• the_radness@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Engineering is a skilled trade. We need our own union like every other skilled labor group.

    • Lexam@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      And they are smart enough to put us at the very bottom of the management ladder, even though we’re not actually management. That way we can’t legally unionize. In the U.S. at least.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 months ago

        That way we can’t legally unionize. In the U.S. at least.

        This must vary state-by-state, or have exceptions, because I could name examples of them (but I would rather not dox myself).

        • Lexam@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          It’s not every company, but that is what mine did. We’re “management” but we don’t manage anyone.

          • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            6 months ago

            Given how “business-friendly” the US has become, I imagine there are all sorts of loopholes that only work in favor of the corporation.

            • nforminvasion@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              There doesn’t need to be loopholes anymore. The SC will just blatantly rule in favor of companies.

              In case anyone has missed it, they’re done with loopholes, done with being sly and coy. They are saying the quiet parts, they are marching proudly, they are confident and unafraid. We need to make them afraid again.

              The right wing and its corporate masters are done hiding in shadow. Loopholes and subterfuge are for chumps when you can just change the rules without consequence.

          • Vandals_handle@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Classifying employees as management without having actual management duties is a violation of federal labor law. You might be owed back wages/overtime. Could be worth looking into. A class action lawsuit against a previous employer I had led to hundreds of employees getting checks for thousands of dollars, even after lawyers took their fee.

            Some technical jobs can be legally classified exempt from overtime. That is different than being classified as management.

    • dufkm@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Depending on your country, that is the norm. Engineers here have at least 2 national unions to choose from, finance have a couple of unions, same with teachers, admin staff, etc. etc.

      As usual, this is probably just US being victim of 'merican exceptionlism.

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I don’t know about everyone else, but if that were my boss, they’d be severely underestimating my capacity for petty behavior.

    • Odelay42@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      This is the part not being reported in the news.

      Many of us are simply working half as much as we did when we were remote. It’s not worth trying to impress these people. They hate us.

  • _sideffect@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Never quit in these situations, or they win.

    Do the absolute fucking minimum you can, or even less so you piss off management, until they have to fire you, which they can’t outright as after a certain number of years they have to give warnings and trainings first.

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      That only works in places with actual worker protection and labor laws, which disqualifies pretty much all of the USA.

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      which they can’t outright as after a certain number of years they have to give warnings and trainings first.

      I mean, says who? There’s currently only one state in the union that requires cause before you can fire someone. The real issue with firing people is that without a documented cause, that person can collect state unemployment, and the number of people who go on state unemployment from a single company has a financial impact on that company.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      There are two ways to quit: How management wants you to or because you’re forming a union.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      There are many at-will states that can fire you on demand (if done carefully) and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  • Mystech@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Yet another thinly veiled stealth lay-off by a technology company. Amazon’s cloud boss Matt “The Prat” Garman will indeed see some departures, as intended and desired. However, that first wave will be of their most talented, who feel confident they will land on their feet elsewhere, leaving those that simply cannot leave (yet) or those that will cozily under perform. When Amazon applies the inevitable followup reductions (subjectively based on their internal review process) to remove the latter, and the former buckle under the load or also leave, Amazon will be left with lower-middle talent at best.

    The more I see of business “strategy” among this layer of “leadership”, the more I’m convinced it is just a game of Jenga with talent, resources, infrastructure, security, quality, etc; pulling out as many pieces as possible in the drive for short term/sighted gains until a company collapses under its own dysfunctional “efficiency” and “success”.

    • Shard@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      This is absolutely it. The C-suite and senior management are made up of sharp people. They absolutely know this will trigger an exodus and a large bag of fire-able workers. They don’t care that they’re likely to lose a bunch of talented, hardworking staff. Its all been accounted for. At worst the results of a mass exodus will only impact their bottom line in a few years. They just need this years numbers to look good and line to go up.

  • Dayroom7485@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    At the all-hands meeting, Garman said he’s been speaking with employees and “nine out of 10 people are actually quite excited by this change.”

    Just imagine the conversation between the CEO of AWS and some random employee.

    „What do you think about the return-to-office policy I propose, Cog #18574?“ „Great idea Mr. Garman sir, really smart move from your team. Incredible thinking and leadership from you Mr. Garman.“

    continues to tell people that 9/10 employees he talks to are excited to return to office.

