This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
That's the point...
Layoffs and firings hurt stock price and needs unemployment checks.
So they make it as shitty as possible, hoping people quit instead.
Never quit your job over shit like this. Refuse and make them fire you if they care that much.
You might even get a class action for unlawful termination later, we need to start treating corporations like how they treat people.
Never quit when a company intentionally makes your life shitty?
Yes. Being fired means almost nothing nowadays. Worst case scenario, they fire you with cause so you can't collect unemployment. That puts you in the exact same situation as quitting. Once you decide you want to quit, just do the bare minimum while you job search.
That term makes my teeth hurt. There’s nothing “quitting” about simply performing the agreed work at the agreed wage.
Corporate attempts to phrase this as some kind of theft are disgusting.
Once you decide you want to quit, just do the bare minimum while you job search.
I actually work as keenly as possible. I really strive to leave a wound that'll sting long after I'v--- uh, I mean I really strive to leave a good impression during the (for me) year-long process of finding a good next job. For my peers, they're going to need my work to be super up-to-date because leaving them a shit-fire is a bit of a dick move and I respect my peers a lot.
That puts you in the exact same situation as quitting.
Not if it's a constructive dismissal, like them forcing you back into the office when you're a remote employee. Well, depending on where you live of course.
If my workplace were to rescind the work from home stuff, I'd refuse to go to office and split my time between doing my actual job and shopping around for a new workplace.
That's what I did and they only wanted us back two days a month. Even did the interviews on company time.
I think that's completely fair. I was hired on the basis that it'd be a full remote position, with the occasional travel (like once a year, if that). If they randomly decided to have me go twice a month, I'd probably look around too.
It'd mean that twice a month I'd have to spend 4 hours commuting, hopefully on company time, as well as find someone who could sit my dog for the day. Honestly would like to have the work pay for that too.
Yeah, until feasible, stay there. Do the absolute minimum. They want you to quit, since it makes it easier for them to avoid workers' rights legislation
Layoffs and firings hurt stock price
Quite the opposite, stock prices generally soar after layoffs.
The severance packages show up as a line item on the quarterly report though, so if you can have some people quit then that can also be a good thing in the eyes of the executives.
The whole thing leaves a bad taste in your mouth for sure.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but unfortunately the stock price soared at amzn after layoffs. Same thing happened at my old company. Only thing the market sees is the bottom line.
Also, the people quitting are the ones with a strong enough resume to get hired elsewhere.
Quiet quitting is an excellent option if you don't care what your next job is, but the fully remote options are all getting filled quickly, and simply waiting to get fired just means you'll be job hunting later in a potentially worse market, and going back to the office anyway.
Better to move up and out than just wait to be fired, in my opinion.
Strong disagree. It’s a lot easier to find a job when you have a job.
Never quit your job over shit like this.
Except life's too short as it is. Martyrs are forgotten. Just go, get a better job, don't look back.
9 years and 2 days ago I clocked out of my job on a Friday, caught a plane, clocked in a new job 3000mi away on Monday. I was already working to secure the wages while my wife was showing the house.
Refuse and make them fire you if they care that much.
Wouldn’t this still impact one’s ability to collect unemployment? In some states at least, I believe there’s a distinction between employees fired with cause versus without cause, although I admit I’m no expert on this subject.
EDIT: This article states that unemployment kicks in if the employee lost their job through no fault of their own or quit for “good cause.”
This other article states that depending on the circumstances and the state you worked in, you may be able to collect unemployment if you are fired from your job. Whether you can collect unemployment depends on the circumstances of why your employment was terminated.
Good luck arguing for refusal to return to office as a “good cause!”
If it was part of the initial work agreement that it would be remote then almost certainly it would count.
A rapid shift in job responsibilities or expectations (such as commuting two hours a day vs. 0) can be considered as "Constructive dismissal"
Even if it wasn't part of the original hiring agreement, if it's been that way for years or you have direct emails stating it's fully remote from now on you likely have a good case.
Think back to the pre-COVID days. If management told you that your office was closing, and that you now had to report to a different office an hour away, would you be so dismissive?
This is pretty well established as Constructive Dismissal - a material change in work conditions that makes continued employment unbearable. Depending on the details, this could be seen as a layoff (if they close the office in Texas and tell you there's a job waiting for you in Florida, that counts as a layoff)
I disagree with the layoff angle. Know who's quitting? The talent that can find another WFH job. Know who's staying?
OTOH, maybe Amazon's big enough to survive the brain drain.
Amazon has always been hostile to it's employees. The culture of "step up or fuck off" permeates the entire organization, from warehouses to executives.
They've even had meetings where they express worry over running out of a viable pool of people to hire from. Because they know they are abusive AF and working for them is miserable, so turnover is extremely high. At some point turnover could surpass a population's ability to absorb it.
And then the problem will correct itself.
It's economics, but with people as the commodity being valued.
Amazon currently has a wide labor pool to pull from, and so the value of any individual person is very low. As they saturate the market with people who are bitter and angry about working for Amazon, the pool will shrink, in this case, faster than the rate they lose people. There is a critical point where the growth of the "will never work for Amazon" pool of people will grow exponentially, and as they struggle to hire replacements, workplace conditions will improve. They will not improve before that moment, however.
