Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/seattle-amazon-workers-plan-walkout-over-return-to-office-layoffs/

by runarberg • 3 years ago

230 286 3 years ago

tjr2252• 3 years ago

If these workers could get remote jobs, they would- but they can’t. Amazon knows this, and probably can’t wait for them to quit.

For now all they can do is complain about having to go to an office to be a spoiled, overpaid tech worker. If I had that job I would be keeping my mouth shut and enjoying the paycheck, but to each their own I suppose.

x86x875• 3 years ago

Amazon has a small window to force the drones back to the office. Once people start having options we're done. WFH will be here to stay.

worrycue2• 3 years ago

After they force people back to office then what? It’s not like they won’t leave if they manage to get remote job elsewhere.

Frankly, I don’t get this drive to RTO. The only gain is face to face meetings might improve productivity (in some people). The downside is increased pollution due to commuting - even with EVs you are wearing out tires increase the amount of micro plastics in the environment, wearing out their batteries, and wasting electricity.

benjaminwootton3• 3 years ago

Objectively, people are seemingly being forced back to the office at least part time, and there are less WFH opportunities. Those in favour of WFH are losing the standoff.

crop_rotation4• 3 years ago

Most of them sadly can not get even a non remote job easily. Most of big tech, and Amazon specially, massively lowered their hiring floor to hire more over the years, and are full of extremely incompetent people who will find it hard to survive elsewhere. Orgs are more like fiefdoms and full of incompetent people. A lot of such incompetent people know they are incompetent and go to massive lengths to survive (getting credit for everything they can, acting as information gatekeepers whenever they can).

x86x875• 3 years ago

Who can get a remote job easily? The top performers. Incoming dead sea effect.

DenisM• 3 years ago

Astute observation. I imagine this effect will eventually consume any company. Or will it? Do we know of a way to stave it off?

neilv2• 3 years ago

Most of big tech, and Amazon specially, massively lowered their hiring floor to hire more over the years, and are full of extremely incompetent people

If that's true, it'd add insult to injury, for the people who were interested in the better FAANGs... but got turned off by the stack of months' worth of prep materials that FAANG in-house recruiters would send to candidates, for their kabuki theatre of interview processes.

One of my recent theories about the interview processes promoted by FAANGs is that they (by accident or design) tend to neuter students against becoming upstart competitors. Think of all those students in school who could have time for side projects, considering startups, developing skills that woudl be useful in startups... and instead FAANGs have trained students to conceive of the very skills as passing the FAANG interview rituals, and to spend their spare time practicing for those rituals. Not only are those students less likely to start a startup, but startups that happen still have to find the workers who are amenable to thinking like creative engineers, and working as a team focused on a shared goal, despite all the FAANG-like messaging to young developers that has infected CS departments and broader industry.

mbgerring2• 3 years ago

Instead of begging to be exploited by billionaires, yob could band together with your fellow tech workers and win better treatment for all of us.

tjr2252• 3 years ago

What? These people have lives better than 99% of the population.

cvoss• 3 years ago

Believe it or not, there are other motivating factors for doing good work than money. Just because I'm fairly compensated doesn't mean I'm going to tolerate major inconveniences that impede my ability to work efficiently, productively, and with a positive attitude. Part of why I want to do my job well is because I find the work itself gratifying. Once that motivating factor vanishes, I'm going to complain or look elsewhere for work. It's in both parties' best interest for complaints to happen, to be heard, and to be addressed, so that workers can get back to being both content for themselves and productive for the company.

neilv2• 3 years ago

“There’s a feeling of the culture and the values that are being told are important for us to bring to the table are not being mirrored by the top executives,” the worker said. “They do not model with their behavior what we are told to do with our roles.”

Are they referring to Amazon's Leadership Principles, or something else?

https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-...

tjpnz• 3 years ago

I read that to suggest the execs aren't coming to the office themselves.

rlabrecque• 3 years ago

I don't work at Amazon, but my C-suite and leadership team is in the office and that really makes a HUGE difference in going back.

