this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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5 day RTO is a stealth layoff. This is a feature, not a bug.
It's like reverse stack ranking. They'll be left with the people that couldn't find another job.
and the people who know exactly how to waste time in an office.
That's literally what we all do in office. Just sit ans chat. It's country club. Productivity went up during covid.
Yup, I waste way more time in the office than at home, and I waste plenty of time at home. Also, the time I don't waste is more productive at home than in the office.
I still value going to the office, but doing it everyday would just kill my soul. I need some time to myself to get stuff done.
I love being able to fold laundry or go on elliptical during calls. Plus the extra sleep and no commute means im waaay friendlier in calls. Everyone wins.
A.k.a. Twitter and the elon filtering moment
Brain drain is the perfect way to end monopolies.
This is false.
Yep this has been the modus operandi for businesses who want to reduce workforce without having to pay for layoffs.
Like many companies, they overhired in the last 4 years. Some of these people are due years of severance (my offer listed 2months for every year after 1 year), not to mention the vested stocks and other bonuses granted during this insane hot hire period.
So how do you remove people not loyal to the company? The most hated mandate ever. Amazon is a company that doesn’t need people in the office. This is nothing more than screwing people over.
No rank and file US-based employees at Amazon are getting years of severance. They don't do that.
Yeah, that was a typo and my experience is limited towards the AWS side which is also facing this issue. But the numbers are there, some people have been at Amazon for a decade, so 20 months (if they had MY package of 2mos per year). Amazon was throwing everything at new hires, because they were making bank on their work.
So they're not paying severance to employees they fire?
Yes, but they're making people quit instead. They don't need to pay severance to employees who quit because of RTO.
They are getting severance when terminated, unless for cause. My comment was, this is how they avoid it by forcing people to quit.
Quiet firing, if you will.
If Amazon don’t think that remote work is productive, then they don’t think they’re losing anything. I don’t even know how “stealth” this is at all. They must believe that those individuals could be productive, because they are trying to keep them working in office. I’m not sure why anyone thinks a company like Amazon would try to be “stealth” about a layoff anyway. They don’t need to.
You don’t have to fund severance if people leave on their own.
And returning to the office probably doesn't count as an unreasonable change to the agreement, so you probably won't win if you sue, and the unemployment office probably won't help.
So yeah, sucks all around.
It definitely counts as an unreasonable change. If you quietly accept it, or quit due to it, you won't get the help. If you set things up in your favor by replying to the mandate with language along the lines of 'such a significant change to working conditions requires a renegotiation of my contract' then you're placing yourself in a good position to say that you were constructively dismissed, not that you quit.
A change from working wherever you are (which could be hours away if you were full remote) to the office is just as significant as being moved from one metropolis to another.
If you were hired as remote you have a pretty strong case for constructive dismissal.
I think you're going to have an uphill battle if you were hired to work in a building and they allowed work from home due to a pandemic. I don't think being slow getting back to the office is going to win you your case.
I feel like being remote for 4 years is no longer about the pandemic. It's become a new standard and by showing financial harm by coming into the office I feel you might have a better case. Example being car insurance. My insurance went down as my car is now a "personal vehicle" vs a "commuter car"
The pandemic was very clearly the initiator.
Being conservative about forcing people back (because most have wanted people back long before now) doesn't change anything legally. You were hired for an in person job, they were forced to have you work from home by actual government orders, and they moved slowly on forcing you back because it was an extended period of time where there was an actual meaningful health risk to a big enough portion of employees.
So they don't have to pay severance or other state penalties for doing an actual layoff. They aren't thinking of talent with this move.
Yeah, I think they want to reduce headcount, and this is the cheapest way to do it. I'm guessing they're getting some flack for investing so much in AI w/o enough return to justify it, so they're culling a lot of the workforce to juice the numbers a bit until that investment starts to make sense. They'll probably just reshuffle people around as needed within the org to fill the gaps.
I find that unconvincing. That they will give up all control in order to save what is ultimately a small amount of money. Paying severance to cut people is already a way to save and reduce budgets. To say they will give up control and take real risks with who they lose just to avoid a piddling 2 months salary per head… it doesn’t add up.
They're giving up control by exercising control?
They’re giving up control over exactly who leaves. When you do a layoff you can choose to cut your lowest performers or most overpaid employees or everyone in a small office which you can then close.
These hypothesized “soft layoffs” where they supposedly encourage people to leave give them no real control over how many people leave, which ones leave, etc. And it’s the top employees generally who have the best options elsewhere. So you’re really inviting a brain drain by putting broad pressure on everyone to quit.
It’s just not a smart move. I think we have a lot of armchair CEOs here who think a company would just suck up all these downside to save on a little severance and that doesn’t add up for me.
I am pretty sure working from home has proven to be more productive, so I think other factors are at play here. I worry that returning to the office might be the only way to keep the capitalists from trying to send our jobs over to poorer nations. If the tapeworms think the job needs to be done face to face then it is much hardet to send those jobs to India or S. America.
They've already tried to send all the jobs they can to India or South America. It ultimately didn't work. They can send some, but the language and cultural barriers, plus the difficulty of assessing quality candidates just doesn't make it viable at scale. They've already tried that game and it failed. Everything that can be outsourced to India already has been outsourced to India.