Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3 days in office rule
ft.comThis week I went to the office (not Amazon, another company in Europe) for 3 days in a row because we had new-joiners and I wanted to make it easier for them in the beginning. I live near the office, just a 15m walk away, and I would still not like to continue 3D/W. I know, people call it entitlement, but my problem is that the office is a hostile environment. Here is my experience, in an office that was at most 30% capacity, in a 3Y old building:
- The "kitchen" area is so tiny, if you want water you will queue, there are only 2 places on the whole floor where you can get it and they are tiny rooms where at max 5 ppl could enter, 3 comfortably.
- Queues at the bathroom, there are 2 stalls, for the whole floor, I couldn't find another one (I really hope there is one more, I just failed to find it, I did ask, nobody knew about another one). This got worse and worse as the week progressed. I've noticed a similar issue at my previous employer (5Y old building, part of why I left, health issues that are greatly improved by the access to a toilet)
- They implemented some eco-friendly lights, with movement sensors. This sounds great and I am for helping the environment, the problem is that in practice these lights turn on-off every few minutes, during the day, in summer, in a sunlight filled building. My eyes were so tired every EOD.
- In the same eco-friendly manner they made the AC not run during the night and morning. So, if you respected the work schedule and came to the office in the morning it was hotter than outside. It's summer, we had 30C in the morning, 47C in the afternoon. I needed to wait for 1-2h for the AC to kick in and recover after arriving in the office.
A long long time ago, I initiated a project to move 80% of the SaaS company's workload out of a big cloud provider that is fond of 3 day in office work weeks into privately run data center cages. To be clear, we bought and ran the computers, rented the network and the cages/rooms in the data center buildings/campuses.
One of our grading criteria was how many bathroom stalls and urinals they had in the men's and women's bathrooms.
Some of these places had 200k sqft (20k m^2) and just 1 stall. No bueno!!!
When we were evaluatin the sites/locations (in the early days) we had to queue our 8 folks up for 5-20 min for bathroom breaks before we could go to lunch!
A few years back, after I left my old employer I went on the local IT subreddit to find a question from somebody about another company from the same building. First comment was that he should accept the offer if he is open to go to the toilet in the Starbucks/McDonalds across the road. I felt vindicated :))
Every day in that building people would queue before and after lunch at the toilets. We are not speaking about a no-name company, it is one of the biggest financial software vendors in the world. Funnily enough, the old building, where they had fewer people, had x2 toilets. They moved us to a more dense floor with half the toilets.
Your chief complaints (eco friendly everything in new construction, AC restrictions) are likely due to compliance with local laws. I would suggest to choose wisely when electing your political leaders. In fact California has a requirement for half the cubicle outlets in new offices to be on timers that shut off during "non-working" hours.
Your chief complaints (eco friendly everything in new construction, AC restrictions) are likely due to compliance with local laws.
More likely that these are cost-cutting measures being labeled as "eco-friendly" to avoid push back.
Where I live this was mostly a voluntary thing. I do not have a problem with it happening, I have a problem with the implementation. The lights thing is just nonsensical. Having them completely off during the day would have been better on both counts, but nobody thought about it.
Apparently you are not the pro in term of limited restrooms stall. You need to “floor jumping”: the art of using the stair either up or down a few levels until a free one is avail.
We did that! Sometimes I would sprint across the stairs 1-2 floors to go to the bathroom. The problem was that just to reach another stall you had to go through x4 security doors that were quite hard to open so it took quite a bit of time. Something that should have taken max 5m now was taking 15m, and my bladder was quite unhappy. Also, due to this, all breaks got elongated, as we were waiting for colleagues before going to lunch (for example) to go to the bathroom, and we were also waiting during meetings for them to arrive from the bathroom.
Then you might have the same problem there so you end up "toilet hunting" (if you're lucky and your company has multiple floors) which is mind bogglingly time inefficient.
They could have just made the article focus on how the big corps are trying to anger staff enough to quit on their own so they don’t have to pay severance. These companies are playing with fire. It turns out you do need some staff to finish projects and the more chaos you cause, the less will get done with existing staff.
I'm very pro WFH but this is pretty benign and standard tbh. One of the reasons employers give you a badge in the first place is to track whose coming and going into the building.
Before the pandemic/WFH, another employee got let go at my company because they were trying to stealthily work remote. My understanding is that their badge-in/out data (or lack thereof) was used.
At a prior megacorp that I just quit from for their return to office strategy people would come into the office, swipe their badge at the entrance, log in to their machine, lock the screen, and go home to work.
A lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept.
> A lot of places have badge in and out readers nowadays. Bolted in during pandemic to "help make sure we don't have too many people in the office for safety." Kept because of course it was kept.