Both by them leading by example and getting to have the face to face time with them.

revlolz2• 3 years ago

It's a multitude of things. The LPs are the start of it, but the data oriented culture has been ignored by rto mandate and the head of HR's apathetic response to the remote advocates. Amazon is a very heavy document writing company and more often than not if you had to write a doc you faced someone saying "so what?" and then that person or their/your leaders requiring proving points and writing narratives leveraging facts through data to challenge biases. Amazon's leadership pissed the workers (formerly "leaders") off by instead explaining all mandates and changes are based upon their feelings and beliefs. There is no data (at least any they care to share) and it's heavily speculated to be a 4th wave of layoffs due to the only data publicly available was aws employee surveying demonstrating 80+% of workers wanted remote as a choice.

The other thing often referenced is something of a company culture thing known as "day 1." The tldr there is bezos coined the term day 1 culture to pretend Amazon was always imitating being at launch day status (day 1) and that day 2 is ruin. MThe rto mandate is a cookie cutter example of "day 2 behavior" listed by bezos and his high level leaders.

Finally, there is the hypocrisy. Executives have tons of exemptions, reasons to bend the mandates for themselves, and the power to choose how and where they work, or influence policies involved. Meanwhile, workers have faced a brick wall when it's come to things even medical accommodations for remote. Workers have posted demands from HR forcing employees to at length detail private and embarrassing medical conditions only to auto-decline accommodations after. Workers have no ability to transfer locations that would benefit both the and the company due to red tape from the RTO edicts. Some workers, having been hired full remote, or to a location not where their direct manager resides are being mandated to move across the country due to no exemption stance taken by Amazon leadership.

dbish2• 3 years ago

As an ex-amazonian myself I agree with the first part about data driven and writing culture and that much of the way this is presented is very non-amazonian, but I'm not getting how rto is a "cookie cutter" example of day 2 behavior. Given that many startups are pushing for in person recently (at least publically, I'm not weighing in either way), how is going in person clearly something that means amazon is past the day 1/early culture?

yellow_postit• 3 years ago

For a company so metrics data driven - their RTO writeups sure do lack hard data from what’s been shared publicly.

o1y323• 3 years ago

I'm not surprised, and I haven't seen "official survey" from companies regarding employees' attitude on remote work. They don't have/show data likely because they know data don't work in their favor and they have to come up with nonsense to convince themselves.

I don't work at Amazon, but most of my coworkers never go to office when they don't have to (on "off" days). People prefer staying at home instead of commuting and getting stuck in traffic, isn't that astonishing?

x86x875• 3 years ago

Wed 5/31 12pm near Bezos's balls (ie the spheres). It would be a shame if other people that are forced back into the office would not show up in support.

patch_cable• 3 years ago

So people are walking out at lunch time?

Do they plan to return after lunch?

olliej3• 3 years ago

If only there were some kind of organization employees could belong to that would help counter the asymmetric power of corporations.

hirako2000• 3 years ago

The interesting part it isn't even needed for this walk to organise. We don't need unions like we used to, some online admin at most is enough

clipsy5• 3 years ago

That sounds lovely, but I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself. They haven't actually won any concessions or really accomplished anything yet; they haven't even demonstrated a reasonably successful walkout yet (we'll see whether they can manage that on the day of). For what it's worth, though, I hope your optimism is justified.

jasonhansel• 3 years ago

Unions get a large number of legal protections that aren't available otherwise.

olliej3• 3 years ago

how are you organizing thing online? how do you contact people? how do you choose policy? How do you support people who aren't being paid due to a strike?

What is it you think unions are doing, that they don't need to do now?

runarberg3• 3 years ago

No, we need them more than we used to.

Back before the National Labor Relations Board unions were unregulated and collective action was unprotected. Unions were more like activist groups (think if BLM had a leadership structure and memberships). During strikes unions had to build solidarity and convince every worker to join. Strikers had to physically prevent scabs from entering the workplace, often with violence. Now it is simply illegal to scab. With today’s militarized police there is no way we could return to the era before NLRB and hope for success.

