I work at Amazon/AWS. In general it's been a good run but the last year has been really tough. Yesterday's announcement about 5 day RTO made me realize one fact: I don't see myself as part of Andy Jassy's Amazon. I don't know when that day will come but my life is too short to spend it commuting five days a week. I value face to face interaction but we have learned that we can be wildly productive with remote work. It's wild to think about the profound effects of Andy's email - you basically gave a shot across the bow to tenured people that now is the time to think about a career change. I don't mind riding the train into Boston to see my team, but do I really want to do this five days a week for the rest of my career? nope. I'd rather spend a couple of days being really productive at my house, taking lunch walks with my dog (or maybe a bike ride). This is how my brain works and I suspect it works for others.
Over the last year I've lost all the people we hired that were fully remote. They read the writing on the wall and realized there was no future for them (even with remote work exceptions). During the period when we could make remote hires it was a time when we really did find some great talent. And poof - all gone.
Andy has said that it is a return to pre covid days when it was 5 days in the office but you could work from home when necessary. Really Andy? Are you going to accommodate parents who a hybrid schedule is incredibly useful for day care? My team self reports that having at least one day at home is useful for appointments at home. Andy has said they want to get away from badge tracking and delegate this to managers. This I completely don't believe. Come january 2nd it's either going to be mass rebellion probably followed by some sort of tracking that will verify that you have been in the office five days a week for the trailing four weeks.
I am really proud of the services my teams have built over the years. Throughout adversity we've found a way to deliver and grind out improvements for customers. My engineers code at home, perform on call at home, and have handled incredibly complex operational events spread out across the globe. I've run operational calls at 2AM in Vermont on a ski weekend. The fu--ing office location does not matter.
Additionally - there are still many great things we can do for customers and I am excited about what my team can build. To borrow a phrase from earlier in my career, "the future is bright" - but only if the CEO can get out of our way.
Finally, people are likely to ask why I would post this publicly. Are you committing career su----e saying it's obvious that you see the end of your career at Amazon? Maybe. If you happen to be young with little expenses so that you can afford to live close to the office and the commute isn't a problem, Amazon will probably continue to be a great place to grow your career. But that's clearly not for me.
Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/carl-shimer-9471b92_i-work-at-amazonaws-in-general-its-been-activity-7242153466221969410-3jv0