> If you or your child were sick, if you had some sort of house emergency, if you were on the road seeing customers or partners, if you needed a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment, people worked remotely. This was understood, and will be moving forward as well.
This is Amazon having it both ways, which is what a lot of companies are doing. You can work remotely 'sometimes,' with a secret definition of 'sometimes,' operating in the background.
I found this paragraph to be somewhat galling since, like, if you're sick you shouldn't work at all, you should be focussing on getting well. Ditto if your kid is sick. Raising one or more whole other human/s is a super important thing. One result I saw from the pandemic is fathers doing more of the childcare, and what full-RTO like this fundamentally does is shift that dynamic back to where it was before.
There has been a shift since the 9-5 meant you leave your laptop at work, and were virtually unreachable.
Next, you were reachable so managers especially also bothered you at 7PM (I even sometimes had meetings at a FAANG). In exchange, employees got the freedom often to work in their desired 40 hours as long as things got done.
Now, companies want it both ways where you come in 9-5 AND they want non office hours productivity as well. Somehow we've forgotten the paystubs and employee offer letters say "40 hours of work"
Been working remote since before COVID and this hasn't ever been a thing for me. I just don't reply after hours. At one gig where I ended up being laid off (it was Playboy) I would stress about not doing this or that but in the end my performance had nothing to do with it. They sold the store I was working on and that was that. Of course the 401k "match" that took 24 months to vest was entirely worthless. Now I don't even consider any equity that doesn't vest immediately as part of my TC.
These companies don't care about you at all. Put in your hours and always keep looking for the next thing.
Every time I start a new gig, I make sure to answer private messages few hours later, and never outside the 8AM/8PM timeframe or during weekends. Ever.
I also make it black on white on contracts that I don't do meetings before 9AM or later than 5PM.
I immediately set a habit for people that I might be AFK and that I never ever answer work-related stuff in the weekends.
As months go by I start answering when I see it/have time, rather than purposefully delaying and occasionally I answer a message or a chat in the weekends if I lurk on the channels. Hell, sometimes I even did some work on the weekends too if some deadlines are close (I am still bound to the success of my clients after all) and make up for it when rhythms are lower.
But in the beginning I make sure to always set a tone where I'm just not there online and ready to answer 24/7.
I did the opposite years ago. I would make it a habit for people for always being up and ready, so when I had to do something (from preparing lunch to bathroom breaks) people would instantly assume I was working less or cared less.
I don't do the mistake anymore. Professional? Always. Connected and ready all time? As little as possible.
In Australia it is a legal right to not be bothered by your employer outside of working hours. I don't know if you can opt out of it, but it certainly helps change public opinion of what is expected of employees.
In the UK anywhere I tried to become an employee in the last 5 years also asked me to sign the "I am ok to work more than 40 hours" addendum, and it was a condition with the offer.
I've had that in contracts, but have always crossed it out. I suggest you do the same.
No employer I've seen has ever questioned it, they know it'd be illegal for them to actually force you to opt-out your of your rights. If they put it in writing that it was a conditional part of employment they'd be in hot water.
They're just hoping you just sign away your rights "for free" so to speak.
> I've had that in contracts, but have always crossed it out. I suggest you do the same.
As of lately, I've seen some web-based signature systems (adobe something something docusign iirc?) and with such systems crossing lines is not an option anymore.
Well for one, you can’t just cross out a section of a contract, sign it, and have that be binding. The other party has to know about it (by you telling them) and then agree to those terms.
In the esig case, you’d need to talk to HR to have the provision removed.
> you can’t just cross out a section of a contract, sign it, and have that be binding. The other party has to know about it (by you telling them) and then agree to those terms.
Yes I think that was implied by the original poster. The company has to counter-sign the modified document, which is why they always get you to sign it first, so they can review before they sign.
This is the default in the Netherlands for many office jobs as well. Usually in the form of 'Subclause 2: The nature of the job may demand work beyond the stated hours in subclause 1. If this occurs, no additional payment shall be made'.
Never had a job where that wasn't a clause in the contract.
It's correct that it was the Working Time Directive that required the UK to add it to UK law in the first place (over the strident objections of the Tory government at the time) but it is the Working Time Regulations Act 1998 that provides this regulation in the UK, and since Brexit the EU Working Time Directive 2003 has no legal force in the UK.
EU directives never had any direct legal force in the UK, or any other member state. The point of the directive is to say "all EU members need national legislation which meets these standards". It's then up to the member states to implement national laws using their own unique systems which meet the requirements of the directive.
As you said, the Working Time Regulations Act 1998 is the UK law implementation of the EU Working Time Directive 2003.