We can, and we should organize outside of unions, but the goal should ultimately be to form a union, and benefit from all the protections you get from having one.

mbgerring2• 3 years ago

This is long overdue. It is well past time for tech workers to organize and demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs.

coin2• 3 years ago

Getting FAANG salary isn’t enough?

Madmallard5• 3 years ago

With return to office it's nowhere near enough on the west coast. Unless you hold a top position at a large corporation on the west coast you don't even have enough money to buy a house. Considering you're helping generate billions in revenue yeah, I'd say you should be being paid more.

programmarchy• 3 years ago

Better to think in terms of percentages. Wages vs GDP has decreased while profits vs GDP has increased. Maybe tech is an outlier compared to the broader economy. Would be interesting to see the numbers.

spicyusername• 3 years ago

No.

Uehreka2• 3 years ago

Can people on this site please stop acting like everyone in tech (or “everyone in tech who matters”) is working for FAANG and getting a FAANG salary? Believe it or not there exist software developers who make less than $100k.

clipsy5• 3 years ago

Is a FAANG salary enough for Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk?

b345• 3 years ago

Why should it be when you can be laid off even when the corporation is making record breaking profits

jrflowers• 3 years ago

Not if you’re getting laid off

ok_dad2• 3 years ago

No, we shouldn’t even have to work for nice scraps, they’re still scraps.

btheshoe• 3 years ago

the nba player's association has secured nba players a nice share of revenue. seems to me like engineers could do something similar.

Thermosetty• 3 years ago

It's all relative isn't it? To some 250k+ is a dream salary. To others it's just a start.

davesque• 3 years ago

No, it isn't.

janalsncm3• 3 years ago

No it’s not. That salary is relatively high for the US but that is only because every other industry has been eviscerated for decades. Every other industry told themselves “it’s fine, I’m being paid well so I won’t worry about it” and then their job got shipped to Shenzhen.

o1y323• 3 years ago

EVERY time someone talks about ANYTHING related to benefits, someone tries to use the salary as a counterargument, as if a $250k salary means you are supposed to give up your whole life and NEVER ever complain about anything. Seriously?

merek• 3 years ago

Why just tech? Can't the same be said for employees of any successful company?

libraryatnight• 3 years ago

Yes but we're a forum for tech workers and this is an article about a tech worker walk out.

XorNot• 3 years ago

Yes it can, but this is a tech industry oriented forum.

nichos• 3 years ago

The time to negotiate your salary is during the hiring process. Employees are not owed anything above the agreed upon amount, no matter how successful the company is.

wilsonnb32• 3 years ago

The world would be a better place if employees were owed something above their agreed upon compensation when their company has extraordinary success, so I choose to believe that they are.

janalsncm3• 3 years ago

In a right to work state, every single day is an implicit negotiation with your employer. The only reason you go to work that day is because you’re satisfied with your compensation.

robomartin5• 3 years ago

demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs

Yeah, well, thoughts like that only come from a context in which there is zero understanding of the realities of business and what it takes to profitably run one. I always find this interesting. Not sure if people just say this kind of thing to just be one of the bro's or because they really believe it. I hope it isn't the latter.

A while back one of my kids had a college-level business class in high school. Their final project was to put together a full presentation, financials and a pitch to get a loan for a mid size bakery ($5MM/year gross revenue).

He was absolutely astounded to learn just how difficult it was to make money in that business. When his team started on the project they pretty much assumed that with $5MM/yr the owner was just raking it in. It was nothing less than hilarious when he came into my office one day to tell me he could not believe what it took to be in business and make money. He had a revelation few people have. He had it at 15 years of age. Most adults don't have a clue about this their entire lives.

VC's? They risk millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions. And, guess what? Most of their bets might lose money or barely make any. People only see success, they never stop to consider and internalize what it took to get there.

CEO's? Try running a non-trivial company and see how it goes. Heck, even a medium company can put you in the hospital! My prior startup did that to me twice in ten years.

Our country would derive great benefit from delivering real financial education before we launch young adults into the world. Ignorance has consequences. Generational consequences.

grensley• 3 years ago

I've always suspected that the primary education system purposefully avoids financial education because of fears that too many people attempting to join the ownership class would cause civil unrest.

somsak22• 3 years ago

VCs aren't risking their own money. But yes, on the whole active investors must make less than passive ones if fees are included.