Because Amazon doesn't see people as people. They see people as a resource to extract value from.
This isn't a problem unique to Amazon, everyone reading this can probably name at least one company they've worked for that did something similar, but Amazon is an outlier for how aggressively they've embraced that idea.
This is a problem endemic to capitalism, as Amazon succeeds, more companies will be forced to adopt those practices on order to compete. Reducing the options people have to avoid Amazon like conditions, and lowering the bar for acceptable workplace culture.
The only defense we have against this is to unionize. Aggressively. The current push should look like nothing more than a warning shot.
If you can organize your workplace and get 75% of the employees in the union, you can write your own check. At a word, 75% of the workforce walking out absolutely cripples any employer. They know that, they don't want the union because they don't want you to have any power in the relationship. It's your life, and they want the keys to it. Take the keys back.
Agree with everything you said. They will also aggressively replace human workers with robots, AI, etc.
These technologies should make life better for working people, but in general I fear they will not. They'll just concentrate the wealth even faster.
This is a problem inherent to capitalism. It only seeks to raise capital and will exploit every resource to do so. As soon as a resource is no longer useful, it is discarded.
Not just Google.
We've had "Human Resource" departments for decades.
Preach it!
Because Amazon doesn't see people as people. They see people as a resource to extract value from.
This is exactly why “Human Resources” offends me to the core. I am a person to be valued, not a resource to be managed.
That's mainly for their blue collar jobs afaik
True, yes, I think so, too. Though I have heard working for AWS is brutal for a white collar job. Obviously not as bad as being a driver or warehouse person.
Working for AWS is definitely not for everyone. It's pretty rough but generally you're treated better than Amazon retail.
I work with it enough as a customer to know how astonishingly broad and deep all the various AWS products and services are. You'd think they'd treat those employees better than they do. That platform is way ahead of the competition.
I worked in support for 3 and a half years and the best part of the job was the people I worked with. Some of the smartest people I've ever met. But they all had the same complaints, incorrect metric measuring, making the workplace hostile by creating a system that pitts people against each other, making what was once a collaborative workspace into a competitive one. They didn't use the stick until you were shown to not be able to catch the carrot, and every few months they moved that carrot forward a few inches, making sure you had to work 4x as hard to meet your metrics.
My friends say that over the last 5 years it's become a shit place to work.
At some point turnover could surpass a population's ability to absorb it.
We can only hope
They probably think they are, big companies rarely actually appreciate the work their tech guys do once all the fancy toys are in maintenance rather than development
This is known as The Dead Sea Effect.
Modern business is not exactly known for making smart long term choices, they see it as a way to easily trim the payroll to make this quarter's books look better without thinking about what it's going to do to future quarters.
I've been seeing companies left and right shooting themselves in the foot in the same way, it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out
People are staying because the job market is currently cold, especially in tech right now. Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc are all on a hiring freeze or at least a very slow hiring rate.
However, you better bet that for the 3 days required by me, I’m only going into the office for only 2-4 hours. Showing up around 11/12 and leaving around 2/3. I’ll actually be able to work after I get home.
That's kinda how I roll currently. Going to office is mainly to bullsh and chat with the peeps about current events and video games.
I can't get shit done at the office. Way too much distraction
Is the implication here that only untalented people would ever put up with working in an office?
I know it's not a commonly heard notion around these parts, but unlikely as it may seem, some people genuinely don't mind working in an office. Some even prefer it. Has nothing to do with talent, everything to do with preference and the level of compensation they get for doing it.
some people genuinely don’t mind working in an office.
Usually they are the people that don't have hard skills and/or love to hear themselves talk. They're the people that make me love WFH.
Also don't discount the 40-50 crowd with kids still in high school age. I know someone extremely smart for our org who likes in person. I don't know if it's a break from the family, seeing different faces, being used to the way things were in the past, or the fact they're in a slightly more isolated role now.
I say all this to say there are probably some who want the office culture but we (our team) tries to ensure we have a social event once a month where we all "clock out" a couple hours early and go hang out. They are also not trying to push everyone to go back to the office and respects most people do enjoy WFH. Just trying to give another perspective on some people who enjoy the office (not me though, fucking love pooping in my own toilet and using lunch to do what I want).
Talented people have more bargaining power. The implication is that nobody wants to work in the office, but some people do it because they have to.
Yes?
If you don't have the skills or experience to sell yourself then obviously you don't have a lot of options.
Is the implication here that only untalented people would ever put up with working in an office?
Not directly. The Dead Sea Effect says "those who can find an acceptable new job the fastest will leave first". That usually means the super-stars and more-talented, but the residue behind all that evaporation isn't all salt. Some people, even the most employable, will stick around, while their benefit/cost/risk/tolerance kind of equation still allows it.
For some people, RTO doesn't hit their cost and tolerance all that hard. The more unsuitable a person's home environment is for work and how easy their commute is, that'll greatly affect forced RTO acceptance and the Dead Sea Effect.
That is likely the point. It's a stealth layoff.
I agree with what I saw someone else post. They want people to quit. Blindly forcing RTO is a way to bully employees without being legally "hostile”.
If you quit, you can't draw unemployment.
The company's HR apparently still has to approve it even if you are eligible, but it's at least potentially an option.
100% by design
