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.
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"
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.
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.
In the esig case, you’d need to talk to HR to have the provision removed.
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.
As you said, the Working Time Regulations Act 1998 is the UK law implementation of the EU Working Time Directive 2003.
There are contract rates for how much overtime should be paid. Just ask to be paid.
Never had a job where that wasn't a clause in the contract.
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.
These companies don't care about you at all. Put in your hours and always keep looking for the next thing.
I'm a freelancer/independent contractor.
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.
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.
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.
a job of a manager is to gain trust both up and down the chain. if you’re forcing your employees to do something, you’ve lost their trust.
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.
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.
> 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.
A lot of ppl on the market means we have no leverage in discussion.
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.
they won’t let you make yourself irreplaceable
This will work only if your manager has 62 IQ.
* Teams when working 5 days in office, but nobody checked (other than maybe your direct manager) and you could wfh if you needed it to
* Teams were completely remote
* Amazon was checking you came to the office 3 times in the week
* Amazon was checking you came to the office 3 times a week for a certain amount of time
And now the expectation is completely different to all of those. Again.
why do you need to see me to do my job?
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!
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
Even if it only happens just once, that's more than enough justification on the employer's side. That's a huge win.
The employee can choose if the slim chance of a win is equally valuable to them or not. It takes two to tango, as they say.
> so again, why do they need to see people work?
I like that you assume they are actually taking time to watch and not just on the golf course.
“(you need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems)”
Somewhat telling that he’d use a congenital disorder as a metaphor for how work should be done at Amazon
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.
I may have a dual motive for wishing for you to “get well soon”, but even that is majority personal.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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 okay to not grind 25/8.
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.
I doubt this would be the case. The L10s get to wfh from there vacation homes while the L5s get commutes.
Wouldn't be the first time, would it?
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.
it is a question of priorities, and every vacation you take suddenly requires review
Most people could work perfectly well with a bit of a cold. Then covid turned it into a virtue signal to slack off for something trivial.
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.