CEOs are hardly the only ones with health issues from their jobs. Hell Amazon specifically is so insanely bad about this that Bernie has basically been taking just about them in regards to an exploitive employer that leaves people disabled.

Maybe we shouldn't be normalizing unsustainable work that creates health problems for people, whether at the CEO or the regular worker level.

ackbar03• 3 years ago

Is this really going to work? Aren't they laying off people? Just layoff the walkouts

losteric• 3 years ago

that's likely a major motive behind RTO, yes - voluntary attrition and termination with cause (ie no severance, unlike layoffs and pip). A large walk out would probably boost share pricing.

joelcollinsdc• 3 years ago

Officially you can’t be fired for striking right? Guessing there’s a lot of ways a company can get around that though.

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

If you strike against the US government as a public servant, yes you can be fired for breaking the law.[1]

Strictly within the context of the private world however, I don't know.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...

idlewords9• 3 years ago

Under the Wagner Act you can't be fired for concerted collective action in the workplace, if the goal of such action is to improve working conditions. That is a much broader protection than for just strikes (which are pretty narrowly defined).

But like you say, any corporation worth its salt can find ways to get rid of problem employees without violating the letter of the law even when it's not already planning big layoffs.

idlewords9• 3 years ago

The danger of any walkout is that you won't be allowed to walk back in. The time for useful collective action was back when tech companies couldn't hire fast enough, and tech employees enjoyed unusual leverage. After 27,000 layoffs, a performative walkout without a defined goal is just making it easier for Amazon management as they plan the next round of cuts.

causality0• 3 years ago

That's a good point about the defined goal. I'd personally like to know if Amazon treats its white-collar workers as shitty as it treats its blue-collar ones. If so, why are they working there when tech has been so hot for the past years, but if not, does that make this a case of "voting for leopards eating people's faces off party"?

sleepybrett2• 3 years ago

If the number is a large enough percentage they couldn't do a lockout. While it may be an industry-wide supply side problem for employees you can't just fire a huge portion of the staff and hire new people and expect things to just keep on truckin', losing that much institutional knowledge would be suicide.

idlewords9• 3 years ago

That's certainly the theory behind collective action. But the problem is you can't go from nothing/online venting to organizing multi-thousand-employee walkouts, any more than you can get up after years of bedrest and run a marathon. The capacity to effectively organize white collar tech workers at Amazon (or anywhere else) was never built up, and now it's too late.

thisarticle3• 3 years ago

Tell that to Twitter.

hintymad• 3 years ago

you can't just fire a huge portion of the staff

Define huge? Tech companies increased their headcount between 2020 and 2022 by at least double-digit percentage, Amazon included. I'm not sure how many of them are essential in top management's eyes.

bg24• 3 years ago

A large percentage of employees can definitely walk out if they do not need to worry about paying their bills, should things turn south. There will be less demand and more supply of workers in the foreseeable future.

My opinion is generic across all companies. I am not an Amazon employee, nor own any stocks.

ok_dad2• 3 years ago

Yea they know that. Even in the face of that they are walking out. Must mean they’re seriously pissed off. I would be more worried if I were the employer depending on this office and I would be trying to make these people happy so all my projects wouldn’t go into the shit bin for several months while I tried to rebuild my team.

idlewords9• 3 years ago

It is extremely important in these situations to distinguish between talk and action. So far you have a bunch of people talking about walking out, which is very different from doing it.

pretendgeneer• 3 years ago

Funny how now is never the right time. It's always just gone or some time soon.

idlewords9• 3 years ago

There was a multi-year effort beginning with Trump's election to organize tech workers, and one of the key arguments was that there was a short window of opportunity in which to act, before some combination of automation and changes to the workforce removed the unique leverage tech workers enjoyed. The message was "now is the right time" for maybe three years, and now that ship has sailed. All we're left with is easy message board cynicism.