If a potential employee isn't willing to agree to work more than 40 hours they either don't take the job, or take the job but refuse to work those extra hours and risk being fired. Being fired is never fun, but the employee is still better off ignoring the contractual obligation there if it was a deal breaker anyway.
As I understand it, before it went off in a huff, the UK was the only European country which allowed a _general_ opt out of the working time directive (many allow it for medical workers, and sometimes for other emergency workers). Accordingly, of course, many if not most UK employers obtain such an opt-out.
Being willing to work 40.5 hours fulfills this addendum. It doesn't mean anything more than that, nor does it apply to if you are still okay sometime in the future.
Before that it was the BlackBerry (my experience), and before that something else (presumably the pager, telephone, telegram, man on horseback?).
I just think it’s important we are all deliberate about what is important to us and therefore what we agree to. If the precedent is set early, it helps tremendously, in my experience.
I especially liked "if you were on the road seeing customers" as if they're reluctantly granting an RTO exception to people meeting with customers and those employees should be thankful for it.
I think it's more instances like "if you're traveling and you get back to your home city at 9am don't feel like you need to be in the office by a certain time, just WFH that day." Obviously if you're traveling as part of your job you're not going to be working from the office during that travel.
FWIW in other countries you not only get paid sick leave by law but also paid leave when your kid is sick (only for one parent usually but the idea is that it doesn't matter whether you're sick yourself or have to care for a sick kid because the kid can't be expected to take care of themselves).
You don't fix this with corporations having better policies out of the kidness of their heart, you fix it with laws. The reason corporations were moving everything to remote work during the pandemic was that in many places travel was severely restricted and they needed to ensure the operation of the business in the case of a full lockdown. Now that that's no longer an urgent risk, they're rolling everything back because the benefits to the business don't outweigh the drawbacks and everybody else doing it makes it an easier sell (just like the wave of mass layoffs).
I was at a large manufacturing software company where the CEO came out with a return to office mandate early on except it didn't apply to anyone in my chain of command. My director lived in an RV and worked from that travelling. Every VP above worked from a remote location, so I asked. I was told they all had other arrangements. I left within a month.
Yeah. My reaction to the leadership for this kind of mandate would be: you first. Release your badge-in metrics for the C-Suite, then progress down the chain from there. They can all afford houses right next to the office, as well as nannies and private schools and a house on the coast. So when the highest paid employees show they’re in office 5 days a week for a single quarter, then let’s talk.
I doubt this would be the case. The L10s get to wfh from there vacation homes while the L5s get commutes.
Well it depends how sick you feel. Personally, if I only have a cold, I prefer working (from home) over hanging on the couch and watching Netflix all day long.
If I'd have to come to the office I'd report ill though, also because I don't want to contaminate my colleagues.
If you are happy about your relationship with work such that you would prefer to do it rather than rest, then what I have to say next is not relevant to you. For others whom this might not be the case: You need rest. If your only or primary form of rest is Netflix on the couch, such that you feel you “should” work instead, you might consider if other forms of rest might be better for you.
Rest benefits you and your employer. Working while ill is a sure path to burnout. Burnt out employees are less productive and more likely to quit.
It's my personal preference and it has worked for me in the last 25 years, but everybody's different and it might not work for everybody.
Note that doing nothing does not necessarily mean that you relax. Working at home at your own moderate pace might make you recover faster. But again, what works well for somebody might not work well for someone else.
We have to be in n the office 3-days so if I WFH because sick, I would have to badge in Friday. This is foolish so I take a sick day if I’m not going into the office.
My org may be more lenient than I understand it to be, mainly I don't know what if any consequences there are if I do WFH while sick/recovering/contagious and am only in the office twice in a week.
> This is Amazon having it both ways, which is what a lot of companies are doing. You can work remotely 'sometimes,' with a secret definition of 'sometimes,' operating in the background.
This isn't really different than startups offering "unlimited" time off. That's just
> This is Company XYZ having it both ways, which is what a lot of companies are doing. You can take time off 'sometimes,' with a secret definition of 'sometimes,' operating in the background.
I think it's widely known that "unlimited" time off is a scam, and people with "unlimited" PTO actually take less time off then their peers who have to accrue PTO the old fashioned way. And yet sometimes I still see people who are enthusiastic about it.
One factor to consider (depending on your locality) is that "unlimited" time off doesn't allow you to accrue vacation days, that would be paid if you were e.g. laid off.
I would not listen to their PR there is no reasonableness being applied to these rules.
