that they can barely keep their teams properly staffed

I think that's true of every tech successful company. There's always more +EV work to be done than people to do it, and recruiting quality people is never easy.

It seems short-sighted to suggest that the existence of this problem necessitates working long hours. There are lots of factors to consider:

* It's possible that somebody working 30 hours is actually more productive than somebody working 40 hours, so productivity goes up under the new policy without hiring anybody new.

* It's possible that many more people could enter the workforce if a 30 hour week with a flexible schedule was possible. This working style could be appealing to students, retired people, stay-at-home parents, artists, etc.

* Maybe it's actually okay for productivity to go down. If the company is able to remain stable while getting slightly less done and having much happier employees, perhaps that's a net gain to society.

rezashirazian• 10 years ago

I have quite a few friends who work at Amazon and what I hear from them is that the quality of your experience is completely dependent on team you're on.

There are teams where all horror stories you hear are common occurrences(although less so in recent years) and others where it's an absolute pleasure.

techsupporter• 10 years ago

This is one of the things I really, really love about being in my current Ops/Engineering position: I have a defined shift. I work 4x10, fixed hours (flexible within certain rules, like if I'm running 15 minutes late or leave 30 minutes early, my boss doesn't come down on me), a few weeks of vacation, and no on-call. I still get to work on interesting projects and* I have people who work before my shift and after my shift who also handle tasks and projects so there's no institutional reason to come in early or stay late to pull extra hours. (Barring a major service meltdown, of course.)

To each their own, but this is why I don't want to dev for a living.

* - 3 day weekends every week is an awesome thing for me.

mbloom1915• 10 years ago

guys lets not pretend Amazon doesn't operate in Europe and already have this setup - if its already working over there dipping their toes in the US is reasonable. it's a pilot.

20yrs_no_equity• 10 years ago

This plus stack-ranking means 60 hour workweeks. I worked at Amazon for several years, their culture may pretend to support this, but, like almost everything you read about Amazon, it's PR fluff. Never going to happen.

Simply only showing up in the office 30 hours a week would be enough to put your team on the bottom end of the stack.

Amazon is organized such that the politics are vicious and anything that can be used to put another team down (And thus elevate your team in the stack) will be used.

Managers like Bezos are proud of creating this toxic cult like culture because they rationalize it and are not interested in hearing about how they are screwing up.

A real example of this is Bezos claiming after the NYT article that if anyone saw abuse they should email him directly... and now the ex-amazon alumni group has grown by several people who did exactly that and were fired.

My boss was committing felonies on the PacMed grounds on a regular basis, drove %80 of his team to leave, and he still got promoted.

Because he was good at politics and BS (and terrible at actually getting product done, easily wasting %25 of our time with nonsense because he didn't understand how the system worked but wanted to "manage" (which really meant micro-manage.))

Felonies, I'm not kidding.

BookingPotions5• 10 years ago

As an amazon SDE myself, one who doesn't think working at Amazon is that bad, but do admit that it is challenging, and often do work much longer then 40h a week, I would need to have a guarantee that my pay cut comes with a no more then 30h a week clause.

I'd like to see proper hour counting, like a check in and check out. Where any hour above 30h comes at an extra cost to Amazon, like double pay. So that they would be incentivised to actually tell me to stop working and send me home.

I know some people might say, that's up to you, just don't let yourself work extra, but at a company like Amazon, you can actually lose your job or at least not be promoted from delivering less then the other employees. You're ranked against your peers, so deciding to work only 30h would hurt you in the long run if the others started putting in 35h, 40h, 45h, etc.

peatmoss2• 10 years ago

I never thought I'd want a clock-in, clock-out system until this moment. Early in my working life (teen retail electronics job), I felt the pressure of the clock, even as a super reliable worker. I just knew it was there.

Now, the idea of a clock that tells me to go home seems super appealing.

therealdrag0• 10 years ago

On the other hand, if you get paid 'for' 40, but work 50, and someone else gets paid for 30, but works 35, is that a problem?

DominikR2• 10 years ago

Could it be that this has to do with Obamacare? I read that it is cheaper to have part time employees in the US right now, but I might be wrong on that.

swiley• 10 years ago

That's true but I don't think it's cheap enough at these pay levels for that to matter a whole lot.

DominikR2• 10 years ago

Well if it was Google or Facebook I certainly wouldn't entertain this thought but with Amazon? They are known to do things that some (not me) regard as pretty shady to shave off costs wherever they can.

I wouldn't object to that as Amazon didn't create the rules, they are just operating within the system in the most efficient way they can.

