• SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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      4 days ago

      That and executive ass covering, a way to avoid admitting to shareholders that they wasted their money on useless commercial real estate.

      It’s also shooting themselves in the foot. The first people to leave aren’t going to be the clock punchers, it will be the best and brightest who can easily find other jobs.

      • chakan2@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        That’s a feature, not a bug.

        The best and brightest will challenge leadership. The shitty barely competent value engineer will say yes until they fuck up so bad they get promoted.

      • AAA@feddit.org
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        3 days ago

        The first people to leave aren’t going to be the clock punchers, it will be the best and brightest who can easily find other jobs.

        Yes. But some of them are also the most expensive ones, so when they leave costs go down. And we all know “numbers must go up” (=cost must go down).

        • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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          3 days ago

          So you’re left with departments full of clock punchers who don’t have vision or leadership. If you want to kill your Golden Goose, that’s a good way to do it. The remaining departments full of drone followers aren’t going to be making you the exciting groundbreaking products that make you money.

          Of course then again I personally see value in employees, maybe business leadership does not or thinks they are all generic replaceable.

          • AAA@feddit.org
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            3 days ago

            In my experience: the higher up the management chain, the higher the chance that they are just in for the bonuses - not for the company / industry. And those bonuses are always bound to these numbers which need to go up. When the numbers go down, these people are long gone.

            • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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              10 hours ago

              You nailed it. look at their more recent announcements about execs not taking bonuses— they’re giving up bonuses for the coming year. I expect most of them to ‘pursue other interests’ but they’ll keep their bonuses, whatever team gets brought in to right the ship will then get screwed.

              Might also be ass covering- with a pre-emptive promise of no bonuses it may be harder to replace them…

      • Spaceballstheusername@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Idk about the whole talk of having an excuse to shareholders, I don’t think shareholders look into hey these offices are sitting unused I demand an explanation I think they care how much profit the company making and what are future predictions of profit.

        • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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          3 days ago

          No, but it will bring into question the process by which they were acquired to begin with. Somebody will ask, why did you spend x billion on real estate when it was obvious that remote work was the future? Or if they are locked into a long-term lease, eventually the question will come up why are we spending all this money for office space we aren’t using? Shouldn’t we have thought of this earlier? Not having workers in the office makes it obvious that real estate was a bad investment, and many of these companies are pretty heavily invested in real estate. Easier to screw the workers with what can be explained away as a management strategy than admit a wasted a whole bunch of money buying and building and renovating space you don’t need.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      5 days ago

      It’s like reverse stack ranking. They’ll be left with the people that couldn’t find another job.

        • Spacehooks@reddthat.com
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          5 days ago

          That’s literally what we all do in office. Just sit ans chat. It’s country club. Productivity went up during covid.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            5 days ago

            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.

            • Spacehooks@reddthat.com
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              4 days ago

              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.

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Yep this has been the modus operandi for businesses who want to reduce workforce without having to pay for layoffs.

    • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      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.

        • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
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          5 days ago

          Yes, but they’re making people quit instead. They don’t need to pay severance to employees who quit because of RTO.

        • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          They are getting severance when terminated, unless for cause. My comment was, this is how they avoid it by forcing people to quit.

      • foofy@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        No rank and file US-based employees at Amazon are getting years of severance. They don’t do that.

        • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          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.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      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.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          5 days ago

          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.

          • BalooWasWahoo@links.hackliberty.org
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            4 days ago

            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.

            • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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              4 days ago

              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.

              • nexas_XIII@lemm.ee
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                4 days ago

                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”

                • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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                  3 days ago

                  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.

      • zbyte64@awful.systems
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        5 days ago

        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.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          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.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          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.

            • scarabic@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              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.

      • Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 days ago

        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.

        • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          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.

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    Just as planned - Amazon Execs who aren’t planning to rehire them anyway.

    They do this shit to cull you.

    • Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      It’s sort of a strange approach, because this will leave you with the workers who can’t find employment elsewhere.

      • exanime@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        By the time that negative effect kicks in, the execs already cashed in their bonuses and are on their way out of the sinking ship

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Executives do not see workers as people with skillsets. They’re numbers on a spreadsheet. And having ten highly paid workers quit “voluntarily” makes the numbers do good things.

        Actually, they’re not even numbers on a spreadsheet. They’re data points in a graph. Executives don’t have time to understand numbers, let alone people.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          4 days ago

          Executives do not see workers as people with skillsets.

          Ain’t that the truth. My company is thinking about replacing all of their technical staff with AI. That’s going to be utterly hilarious to watch from the sidelines.

      • DrDickHandler@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        People exaggerate this claim. Amazon already accounted for some talent leaving and the benefits obviously outweighs the con. There is nothing strange.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          4 days ago

          This implies a level of intelligence they’ve never previously demonstrated.

          Can you cite the source?

  • omarfw@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Now they can replace them without paying unemployment and pay the new workers a lower wage. This is what they wanted to happen. Mega corporations are a problem we need to solve as a society.

    • orclev@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Quality programmers are a finite resource. Amazon chewed through the entire unskilled labor market with their warehouses and then struggled to find employees to meet their labor needs. If they try the same stunt with skilled labor they’re in for a very rude awakening. They’ll be able to find people, but only for well above market rates. They’re highly likely to find in the long run it would have been much cheaper to hang onto the people they already had.

      • omarfw@lemmy.world
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        The whole problem with companies like Amazon is that hardly anyone in charge of them seems to care about long term sustainability. They all just invest enough effort to squeeze out some short term profits, earn their bonuses and then leave for another company to do it all again. Nobody is interested in sustainability because there is no incentive to. They’re playing hot potato with the collapse of the company.

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Now expand that to the entire planetary economy. Unsustainable short term gains is the entire industrial revolution.

          We’re only 300 years in and most life and ecosystems on Earth have been destroyed and homogenized to service humanity. We’re essentially a parasite. It’s not surprising that the most successful corporations are the most successful parasites. It’s just parasites, doing parasitic things, because they’re parasites… from the top down.

          • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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            There has been efficiency gains throughout. Capitalism is amazing for that, far better than other systems.

            The problem is too many people. If standard of living is to increase then the resource requirement is due to massive unsustainable population growth.

            That and the fact the public hate externalities and don’t want them used at all never mind aggressively.