I hurt my knees back in May and tried to get HR to make an exception for me. They shot it down because they said I didn’t have enough documentation. They wanted more paperwork, which meant I had to make another doctor’s appointment. Getting a doctor’s appointment these days takes weeks, so I never managed to get the exception.
How much leeway you get totally depends on your L8 Director. If you’ve got a strict L8, good luck—this policy isn’t going to be applied reasonably. They’re actually looking at badge reports that show how many hours you’re in the office, and managers will call you out if you’re just “coffee badging.”
If you think this kind of thing doesn’t happen, just take a look at Blind. There’s no logic to how these rules are applied. Meanwhile, if you go to an L8/L10 meeting, try counting how many people are actually in the office. It’s a joke, especially when all the <L7 exceptions have been pulled.
I would recommend speaking to an ADA attorney with regards to civil action, as well as potentially filing an ADA complaint with the federal government.
Not sure about Amazon, but I work for a big US corporate that is making similar noises. I suspect "sometimes" basically equates to how much your more immediate management chain wants to keep you around, because after a few steps up the chain, you're PYs and percentages rather than an individual. Your more immediate management would have targets, but if 80% of their group's hours are logged in the office, it probably doesn't show up as a red light higher up.
I'm not defending the CEO's memo but "joined at the hip" is a very common idiom and in normal (and this) usage has no connotation with conjoined twins. Attack the opinion all you like, but this isn't productive.
It's a cute joke about an unintended interpretation of what the CEO said.
Let's be real, not a single HN comment (and there's nearly 1500 here as I'm writing this one) is going to be "productive" is this discussion, especially with regard to Amazon. The biggest impact is some comment here may convince someone on the fence to quit when they might have waited a few months without it. And this joke isn't going to change that.
My wife's company does this hybrid office bullshit at a fortune 500 and they not only track the days you come in, but they will bring it up in annual reviews if it hits a certain threshold.
Who will bring it up? I've never worked at a company where managers are suddenly assholes who diligently apply unreasonable policies. My experience is committees make all sorts of policies, but unless consequences are doled out by some automated system, no on actually cares or follows the policy.
At my current company, there's a place I think I can see my reports' office attendance, but I've never actually checked it. Why would I? I'm not even a WFH zealot myself; I just don't see why I should care if they're in the office.
The managers will bring it up because they have pressure on them coming from higher up to have their reports all be compliant with the work-from-office policy, and in extreme cases, they would be expected to manage out the people who are flouting it. Not doing these things could easily result in an unsatisfactory performance rating for the manager.
Completely ignoring any RTO/WFH-specific aspects, one of the jobs of a manager is to communicate and explain corporate policies to their direct reports, and enforce those policies.
Yes, a job (not the job) of a manager is to gain trust up and down. Imagine, just for a fleeting moment, that "communicating and explaining corporate policies" may actually play a role in this! "Here is why we have to RTO 5 days a week: [corporate bs]."
Now let's also imagine that you already have the trust of your direct reports (I would think a lot of Amazon managers don't but that's neither here nor there). You explain a policy to them - they have to be in the office 5 days a week or Things happen, whatever they may be. This person just refuses to do it. Is the manager to just say "oh well I don't want to 'be a dictator' so I'll just let them ignore this policy?" Of course not. They'd be abdicating part of their job if they did that.
yes the manager at that point decides if it’s worth burning the trust they’ve built or if they should push back harder.
see in the example you’ve given, you’ve still placed the employee second over the business. or to put it another way, a human over money. so poof, gone is the trust if you did have any.
Anecdotally, I'm aware of managers who've been sacked for pushing back. Knowledge of this is probably enough to reshuffle priorities in the current economic situation.
As a random line manager of a small team, you can't meaningfully push back against a company-wide mandate. Hell, even directors can't do that. That decision is being made by the CEO. You either enforce it or suffer the consequences.
> see in the example you’ve given, you’ve still placed the employee second over the business
I mean yes, this is how businesses work. Of course the business is of primary importance over any individual employee, especially employees who are in violation of prioritized corporate mandates. Anytime someone is fired, for pretty much any reason including poor performance, that's prioritizing the business's needs over the individual's. But that's literally just what everyone signed up for; the business is a mission and profit-driven organization, and it puts its needs above those of any individual cog in the machine.
The GP's comments in this subthread make it pretty clear their opinion of business owners, executives, even middle and lower management are mustache-twirling villain billionaires (or billionaire wannabes) trying to suck every last penny out of their poor witless employees.
HR will bring it up, because it's a KPI they track. They don't tell you this and you have no idea what the threshold is, so the manager can't help you beyond a vague "HR won't approve the higher rating I want to give due to your in office attendance".