What I find concerning is that the rules are changed in the West to incentivise part time work (which doesn't pay living wages in other sectors than IT) over full time work, effectively leaving more and more workers dependant on welfare.

It's what we see here in the EU too since the crash in 2008. Many jobs were lost and the recovery was mostly in part time jobs where the government has to support these workers with additional payments in order for them to survive.

megablast• 10 years ago

Not for the guys in the factories though.

amzn-336495• 10 years ago

What is likely occurring at Amazon is that the board has outlined that executive and line managers should be paid based on number of reports beneath them and this is a scheme simply to get more butts in seats so manager can be paid more. Before you say that can't possibly be correct, consider you don't know Amazon. At Amazon this sort of out in the open cheating or ability to game the system is seen as a mark of power. It's the same as cheating vendors or publishers. It's seen as a positive. Secondly the management culture is that employees are mere chaff to be used in any way possible to increase management compensation and power. There is absolutely no way this has anything to do with making Amazon better as a business.

losteverything• 10 years ago

The most difficult thing to do is to stop work after 30 hrs (or whatever the time-to-be-paid is) It is counter to stop working if the job is not completed. But one must learn the discipline to stop.

Even if you can squeeze more productivity into 30 hours the temptation should be resisted.

The outfit I work for intentionally gives 9 hours of work to new employees and has them work an 7.5 hour day. It's intentional and brilliant. New people do not know they don't have to do 9 in 7.5. Old timers coach them but it is a very hard thing to tell someone to work slower.

I think Amazon will realize more productiviy in 30 than in 40 (in some cases)

balls187• 10 years ago

Get two jobs working 30 hours, each paying 75%, and you'll work the same as one demanding software job, and make 50% more!

Falkon13132• 10 years ago

"Even names like that, 'part-time' or 'reduced,' make it seem like a deviation from the norm, like you're doing less."

This is a telling statement. Why are we still stuck on a minimum of 40 hours being 'full-time'? After over a century of productivity increases, and with ever-increasing automation, we could soon be at the point where a 15-hour work week is the equivalent of an old 'full-time' work week. Now is a good time to start nudging down expectations.

The pay cut is wrong, however. The fact that people are producing much more now in 30 hours than they used to produce in 40 argues against that. If a company is profiting from the benefits of that productivity, but can't afford to pay the employees for their work, then it needs to change something else.

GarrisonPrime2• 10 years ago

Now is a good time to start nudging down expectations.

Agreed. As technology advances, we have a much less need for labor. Yet we are not yet at the stage of "Star Trek abundance", so people still need to work for a living. A cultural shift to a shorter standard work week will be essential, I feel, to avoid having catastrophic waves of unemployment.

I'm not sure about the pay cut being wrong however. That may be necessary to some extent, society-wide. But if nearly everything is becoming automated and dirt cheap, one's standard of living need not necessarily decrease. It may dramatically increase, even if the dollar amount of your paycheck doesn't change (or even if it goes down).

sidcool• 10 years ago

With the speed and aggression that Amazon moves, it's going to be a challenge to implement this for Engineers.

jecjec• 10 years ago

The most important thing about this is that it will give other companies institutional cover to implement this within their firms.

I love my job but I have had jobs I've hated. Work sucks, go Amazon. If widely adopted, this would represent a massive reduction in taxation imposed on the average American family. A two-income family working 25% less hours pays over 25% less in taxes. Progressive taxes work both ways, Feds :)

elihu2• 10 years ago

I work for Intel, and just a couple weeks ago switched to a 32-hour-a-week schedule. I had to get approval from my boss, and presumably my boss had to get approval from his boss, but it was a pretty easy switch. So far, it's been great. Benefits are the same, salary amortized at 80%, and stock grants are reduced a bit more than that.

I think most people would rather have the extra money, for various reasons. If I owed a couple hundred grand on a mortgage or was saving to send my kids to college, I might think the same but as it is I have no house and no kids and relatively low living expenses, so I can afford to be a little bit self-indulgent and take a 3-day weekend every week.

dasmoth3• 10 years ago

Good for you. I can assure you that there are plenty of people with kids who like this idea, too!