MattGaiser• 3 years ago

The problem is that the right time for something is usually a sacrifice in a time of abundance. So nobody wants to think about such a negative during good times and thus no action is taken.

shawndrost• 3 years ago

My good man, you are responding to an actual union organizer who actually spent the recent boom years doing "now is the right time" work at software companies, at the actual right time.

tarsinge2• 3 years ago

There is a big difference between a general 27,000 layoffs and a significant portion of key senior engineers walking out. Dysfunctional management could fail to grasp that and the company could continue to coast in the short term with happy investors. It will take some time until we see the cracks due to bad tech choices and inability to execute.

adultSwim3• 3 years ago

We still all of the work. They can't do it without us. We have tremendous power that we seldom acknowledge.

btbuildem• 3 years ago

Wow, the pro-corp tone in some of the comments is surprising. Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production -- and can withhold them to our leverage. These folks are walking out for the right reasons -- big f-off to RTO, and even if a bit late, the layoffs.

chadcmulligan4• 3 years ago

There are so many people that stand to lose if a fully remote work force came to pass. Building management, HR, middle managers, property investors, they're the ones you're hearing I'd guess. Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely, it's not like we spend all day talking to people any way.

charcircuit• 3 years ago

Software developers lose due to increased competition. Instead of competing with just silicon valley you are competing with the entire world.

ThrowawayR24• 3 years ago

Amazon has a reputation of being frugal to the point of stupidity (e.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-use-frupidi...) so that tired conspiracy theory especially doesn't hold water for them. Amazon wouldn't give a hoot about the opinions of "building management, HR, middle managers", etc. if anyone there could make a solid business case that increasing WFH would significantly improve their bottom line over the long term.

ajkjk• 3 years ago

It's so annoying that the vocal commenters on here assume that every engineer agrees with them that working from home is preferable to having an office. Nothing against other people working from home but please keep in mind that people's can differ greatly from your own.

RedShift1• 3 years ago

I've already bought it, you don't need to sell it to me.

lettergram5• 3 years ago

I managed a remote team and man is it harder than in person.

One common remote work thought is “you get more heads down time”

I’ve found almost the opposite. You have to be way more regular about engagement with each person. I would do 20 min meetings with every team member, every week. Team lunches over zoom twice a week, daily standup (1 min per person, plus breakout rooms for further discussions), Friday afternoon optional game days, etc. I always just hung out on a video conference, all day; similar to when people game.

In an office I can walk around the block with you and chat. In a remote setting I have to schedule some time and keep you engaged. It’s a long distance relationship, takes more time, and effort… much harder to sustain

deanCommie• 3 years ago

Here's my hot take that's not actually that hot, I'll start with an analogy every engineer should agree with:

There is a sweet spot for "amount of process" that makes individuals and teams the most productive. Note, I didn't necessarily say happiest, and the productivity may not be sustainable indefinitely but we all know there is a certain sweet spot. Too much process kills productivity. "Can I just please leave this fucking meeting and start writing code?". No process also sucks. "Oh shit, you built that API? I thought I was supposed to be building that"

But just the right amount unblocks everyone and lets teams build stuff efficiently.

The trouble is "the right amount" is different by person, by team, and by project. So the most important thing of any process is to have it be constantly re-evaluated and adjusted as the team and work evolves. But I think we've all been there on a team when things just glide and try to recreate that for the rest of our careers.

I think the same is true for remote work vs in-office work. Sure, on the right task working from home is positively ethereal compared to an office filled with interruptions. But on a long enough timeline, and especially if you are part of the creative process of engineering (ie not just "converting requirements into code" but helping define the requirements, and contributing to the full product, which good companies incentivize their engineers to do), then you do want to be in person with your teammates for at least part of the time. Juniors need access to Seniors to ask questions sitting next to each other or even pair programming. And there is nothing quite like iterating on a design with a peer at a whiteboard compared to a remote session.

Balanced effectively by good teams, a mixture of in-person and remote work is probably the most efficient answer for most teams.