I've been joking with my coworkers that we should pool our badges, and just rotate one person who goes in and swipes everyone's badges in, works a day, then swipes them out.
It is not uncommon to have an attendant posted at badge in locations. Such that... this wouldn't really be hard to put a stop to. And that is assuming you couldn't just spot it in the data.
As I said in other response, I have no doubt these things can and will get gamed. I don't like the seeming escalation that is implied by this, though. Why start down that slope, if we can avoid it? (Valid to argue that the start down that pat was the badge readers, I think. But at some point, the last step has to stop being justification for the next.)
Are you serious? You’d need one attendant for each badge-in location. My work building has like a half dozen of these entries for fire reasons.
Feasible in high rises maybe not in the PNW or Bay Area.
Usually the badge-in spots were grouped at entryways? So, not one attendant per badge reader, but not uncommon to have a choke point that had one. If only for security reasons. Even without an attendant, there would be a camera. And this would present an obvious cluster of badge ins that can be easily inspected.
I think it depends on the company too and how much $$$ they have to spend on such things, but generally there’s an attendant at the entrance badge in points. They not just monitor the entry for people hopping the turnstile, but also greet guests and provide guest badges.
Some way to keep a count of the number of people in the building can be useful. I've seen occasions where someone checks to see if anyone else is still in the building, misses the one other person who is still there, and so arms the security system when they leave.
In case of an emergency -- fire, earthquake, active shooter, etc -- it helps to know if people are in the building. Having been in two of those situations and fire drills, it helps to know who was in the building and if they got out.
Oh yeah we had that. But the query for compliance didn’t track how long you were in the office. Eventually it was updated and people had to be more clever. But the fact was while I was there they never got more than 35% compliance with the mandate. They were escalating the stakes and threatening performance review problems etc when I left. At some point I just decided it wasn’t worth being at a place that values controlling my body more than my contribution. If that’s the case they can have neither.
I mean you could just follow someone else out. Alternatively leave, stand outside to badge in and then never enter.
Both of those would be trivial to see on the data, though?
I have no doubt these things can and will be gamed by more than a few folks. But I also have no doubt it would be rather easy to figure out most of them.
The second one was controlled for by monitoring if you logged in.
> Amazon has tracked the attendance of US-based workers and targeted those who appeared to fail to comply with its hybrid working policy, sparking concerns about privacy.
Concerns about privacy? Really? They expect that entering and leaving their employer's building should be something that they should be unaware of?
Sure. Most companies track entering/leaving but are not actively monitoring it, Employees become concerned when moving from tracking to actively monitoring.
That's more than a little silly. Someone being tracked has no idea whether or not they are being actively monitored. It's naive to assume that one won't be.
The title reads less confusingly with some well-placed hyphens:
“Amazon tracks and targets US staff over 3-days-in-office rule”
What a bizarre article. How can an employer not be allowed to keep track of when you work?
It reads like an Onion headline. "Gen Z learns their badges can be used to track their movements. Said one employee: 'This is not OK!'"
Yeah, that was oddly non-specific. How can being at the company's office ever be "private"?
indeed this is location tracking, not productivity monitoring.
>The email to a select number of employees prompted some to raise concerns about privacy...
This is a fascinating perspective for Amazon employees to take given the numerous privacy concerns many people have had about Amazon for a long time.
I have a friend who’s required to do 3 days in the AWS office, buuuut… Amazon hasn’t re-opened the building he’s supposed to report to. Like he has a desk assigned in a closed building.
Did they get the email?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they’ve been getting prompt emails generally I don’t know about this one. Their manager is trying to get the various enforcement machinery worked out but not much luck stopping the emails.
To summarize:
* Amazon requires in-office work N days a week.
* Employees agree.
* Employees don't honor the agreement.
* Amazon sends a notice that employees need to honor the agreement they made to return to office.
* Entitled employees are upset.
- Amazon employees that were going into an office pre-pandemic switched to virtual when the company asked.
- Amazon employees stay productive, company makes the most it ever has due to the pandemic.
- Amazon fumbles for 1.5 years, doesn’t clearly communicate the desire to have everyone working in Seattle/hubs again, continues hiring remote talent.
- Most employees get frustrated at the fact that Amazon has complete control of the contract. Amazon says “you must work here” and there’s 0 room to negotiate.
Now I get it, we’re US workers with little workers rights and we get paid good money. So, to people like you, we should suck it up and just deal with it! Quit being so entitled!
Sure.
Where’s the empathy for our fellow humans that are being forced to move across the country with their family because they took a job that promised them one thing, and is now taking that away?
