I would be surprised if they did this, and if they did, use it for implementing any sort of meaningful change. Plus I would not put faith in leadership to being able to interpret what this really means because they are so out of touch with how things are going. Discussions with upper leadership is heavily reviewed and curated as a means to avoid getting called out and stay under the radar. They all have a skewed view of what's going on with the teams that build and this data wouldn't feed into it in a way that would be meaningful.
Likely what they will do is keep track of stuff like regretted attrition, hiring numbers (once they get back to hiring), Connections results, project/goal delays (the well established orgs are all aggressive about tracking dates along with goals to see how things are going).
> a lot of my colleagues have started working at 9 am and log out at 5pm pronto
I think this is a great thing. This is long overdue there. It's too common for employee's personalities to be all Amazon all the time. I've been to many social events over the years where I'm told to not bring/invite anyone from my Amazon circle because all they can do is talk about Amazon.
Unlikely. Nobody wants evidence that potentially contradicts The Edict.
Absolutely bonkers that doing the job you were hired to do can get you canned
For that team at least, the job you were hired to do was to get results. I imagine OP was referring to people simply putting time on the clock and being just present enough to avoid notice, without actually caring whether they were getting the same results a full level of effort would achieve.
Even at the best run companies, if the financial situation changes, you'll be gone through no fault of your own.
People that get emotionally and psychologically invested in someone else's company do themselves a disservice, typically only learned the hard way.
When you work at a FAANG, you know you'll be sacrificing some of those benefits and taking on more stress for much higher pay. The current climate is much worse than that though. It's a complete no-empathy/give-no-fucks environment, and that's not ok. Garbage in, garbage out.
I'm not looking for a hand-out, I just want to be treated as a human being. In return, you'll have a productive employee.
And of course, marvel when you still get high performance marks.
Isn't this 7-7.5 hrs? Are you not required to take at least a 30 minute break within that period? Or does Amazon pay for lunch? I thought 9-5 was a myth/thing of the past.
But then again, my internship feels like a job and I'm a bit confused. I do all the work with no direction, just report to my manager weekly and no training. Every internship I've had just feels like every job I've had except I don't get the equity and 401k that normal employees do. I've also always had to fill out a timesheet for every salaried position I've had, which seems a bit odd too. It's at least be quicker to fill out a checkbox lol.
I would ensure that you have someone to talk to who can discuss what success looks like for the role (of intern). With that, there is always what you want to get out of it, but if you are looking for a job, you need to have performance and goal conversations reguarly. How are you doing compared to peers or other interns, etc.
I don't think you're wrong, but my situation appears to be the norm when talking with others[0]. All but one internship I've had is like this and honestly I don't think I can adequately say I've gotten training, be it internship (excluding the one) or job (I worked prior to grad school). I've simply concluded that training is a thing of the past, or it is expected to be self-driven, and performed outside work. (Personally I do not think this is an intelligent move, but these companies are quite successful and I'm not even a millionaire, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
> How are you doing compared to peers or other interns, etc.
Hard to say, as I'm not sure who would be an adequate peer. If you are to ask me personally compared to my expectations, I would say below expectations. In part there is a lack of the adequate resources I need to do the job (I work in generative ML but I'm trying to not dox myself so I can be honest and I want to hear your advice), there is more complexity than I expected and no one to really bounce ideas off of or whom can offer advice, and I'll be honest that my motivation is nowhere near where it was when I started, so I'll admit that I could do better. But I do want to say that I am still learning a lot during this time, getting work done (my manager seems happy, I've had no complaints, and its the second job I've had where someone says "well done" more than once in a blue moon. It's been extended twice now, so its a decent signal that they're happy with my work), and having a reasonable wage does reduce a significant amount of stress. So I don't want this to come off as depressed doom and gloom, it's more that the conversation is around critiques rather than highlighting the good or benefits. I'm generally happy about the opportunity but it is clear that my experience(s) does not fit the common expectation of this title and that there is room for improvement (both me and them). But if critiques aren't acknowledged, how then can I improve? (I am looking for other teams who may offer a better fit, as that might just be it)
[0] There is a gap that I do notice though. It appears that this is not the norm for those who obtain internships that are more prestigious or the highly sought after ones. But I am not at a top 10 school and that appears to be one of the stronger variables of correlation (more so than understanding, as I do talk and collaborate with people from those institutions so I think I have a decent gauge on at least intellectual capabilities. There are, of course, people who stand out, but most seem no different). Connections appear to be a key part of getting internships and undoubtedly this is an opportunity feedback system. You take what you can get. I'm a bit surprised others do not exploit this, as it reasons that you could get top talent by creating top talent, but that's an entirely different conversation.
Are you paid for the hours you work in the internship? If so then you are not an exempt salaried employee.