The problem is:

1/ It doesn't happen automatically, much like refining a process, figuring out this balance is going to require much tuning and adaptation. And a top-down company-wide mandate for the same process is the opposite of empowering that for teams bottoms-up.

2/ It has meaningful consequences for people's lives - things like where they reside, and how they commute. Whatever improvements come with a hybrid work environment are probably lost by the candidates you lose who refuse to move, and the sacrifices people have to make in the rest of their lives.

osigurdson8• 3 years ago

If these jobs need to go then so be it. It is a net positive to have people allocated to where they are needed.

RestlessMind6• 3 years ago

middle managers,

If you think middle managers stand to lose due to remote work, you have no clue why middle managers exist in the first place. Remote work increases the importance of that role, in fact.

Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely

Have you actually done meaningful software development? For a specific example - designing a complex system is definitely hard to do remotely. Put 3-4 key people in that project in front of a whiteboard and you will get a much better outcome. I have been managing remote teams for >3 years now and have flown in my teams from all over the world to a single location on multiple occasions. Every single time, the feedback was that whiteboard sessions were awesome and helped move the project forward significantly.

dumpsterdiver4• 3 years ago

Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production

Typical software jobs absolutely do not "hold the means of production".

The aforementioned "means of production" likely includes years of work from an entire sales team in order to land paying customers in the first place. What good are the "means of production" when no one is buying your product?

Cool, you built a useful piece of software... are you ready to pay a cool million to your sales people to actually get it out the door? No? Well then you don't own the means of production. You own a pipe dream.

How about paying for all of those cloud servers that your customers run on? When you write code does it also automatically pay your cloud server bills? Guess what, those servers are required to actually run the god-granted code that you put on this earth.

petersellers• 3 years ago

What are the software sales people going to sell if there are no software developers to build their product?

In a way you're both right - software developers (usually) don't create/design/sell the entire product end-to-end, but they no doubt are a critical piece of the process. That gives them leverage.

wilsonnb32• 3 years ago

You have a good point but software that exists with no one to sell it is more valuable than salesman with nothing to sell.

Unless you are just trying to grift people, which a disappointingly large percentage of the tech/Silicon Valley/startup crowd are totally cool with.

andrewflnr• 3 years ago

Sales was always and continues to be separate from production. Production has always needed tools and inputs. You're not pointing out anything about software that's different from what Marx would have seen in a factory.

tessierashpool2• 3 years ago

Typical software jobs absolutely do not "hold the means of production".

The aforementioned "means of production" likely includes years of work from an entire sales team in order to land paying customers in the first place.

that's the means of sales.

refurb4• 3 years ago

Indeed. I'm not sure why tech workers have this viewpoint that every other corporate function adds little to nothing to the bottom line.

"Build it and they will come" is not how it works. There is a reason why very successful sales people often make more money than tech workers.

idlewords9• 3 years ago

Walking out to protest multiple rounds of layoffs may not be the power move you imagine.

mc322• 3 years ago

To quote a somewhat polarizing politician, what difference, at this point, does it make?

But yeah, not the greatest timing…

lelanthran5• 3 years ago

Walking out to protest multiple rounds of layoffs may not be the power move you imagine.

Sure it is, if you're unionised!

I've seen decades of comments, even here on HN, from devs who say that unions are not necessary for software development.

Welcome to the future, I guess?

nitinreddy88• 3 years ago

What many of you are missing is, its gonna hurt US in the long run.

1. If US people wouldnt want to RTO, these jobs will be moved out to India. You can get to hire 3 people for same pay and they are happy to work. Or you can definitely hire pretty good engineer with half cost and same output

2. Unlike labour work, you are not competing with local people or can benefit from unions. You are competing with world and there are lot of people who are ready to grab it with same business outcome

the_only_law• 3 years ago

these jobs will be moved out to India.

You mean just like the other thousand times people said this over the decades?

epicureanideal2• 3 years ago

Good engineers seem to cost quite a lot everywhere. I have yet to see the mythical $10 per hour amazing engineer from overseas, although I’ve seen several amazing but expensive engineers from overseas. I think the era of wage arbitrage is over. This myth is perhaps perpetuated to scare the talent over here into accepting worse conditions.

