Leaked messages show Amazon will force a 'voluntary resignation' on employees failing to relocate near their team 'hubs'

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 619 points –
archive.ph

Leaked messages show Amazon will force a 'voluntary resignation' on employees failing to relocate near their team 'hubs'::undefined

88

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

Amazon started enforcing its so-called “return-to-hub” policy in recent weeks, according to an internal email and Slack messages obtained by Insider. Hubs are the central locations assigned to each individual team — employees will have to work out of those hubs instead of any office nearest to their current city.

Amazon assigned offices for most individual employees, but not the whole team. Some employees told Insider that made office work pointless because many still had to use video calls to connect with their teammates spread across the country.

Why does Amazon even bother to do this? Why force their employees back to office if they'll going to work remotely with their distributed team anyway? Why not save money on office space by letting those employees to work from their home?

Why not save money on office space by letting those employees to work from their home?

Because they can't control them at home.

I've never felt more under control by the company I worked for than when my team was all on a Slack channel even though we were all WFH.

Just curious, how does being in a Slack channel feel more like being controlled than being in an office?

The project we were working on required all members to be available to answer questions from other team members right away and this happened a lot, so you couldn't just wander off and do something else around the house or your absence would be immediately noticeable. At the office it was easy to disappear into the bathroom for awhile or take a nap in the sick room or head down to the food court in the basement of the building.

They bought a ton of real estate over the years.

Then places like Seattle were literally falling a part without the added cash cow of commuters stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for 16 hours of a workday.

And that commercial real estate is the backing for a LOT of corporate debt. I imagine they're afraid of the collateral against which that debt was borrowed collapsing in value.

Why is that a concern for amazon?

They already know wfh is as good or even better for productivity. This doesn’t see like a move in their best interest

Control. Why do republican men tell women how to live their lives when it doesn't change their own?

Some of the same insecure power hungry losers are high up managers in these companies

My employer is trying to do this too and using the same logic. I’ll just have to report to an office to video chat my team. Luckily my boss and I are in agreement and until they somehow force both of us, I won’t be doing it. I will, however, be updating my resume.

You're a 1 on a sheet, if you stand in the way of resource allocation then they can find another 1. Welcome to the delightful world of big business.