    • evilcultist@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      He has to be straight up lying. There’s no way 9/10 are excited to be ordered back into the office. If that were the case, they’d have been in the office already.

      • billwashere@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        That’s a very good point that I’ve never really thought of. It’s not like anybody was keeping them from going back into the office. If they wanted five days a week, they would already have been there five days a week.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          If 9/10 were already voluntarily coming into the office every day, I could see it. Of course it would only be 9/10 of the people he bothered to speak to it about, and maybe he only spoke to people that were already there.

          As to why they would care if they were already there, well one guy in my team goes in every day of his own accord. He applies pressure to everyone on my team to be there with him every day, in spite of the stated WFH policy. So everyone but me goes in every day because I’m the only one that is willing to disappoint him. I’m reasonably certain that guy would love a forced into the office every day mandate, to force me to be there too. Then he could stop making passive aggressive comments about how people who didn’t come in must not care about the work as much as they should at every opportunity.

    • billwashere@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      9 out of the 10 he talked to are brown nosers and tell him what he wants to hear.

      Unless they were preselected micromanagers who like to bully their employees.

      Nobody I’ve EVER talked to wants 5 days in the office anymore. 2-3 tops. Even 3 levels above me don’t.

    • veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The “anonymous” survey asked this question with two choices: I agree or I’m looking for opportunities elsewhere

      • butwhyishischinabook@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        That’s what I don’t get though, these people seem to be delusional in that they think that they’re a hard worker and looooove in person, so therefore every hard worker loves in person and the chaff will quit. Then they act shocked when their high performers largely leave to pursue remote or hybrid options. It’s such a glaring inability to see people different from them as having any value.

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    I asked our CTO at a town hall if there were plans to improve the office my team got moved to because they moved us from the nice office to the city and the back to the previous area but a crappy office. Nope.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        6 months ago

        Friend, you have no idea how nervous I was during that exchange lol. I think I’m reasonably comfortable with public speaking in smaller crowds but this was a huge group of people and a bunch over Zoom too. I’m so conflict adverse. I typically just ignore problems. I’m rarely even passive aggressive. All that to say, I’m worried I sounded like that guy while I was talking lol.

  • buzz86us@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    This makes zero sense… If you’re a cloud company why can’t employees be in the cloud

      • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        But that’s something I don’t actually understand, since real estate would fall under the sunk cost fallacy. Ie, if you’ve invested in real estate, the cost is spent already, right? Whether someone comes in that building is irrelevant. The costs spent to maintain, heat, clean, power the buildings, on the other hand… It’s just not really obvious to me. Seems like fewer people would cost cheaper, no?

        • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          The cost is spent, but the offices are still assets on the balance sheet.

          If demand for offices is lower then all companies that own offices will have to revalue theirs downwards. These impairments have a direct impact on the P&L of the company accounts. Better to force employees to use these assets (and pay their own costs to do so) than show a (greater) accounting loss.

      • buzz86us@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        as a client this this tells me they aren’t all that confident in their product

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    or they could fuck up key services with delayed code breaks before leaving. Programmers working for amazon should consider adding bullshit in the software and saying it was chatgpt

    Go into the office and clog all the toilets.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Don’t clog the toilets. It’s not the c-suites who have to clean that up.

        Nah, use cement, let the C-Staff pay for the plumbers/construction, they’d be more than happy to help out.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The toilets should be being cleaned regularly anyway, if they’re not you’ve just highlighted a major sanitation issue for the building.

  • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    Funniest to me in this kind of debate is having my N+1 manage us from across the country, having two team members in another town, and somehow, my ass being at home 15km from the office makes any difference at all to the daily life of the team? It doesn’t. My actual manager, the dude giving us our marching orders, doesn’t care. Shit, our N+1 doesn’t care either, since he’s almost always remote himself!

    Only people I’ve seen actually care seem to be HR, for whatever reason.

    I don’t even get how any company with several sites has anything to stand on. Makes no fucking sense.

  • PushButton@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    BuT nO OnE WaNtS tO WoRk AnYmOrE1

    Yeah, when you’re having fun pissing off people, people are pissed off.

    Who would have guessed?