Any small gains they can make through arbitrage are eaten by time zone issues, communication issues, legal issues, etc when working across huge distances.

pas2• 3 years ago

... the structural issues the USA and the world faces are probably literally endless, but the free movement of IT work is not one of them.

the claim that it's gonna hurt the US in the long run is almost certainly false, because ironically the long-run US economic and foreign policy goals are constantly hindered by its own protectionist policies.

these policies are the same ones that lead to countless fuckups when it turns out that the US is both "too big to fail", but also still smaller than the world (Puerto Rico, Jones Act, name a more iconic duo; oh right, subsidies forced quasi-monopoly for baby formula and only 3 factories nationwide; oh right, granting WTO MFN status to China without requiring and enforcing reciprocation)

long run America is forced to deal with a lot of unstable allies because they are not integrated economically sufficiently. no shared fate no shared interest, etc.

... of course it's unlikely to "solve" geopolitics in a 7AM HN post, but worrying about offshoring IT jobs is like trying to cordon off the best seats on the deck on the Titanic as the water rises.

exelm9• 3 years ago

At the large company I work at, offshoring jobs to India was announced in December 2021. Same company is now in the process of re-hiring in house because they realized what kind of offshore programmers are willing to work PST hours.

caskstrength2• 3 years ago

This argument is being repeated in every thread about RTO so let me just copy/paste my reply from before:

Because interview process in bigtech has been subverted by people benefiting from it and who are already skilled in it. I bet absolute majority of people that I worked with and considered them very good couldn't solve knapsack problem on whiteboards in 15 minutes, don't know Z algorithm by heart and won't be able to correctly project Amazon leadership principles with (made up bullshit) examples from their previous jobs.

osigurdson8• 3 years ago

"Means of production" is a tribe signalling phrase imo.

IntelMiner2• 3 years ago

Perhaps "Proletariat" might be better?

Or "working class"

dukeofdoom• 3 years ago

Perhaps the "Wagie get back in the cage" policy, would go over better if the boss did not blow 100s of millions on chefs, cnn hosts and trying to escape gravity.

"Jeff Bezos, the Amazon (AMZN) founder and world's wealthiest man, said Tuesday after flying to the edge of space that he planned to award $100 million each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef José Andrés."

WheelsAtLarge• 3 years ago

I'm always surprised to see this much desire to work from home all the time. The way I see it. Given a few years, every work from home job will be outsource to some country where the pay is less. Companies are all about cutting costs. If a job can be done at home then it can be done from anywhere in the world. Why not hire the least expensive workforce?

user3939382• 3 years ago

Communication across cultures is a huge problem even when the language is the same, let alone when it’s not. Also being in the same time zone is a big advantage for remote collaboration.

1123581321• 3 years ago

Lots of companies have learned the hard way that cheaper engineers aren’t always better, or watched others learn it. And great engineers aren’t necessarily willing to work for last decade’s local wages.

jojobas• 3 years ago

Try working with a team composed of people from Bangalore, Philippines, Russia and Brazil and let us know how you went. Besides, the most capable and industrious people from these countries have already moved to better places, so you'll have to wait for the next crop (and hope they don't move to countries with better pay).

petre2• 3 years ago

Especially Russia since you can't even pay them due to the sanctions and you also risk your guy getting drafted.

roncesvalles• 3 years ago

The jobs that were going to be outsourced have already been outsourced. I really don't think physical presence is the big levee that keeps white-collar jobs in America.

kitsunesoba• 3 years ago

I don’t necessarily mind working in an office so long as it’s close to home and I get a cubicle or private office.

I don’t technically need to be there to do my work, and so it makes no sense for me to spend a significant chunk of my day and salary getting to and from the office only to be met with the incessant breaking of focus that comes with open offices.

stocknoob• 3 years ago

Are language and communication skills, timezone, cultural willingness to disagree with bad decisions / report bad news, diligence, and UX skills are fungible?

