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Amazon Will Allow Many Employees To Work Remotely Indefinitely (seattletimes.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Amazon will allow many tech and corporate workers to continue working remotely indefinitely, as long as they are able to commute to the office when necessary, according to a blog posted Monday. From a report: The new policy is a change from Amazon's previous expectation that most employees would need to be in the office at least three days a week once offices reopen in January. Monday's message, signed by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, explains that Amazon directors -- at Amazon, a title signifying an executive who oversees a handful of teams -- will have the discretion to allow teams under their purview to stay remote. "We expect that there will be teams that continue working mostly remotely, others that will work some combination of remotely and in the office, and still others that will decide customers are best served having the team work mostly in the office," Jassy wrote. "We're intentionally not prescribing how many days or which days -- this is for Directors to determine with their senior leaders and teams."

In the blog post, Jassy thanked Amazon employees who have been unable to work remotely during the pandemic "for their passion. It is highly appreciated." Those workers include the vast majority of Amazon's more than 1 million employees worldwide, who work in the company's fulfillment and transportation division, as well as its AWS data center and physical retail employees. Amazon's update to its return-to-work policy follows similar moves from other tech giants. Microsoft announced last month that it had postponed reopening its offices indefinitely; Google has said it anticipates roughly 20% of its workforce will continue to telecommute full-time.
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Amazon Will Allow Many Employees To Work Remotely Indefinitely

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  • Okay Amazon I am tempted... (Score:3)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @02:08PM (#61881251) Journal
    Big tech keeps trying to seduce us and I have to admit the recruitment attempts are getting more appealing. If they make a fair offer without forcing me to relocate to Austin or CA I might have to go to the dark side.

    • just say I will not work more then 60+ with out OT pay

      • How would they even know your hours working remotely?

        • It was never a problem for Verizon who is one of the few employers that actually acknowledges tech staff without direct reports are NOT exempt employees. Staff only works OT with justification and logs the justification alongside the hours and performance expectations have to be inline with a 40-46hr workweek. In general the idea is that people don't work 50+hr workweeks without some kind of special and short term extreme cause. ;)

      • just say I will not work more then 60+ with out OT pay

        I hope that's a joke, because it's about 20 hours too high. Last place I worked I could count on one hand how many times I worked even a minute over 40 hours over the course of the decade that I worked there (yes, 1.5x pay kicked in at 40). Igot my work done on time and under budget by working at a place that respected me by not overcommitting me. The place I'm working now pays a significantly higher salary, so I'm willing to flex a bit with my hours, but it hasn't abused my trust yet. Since I started here

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        This must be a us thing, if you work mor than 37:5h/week here in nirway( kess if you have inconvenient working hours) the law mandates overtime or other compansation. The reason for the kd number us thst luch breaks ar not counted as work time, so that's 30 min/day unless you are mandeated to take lunch at your dask/ station

    • Re:Okay Amazon I am tempted... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @02:33PM (#61881323)

      I hear that Amazon has some great perks for their remote workers.

      For example, every month they ship a fresh carton of empty plastic bottles right to your doorstep.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        I sort of like the joke and hope you are modded funny, but this FP branch (until this comment) is apparently ignoring the fundamental distinction between the types of employees at Amazon. How to describe it best?

        (1) The low-class worker bees do NOT have any remote work options. In some cases they are intrinsically working remotely because delivery is what they do. In other cases, they are in a warehouse of some sort and the entire point is for them to be there and shuffling things around. In such cases, Ama

    • Just as long as their infrastructure is better than Facebooks.

    • at least not with Amazon unless you're crazy obsessed with work. I've heard no shortage of horror stories. They pay well, but even dogs do get worked that hard. To be fair this is all "friend of a friend" stuff, but I've heard it enough times to be credible.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        > To be fair this is all "friend of a friend" stuff, but I've heard it enough times to be credible.

        My partner works for Amazon, so I'd argue that's slightly more meaningful than friend of a friend, and I'll say this. Yes, she's worked hard, but it's all relative.

        She was worked even harder by her former employer, which was a reasonably known brand, but not big tech, and wouldn't give remotely near the pay or benefits.

        But here's the thing, if you're a hard worker - i.e. you're happy doing maybe just over 4

  • Amazon Will Allow Many Employees To Work Remotely Indefinitely

    That warehouse-fulfillment job is going to get a LOT easier on the legs and back ... :-)

    • Robot! Experience this tragic irony for me!

    • I'm actually a little surprised they haven't tried to have remote operated robots running their warehouses.

  • Been a remote worker for a decade (Score:3)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @02:27PM (#61881307) Homepage Journal

    I think this is an excellent idea.

    Simply cramming people into an office because "we need to cram people into an office" is dumb.

    And with modern telephony and remote access solutions, you can still deliver a seamless work environment.

    • Absolutely, office work now really doesn't need an office, decent home connectivity & corporate VPN's make offices redundant.

      Maybe a chance to convert those cavernous office buildings into apartments.

      WFH obviously :-)

      • Well if they do that then in a completely circular move, the people living there can remote work.

      • decent home connectivity & corporate VPN's make offices redundant.

        You don't even need VPNs. Actually, they're a bad idea, part of the thoroughly-discredited (though still widely used) "secure perimeter" model of IT security. The model assumes that you can draw a line between secure corporate networks and systems, and insecure "external" networks and systems. But you can never do that perfectly, and assuming that the inside of the perimeter is secure leads you to make bad security decisions that ultimately result in vulnerabilities and compromises. A large percentage of h

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
          You ar right to some extemt, but a vpn can also be used to punch thru several layers of IPv4 nat ( because no one seams to have the resources to deploy IPv6 everywhere and there is always that must have but yet un upgradable application...) net result, lets put another nat outside your nat, and some apps realy don't like nst that much, esp those based on orotocols that put adresses inside the payload ( I'm looking at you sip), yes there are workarounds thst msy or may not work thru CGNAT

    • I've been telling my employers for years that I would gladly work three extra hours (my typical round-trip commute) FOR FREE if they'd let me work from home. And my teams of developers have proven to be MORE productive while working from home.

      But, nope. There's always that manager that wants to see all of her/his reports sitting in their cubicles. Stupidity.

      Important meeting? Clients touring the office? All-hands? Sure, I'll be right there! Coding all day? Let us work from home!!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        The hard part is time management.

        For some people, it can be exceptionally hard to stay "at work".

        So it isn't for everyone.

        When I moved my mom in with me, I had to have the "No mom. When I'm at work, I CANNOT just drop everything for an hour and go mop the floor." talk multiple times before it finally penetrated.

  • "Many Amazon employees gave credible threats to quit when asked to drive into the office"

    • "Many Amazon employees gave credible threats to quit when asked to drive into the office"

      Later, they drove through the office.

      • Actually had this happen to a place I had recently left, but a relative was still working there. Employee claims she just had the car in the wrong gear, but also had a known history of being stressed and the one most likely to do something bat-shit crazy. Up and over the flower bed and pancaked several cubicles (no one in them but someone was in one of the ones in the adjacent row). Took a quick visit and the carpet was a bit torn up, which you would not expect unless someone was accelerating or rapidly

  • Because I'd go with Janice in accounting. She's the worst.
  • Good news for the employees. Hoping that Amazon will open more jobs as there are many people still looking for opportunities to work in the safety of their homes. Go Amazon! by: Remoaid - https://remoaidvirtual.wordpre... [wordpress.com]

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