The only viable option here is to make yourself non-replaceable. Stuff as much knowledge in your head as possible, share bare minimum, use non-standard tech stack, write no documentation, ground as much project on yourself.
And in the interim, before you're non-replaceable (which very, very few people actually are even if they follow your suggestions), you'll definitely be fired for being an asshole to your coworkers, barely doing half your job, and as jensens said having horrific technical judgment. And rightfully so, and now there's a company of people who know you and what kind of coworker you are.
Several times in my career I've had my boss or one of my boss's peers send someone's resume to me because our tenures at another company lined up. Sometimes I knew them, and sometimes someone otherwise very well qualified for a job on the technical merits didn't get an initial interview because they were horrible to work with.
> Stuff as much knowledge in your head as possible, share bare minimum, use non-standard tech stack, write no documentation, ground as much project on yourself
this will be countered by denied code reviews and security reviews because of the nonstandard tech, forced to write documentation and finally knowledge sharing.
Because employees have no leverage in negotiations. In addition, your job is directly tied to your own well-being, as well as the well-being of your family.
You mean an employer set an expectation, checks to see if people are meeting the expectation, and holds them accountable if they aren't? What incredible bs.
Companies need you to perform a certain amount of defined work (as captured by performance goals) to keep the lights on, and aside from some jobs that require the physical touch this can be done remotely just fine, but what they really want to see is the impromptu networking between people doing entirely different jobs to discover new opportunities where there is overlap. That is where the magic happens.
Having worked from home for 20+ years, I'm in favour of remotely working more than just about anyone, but I'd be remiss to claim that said networking isn't harder remotely. I don't think it is impossible, but it is different, and not very well understood. I expect most people working from home don't engage in this much, if at all.
Now, keep in mind that the people running these companies are every day normal people who aren't particularly intelligent. They don't really know or understand how to get people working remotely to network better (or even at all). All they know is that there is some chance that if you bump into someone else at the water cooler that you might start talking, so they lean into that. Even that is not a great solution, but it is seen as being better than what happens remotely.
I assume from what description of your job you have given us that you are in a problem solving-type role (e.g. software development). There is the problem they face. Here is your time to shine!
> see is the impromptu networking between people doing entirely different jobs to discover new opportunities where there is overlap. That is where the magic happens.
there is none of this happening regularly enough to warrant coming in the office full time. teams are already so isolated they cannot interact much less network and converse. then you also have distributed teams, so you end up with offices that have 1 team member in them with the other coworkers working in some entirely different field with no hope of ever interacting.
so again, why do they need to see people work? this is an outdated idea
Is sick leave paid in US by law (till certain extent of course) from some employer's mandatory insurance, or some sort of corporate perk like extra paid holidays? And what about when having sick child?
Even in Europe I've seen various mix, some countries ie don't pay first 3 days of sick leave, some do but pay only some minimal compensation, some do full for X days etc. But it was never completely on the employee, meaning no pay. Covid shuffled this a bit so may be different now.
> Is sick leave paid in US by law (till certain extent of course) from some employer's mandatory insurance, or some sort of corporate perk like extra paid holidays? And what about when having sick child?
For the kinds of jobs we’re talking about here (corporate Amazon, college education required, salaried) you basically just call in sick and that’s it. You didn’t work but you still get paid your normal salary. This is the flipside of salaried work obviously — just as there may be times you work over 40 hours and don’t get additional pay, there are times when you work less than 40 hours and still get your regular pay.
Now all of this depends on circumstances like your manager, but in general, in these kinds of jobs, no one is running around tracking your sick days. If you’ve got something more substantial going on then you’ll have to take short-term or long-term disability however.
That's not how Amazon operates. You have paid personal time that you must use as sick time. You get 6 days per year or whatever the legal minimum is in your state if it's over 6
The 6 day thing may be corporate policies but there are (were?) absolutely teams where you just call in and nobody really cares what the personal time balance is.
"When your boss is asking how are you when you're sick, he doesn't really care about you. He's thinking 'this asshole lying in bed costing me the money'"
How does leave policy work in your companies? Where I work you can use that leaves quota for something else (i.e taking a vacation). So its gonna "cost money" the same way.
This is Amazon having it both ways, which is what a lot of companies are doing. You can work remotely 'sometimes,' with a secret definition of 'sometimes,' operating in the background.
I found this paragraph to be somewhat galling since, like, if you're sick you shouldn't work at all, you should be focussing on getting well. Ditto if your kid is sick. Raising one or more whole other human/s is a super important thing. One result I saw from the pandemic is fathers doing more of the childcare, and what full-RTO like this fundamentally does is shift that dynamic back to where it was before.
Shame on Amazon.