Either they are, and every company has somehow overlooked them, or they aren’t, and years of failed outsourcing experiments has shown this.

deely3• 3 years ago

Ousource market is just a market. You will get (to some degree) what you are paying for.

lelanthran5• 3 years ago

If a job can be done at home then it can be done from anywhere in the world.

Sure, agreed, but ... if a forced-into-the-office job doesn't actually require a warm body in the office (i.e, the jobs that are under discussion), then that in-office role can be done from anywhere in the world as well.

IOW, sure, if you work from home you are proving to the employer that your job can be outsourced easily, but working from the office doesn't provide any evidence that your job cannot be outsourced.

sensanaty• 3 years ago

Any competent dev from those cheaper countries has already long since moved into countries or at the very least managed to negotiate deals where they get paid pretty much on-par with richer countries. The only ones left at this point aren't exactly the shining jewels of productivitt, of they're willing to settle for a pittance.

TrueGeek• 3 years ago

Given a few years, every work from home job will be outsource to some country where the pay is less

I’ve been hearing this (and worrying about it) for longer then I’ve been working from home. Coming up on 18 years this December.

MortimerDukePhD• 3 years ago

Cue the analogies of how forcing coders back into the office (in one of the first places where you could bring your dog to work) is worse than working in a salmon cannery in 1926. I weep for those that must endure these atrocious working conditions, I heard they're running low on sparkling water in the kitchenettes.

ramesh31• 3 years ago

Bets on how long until they seize the means of production and occupy those spheres with some kind of eco-libertarian anarcho neutral zone?

petedoyle• 3 years ago

Would be fun if this turned into a huge recruiting event :)

opmelogy• 3 years ago

This isn't surprising. Amazon said that they were going to support remote work indefinitely and then changed their minds even though people have moved away from the main offices. Then they pull every back in the midst of massive layoffs and it really comes across as intimidation and manipulation. It doesn't matter if that's what it is - it's very very easy to perceive it that way. From what I've seen, older generations tolerate this sort of treatment better than younger generations. I don't mean that as a dig on younger folks and it being a commentary on maturity - I think that the younger generations have a different view of how things can and should function (to inject my opinion here - I tend to agree with them...things are really really broken and we have to change).

DiggyJohnson• 3 years ago

Does indefinitely not mean something like no timeline or deadline, but subject to change It doesn’t seem like a change of mind if the operative word is indeed “indefinitely”.

hackernewds5• 3 years ago

Yes but indefinitely also does not mean 1 year generally

smsm422• 3 years ago

to show their frustration with recent layoffs, return-to-office mandates and a lack of action to address the company’s impact on climate change

Now one only has to add social justice, marriage equality, immigration policy and saving the whales, and the mission of making it impossible to understand what it is about will be accomplished.

Dudes, it's OK to be upset by just RTO, you don't have to bring the whole list every time.

runarberg3• 3 years ago

Modern labor struggle is social justice. Just see the most successful labor leader in recent years, Christian Smalls, see how he talks, and what he emphasizes. See also various union statements by Starbucks worker’s unions.

Climate change, gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, BLM, #metoo, those are all integral to a modern union. And raising those among your labor concerns has proven to be effective in building up the solidarity required for meaningful action.

smsm422• 3 years ago

I guess whatever works, works - but I wonder how many union members actually support that and how many just go along because of the benefits and because there's no choice. I understand the original idea of unions, as means for improving worker's conditions, but this is not that. That's just generic leftist activism masquerading as worker's movement, and prioritizing things that have little to do with workers' benefit. Maybe that's why the unions are in decline now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta...

Maybe if they were more about the workers and less about the wokers, they had more willing members.

mathattack• 3 years ago

Seems like walking out when the company is doing layoffs is doing their own dirty work for them, no?

My sense is if they think the work can be done remotely, it will be done in a low cost location. It’s too easy to say “You’re not here, you’re fired. Let’s move it to Iowa/Liverpool/India.”

tmaly• 3 years ago

“A group of workers is urging their colleagues to walk out May 31”

I think that is a holiday for most in the US no?

adultSwim3• 3 years ago

United we bargain, divided we beg

Seattle Amazon workers plan walkout over return to office, layoffs

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