Tell me you're a low performer without telling me you're a low performer ;)
Low performers == people acting with empathy? I thought the Earth's best employer would "lead with empathy" [1]?
I'm (voluntarily) leaving today after 5 years, I guess my performance was good enough to let me stay for that long.
[1]: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/two-new-leader...
Absolutely! The performance rubric looks at your value to them, not any of the other wishy-washy axes, comrade.
Well, they didn't make up the rule just for kicks. It was bound to be enforced eventually, and that's what they're doing now.
I'm a huge WFH fan, but I don't see the problem of a company demanding 3+ or even daily attendance. It's a bad business decision IMHO, but it's simply that: a business decision. And they have the right to know if you are complying with that job requirement, it's not too different from requiring warehouse workers to lift boxes.
I think employees should also have a law in their favor stating that once they badge out of office at 5 pm, their laptop is locked completely.
This will make all attendance reasonable.
With all the talk of more Covid coming this winter, should be interesting to see how that plays out with lockdowns again if they happen.
Just let your coworker/friend swipe in for you. If they can't tell otherwise, does it really matter?
*Not financial advice
Lol. Based on chats with a buddy that [still] work there, in [most] a lot of buildings they have a system sort of like the subway. Swipe, door open, you pass through, door close. There isba sensor that can tell if you went in. You also swipe in and out of the building. So not only they know you were there, they know for how long.
From a business security point of view this makes sense. You want to know who is in the building at all times.
Also, from conversation with same person: everyone got the email. Not a single soul they talked to met the "quota". Isn't it great? Now they're gonna move to the fire everyone stage?
> everyone got the email. Not a single soul they talked to met the "quota"
As an Amazon employee who has been RTO'ing 3 days a week like a good corporate drone, I can absolutely attest that this is not true. It does seem like the query used didn't take things like time-off or holidays though either.
My anecdote - there are MANY director level managers who are against RTO and thought they could just turn a blind eye and message to their org "I am not keeping track of this so don't worry."
I pointed out to MY director that I didn't think it was going to be in their power to turn a blind eye. They would get some sort of report with tough questions attached, directly from their manager or higher. Turns out I am still Right A Lot.
I'm guessing your friend has a director with a similar mindset who is finding out the harsh reality of the situation themself now. They have no control over this. Every manager (L6 - L8) I've talked with about this was both unaware this was happening and pissed off because they were removed from the communication chain with their team.
That’s a very good take, I completely agree (but do feel bad that you’ve been going in!).
My last day is today, my org tried very hard to keep me. They were going to get me a remote exception until the email came out, now they have no idea what will happen.
Just like you explained, everyone told me that the director would shield us. That one email changed everything.
You got my attention until the "right a lot bit". What happened to earn trust or being data driven?
Imho, they are gonna reap the results of what they sow foe years to come.
The "right a lot" is a cheeky point to Amazon's core values. Probably written by bezos or some other exec who saw themselves as infallible.
> Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.
got it. that's when i replied w/ the "earns trust" bit.
Wow, that's inconvenient. Seems like a courthouse/prison
> Lol. Based on chats with a buddy that [still] work there, in [most] a lot of buildings they have a system sort of like the subway. Swipe, door open, you pass through, door close. There isba sensor that can tell if you went in. You also swipe in and out of the building. So not only they know you were there, they know for how long.
Could you swing a backpack through to fool the sensor? But it's sounding like fooling it would be way to attention-grabbing to work.
This might work at some companies only using badging, but remember Amazon owns Ring, facial recognition technologies, and probably has location tracking on company phone apps. Someone else badging you would probably create more problems for him and you.
"Concerns about privacy" on just "works at office/remotely" is a weird complaint.
I'd think even under EU and GDPR logging whether user badged in or used VPN would be entirely fine.
No, it's not fine. It adds a lot of complications and EU countries are different. It's not an accident that this is US only. The main problem is that while it's fine to collect that data, but to use it to calculate attendance is an another question.
I think only problem would be not telling the employee that is used as attendance data.
Anyone with full time employment (at least here in Poland) will have attendance data in one or other way because it's required by law
I've heard a lot of orgs have flex weeks or flex days. I really want more awareness of who is doing what in this regard.
My org is giving folk 6 flex weeks a year where they can work remote all week.
It's the end of WFH Hybrid for certain industries.
Many (most?) London based roles are hybrid now , train occupancy seems back to pre-covid levels
again? already?
This is going to spawn a plethora of linkedin influencer and biz insider articles about "psychological safety" and "hostile communication" and HR consultants will get paid to use chatgpt to make language sound less bad
Bezos is desperate to hold on to those corporate tax incentives.
Jassy's running the show now though.