But what's the justification for a more-than-pro-rata loss of stock grants?

elihu2• 10 years ago

I still get full benefits even though I'm only working 4/5ths the hours, so it makes sense they'd take that out somewhere else. I don't get a lot of stock, so I think it works out numerically that the stock I don't get is probably about equal to a fifth of the cost of my health insurance. I think that's fair.

nemesisj• 10 years ago

My company (Administrate - http://www.getadministrate.com) went to a 4 day, 32 hour week (but paid for 5) a little over a year ago. It's been a huge success, and we haven't seen any drop in productivity. We have had to be a little bit more efficient in some areas but overall the productivity gain was more or less "automatic". I'd recommend trying it to anyone, but understand it can be a scary thing to implement, mainly b/c it can be an easy thing to blame when things aren't going well. We have had some brief periods (usually when we're hiring) where teams have had to work 5 days, but overall we've been pretty consistent.

kiddz• 10 years ago

Just wondering, but it strikes me as odd to have the Washington Post report anything about Amazon, since bezos owns them both. It's like Bloomberg reporting on Bloomberg's flirtation with a third party bid.

groaner• 10 years ago

I would much rather have 75% pay for 13 weeks of PTO. Highly unlikely anyone will ever offer that.

itaysk2• 10 years ago

"These 30-hour employees will be salaried and receive the same benefits as traditional 40-hour workers, but they will receive only 75 percent of the pay full-time workers earn."

How does this sentence make any sense?

sokoloff6• 10 years ago

It means that they get the same [non-cash] benefits as other workers and that their cash compensation is the only thing scaled down in proportion to nominal hours worked.

(I'm assuming you were confused by "same benefits" and "75% pay". Benefits, in this context, is the non-cash benefits: health insurance, PTO accrual, etc.)

itaysk2• 10 years ago

I was (still am) confused because they say employees will be 'salaried' the same and than receive 75% of full time 'earn'. Salary and earn are the same to me.

stefs• 10 years ago

i've been working a 30h/week job, 6 hours a day, with flex hours (without overtime pay but comp time) for the last couple of years and i absolutely love it.

last job i worked at had 42 hours and after 2 years i've been totally burnt out; now i'm motivated, usually well rested and concentrated. when my concentration drops i go home for the day, if i'm working on a hard problem that occupies my mind i'll stay a couple of hours more (but only if i want to, which i usually do). i haven't had to do crunch time for several years and when that was the case they asked if you wanted to volunteer and if you said no that was ok.

also if my project lead tells me there's not much work to do right now and if i want to take off time now would be a good time to do so i'll usually do it.

additionally, if you want to it's possible to work from home if there aren't any reasons speaking against it (meetings) - many colleagues work one fixed day a week from home (i don't because i love the quiet conditions and free, potent coffee).

in my opinion this benefits both me and my employer. i'm motivated, concentrated, productive and loyal - currently i can't imagine working somewhere else full time, even for higher pay. i do regard my employer as fair and really want the company to succeed, not only because of my workplace security but also because i think they're doing it right and that's how it should be done. there's no us-vs-them mentality.

pay is good but i'm probably not going to become a fabled startup millionaire here; quality of life is, in my opinion, unbeatable. currently i don't know any people who lead a more comfortable life than i.

atopuzov• 10 years ago

Cool, perhaps that's why I was required to work more and be oncall all the time, have meetings after 18:00, have no life, have high blood pressure.

mark_l_watson• 10 years ago

Makes sense to me. For most of my 40+ years of working, I worked a 32 hour work week and this was mostly for large corporations. I simply informed HR that I would not be working Monday's and to pay me 80% of my salary. It always amazed me that I was able to do this decade after decade, but the trick was that I worked really hard the 4 days I was in the office.

I mostly used the extra time for friends and family, and to write books.

JamesBarney• 10 years ago

BTW if you went around and asked a bunch of software engineers how they finangled there way into working a sub-40 week and collected that into a e-book. I would buy the shit out of that. And judging from other hacker news posts there are lots of other developers who would as well.

I would do it myself but I don't have the extra day to write books :) and I'm a terrible writer.

namelezz• 10 years ago

30-hour workweek

Amazon, is that 30 in decimal or hexadecimal?

peatmoss2• 10 years ago

The 75% pay / 100% benefits thing is likely the factor that prevents many companies from doing this. This is part of the reason I love the idea of a single-payer health system. If companies were no longer on the hook for the most expensive benefit, then more flexible wrking arrangements with concordance between work and pay would be possible.

radafor3• 10 years ago

Agreed. I don't think healthcare should be tied to work.

AlphaWeaver• 10 years ago

"Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post."

radafor3• 10 years ago

I see a lot of skepticism in the comments.. is a 30 or even 20 hour week (for commensurate pay) even possible? I have lived fine on very little money before and I value my time much more, but it seems like my only option for not slaving away is working for minimum wage.

Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

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