Though I've also worked full time salaried jobs and also been always required to fill out a timesheet. Often being told that it doesn't matter and the manager just saying they fill out a standard block at the beginning of each week. This is really what I've done at every job.
But I do want to make clear that I've had salaried positions in the past and not been given such offers. I am also not aware of any person that I know (offline) who has a paid lunch period and this includes many people in many sectors mostly in the west coast. This even includes my now retired parents.
I've also worked at a place where I had to physically clock in and clock out (even for breaks and trips to the bathroom), and it was a salaried software development job. Not unheard of at all.
Nothing is guaranteed, and if you're young having a few stressful years now then retiring is certainly easier than working dead end jobs for another 20.
Someone who retires at 40 probably goes to watch movies, eats in restaurants, and travels on airplanes.
My stress level while commuting is basically zero. Tbh the commute makes me less stressed because it’s a nice time to listen to audio books and provides a physical barrier to “transition” into work mode. I dislike RTO for other reasons, but my stress level was higher while WFH than it is from commuting.
Commuting doesn’t necessarily mean working long hours and missing out on the rest of life. I still only work 35-40 hours, I just sit in my car for 30-45 minutes each day. I definitely wish I didn’t, but for the pay I get (and the pay cut I’d take for taking a remote role), the 30-45 minutes is worth it at least temporarily.
In office workers have more defined working schedules? Is that what this means? That seems healthy for the worker.
-- UPDATE --
Must consider the commute factor for time-demand on employee.
there's also the push/pull of the health benefits and disadvantages of commutes and other external factors that go into office-based dynamics. additionally, as i've mentioned in another comment on a similar thread, RTO mandates are not accompanied by corporate commitments to restore the cultures and environments that were present in the pre-remote migration which only intensifies the skepticism and recalcitrance of the workers.
edit: changed "ramps up" to "intensifies"
In a healthy work environment where there's high morale and trust, the exact work hours are going to be off somewhat on a day to day basis in either direction based on logical stopping points. In a toxic environment, workers will pretend to work towards the end of the day then go home exactly when the clock hits 5. Once they can, workers in such an environment will probably leave.
But one size doesn't fit all. I'm honestly sympathetic to management of companies figuring out how to balance what's best for individuals with what's best for teams and organizations as a whole.
But I strongly believe that the most successful companies coming out of this period will be those who take this problem seriously, rather than those who pine for the old days and "solve" it with a one-size-fits-all edict from the top.
> I wonder if Amazon would check the Slack+Chime logs to see how the activity drops before and after RTO mandate.
They already have and they found that productivity was way down. They don't care. They made this decision from the gut, despite claiming to be a data driven company. When anyone called Andy on it he just said "sometimes we make decisions that we know are right" blah blah.
Their data shows their decision was wrong from a productivity standpoint. But that's not why they did it. They did it so they wouldn't loose their tax breaks from all the cities that were threatening to pull their subsidies if they couldn't show enough butts in seats in the downtown areas. Also they over-hired in the pandemic and need people to leave because their attrition numbers were too low for 2022 and 2023.
> They already have and they found that productivity was way down. They don't care. They made this decision from the gut, despite claiming to be a data driven company. When anyone called Andy on it he just said "sometimes we make decisions that we know are right" blah blah.
Respectfully, do you know this because you yourself have seen the data, because a person you know saw this data and told you about it, or are you speculating that this is probably the case?
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-re...
Would love to hear knowledge of internal data on this either way but it sounds like we're still just guessing.
But what about productivity/output?
Obviously this is partially a function of job satisfaction, or a correlation. But wouldn’t it be interesting if job satisfaction went down but productivity stayed the same?
I also work in a big "data driven company" and the same thing happened. Pretty sad that they bother engineers to justify everything they do with metrics (even when it's obviously wrong), but admitted in a Q&A that they didn't have productivity data to back up their RTO choice.
That's the real reason. Making people quit is cheaper than layoffs.
If you do a traditional layoff you get to decide who stays and who goes and have at least the chance to try and retain your top players.
If you do a soft-layoff someone else does the choosing, and the more employable the employee is on the outside the more likely they are to leave.
Just ass-backwards decision-making no matter how one slices it.
A few of my coworkers (3 out of ~15 people team) have/had left when RTO mandate was announced, and I know at least 4 people are thinking of leaving as soon as they have a chance. Since the RTO, a lot of my colleagues have started working at 9 am and log out at 5pm pronto. Before RTO, they would be working until 6-7 pm and will be logging in around 8 am. Sometimes, coworkers would even log in late because they were commuting. I wonder if Amazon would check the Slack+Chime logs to see how the activity drops before and after RTO mandate. Based on my observation, I would bet that the activity/productivity drops significantly more.
Glad I left Amazon. I have been programming for 15+ years (have been in a managerial role for 6+ years), and I firmly believe I am (and my team are) more productive working remotely. I will never work for a non-remote companies even if they are big names.