Folks should unionize, and then use that collective power to tell "back to office" mandates to fuck themselves to death.
Shut down AWS and let the world burn until management capitulates. It's not like the soulless husks calling the shots can run the show themselves.
i would love to see more unions in IT. is there somewhere i can read up on current IT unions or organizations that are attempting?
I'm not as informed as I'd like to be. Rock paper shotgun did an article recently about unions in video game development, which was interesting and might be somewhat broadly applicable: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/from-blizzard-to-bethesda-game-unions-are-sweeping-the-industry-heres-how-the-cwa-helps-make-them-happen
thanks
If there were an easy way to do this, almost totally anonymously, so that Amazon cannot shut it down, and so someone can see that it is a legit attempt to unionize, I would love to see it.
There's plenty of "talk" about it, but there's a lot of fear of retaliation in doing so.
I understand fear of retaliation. No one wants to lose their home or go hungry, and it's not like landlords will give a shit. But I also want management to fear the workers rolling up to their house and hour before dawn. They only have power because we let them.
Well, at least until they have fully autonomous kill drones or something.
But it's easy to say that from my comfortable home. It's another to actually get in a truck with your friends and actually shoot a VP in the back of the head.
My philosophy is that I need a job, but I don't need this job. Its great to see people quit working for companies treating employees poorly.
This is just Amazon's way of cutting employees without having to pay severances/unemployment. Those workers looking for new 100% WFH jobs are in for a rude awakening. The market is not what it was a couple of years ago. Tons of companies have moved back to onsite or a hybrid model, requiring 1-2 days in office per week.
And if you're in IT, good luck. Thousands of IT layoffs this year alone, so there's a lot of competition in that field, depending on your specialty. My job forced us back to a 3 days in-office per week policy about a year ago, but we were getting a new director who promised more flexibility, so I decided to just passively look for jobs here and there versus really trying. I now wish I had focused more aggressively on looking. Ah well, 'least I still have a relatively reasonable job, which is more than many can say.
Anyway, good luck to them. Fuck these parasitic C Suites and fuck this corporate and governmental anti-WFH movement.
Those workers looking for new 100% WFH jobs are in for a rude awakening. The market is not what it was a couple of years ago.
Gotta disagree. The demand for tech workers continues to be voracious. And most employers don't have the abysmal administrative policies of Amazon.
You're far better off at a mid-cap firm with management that doesn't jerk off to Ayn Rand novels than one of the AI obsessed FAANG firms. Take a small salary cut and enjoy a large improvement to your work life balance.
I should clarify that I was referring to the US. And I have to also disagree it's voracious for all tech workers, that's why I said depending on your specialty within the IT field. Hell, there was just a post on the r/cybersecurity subreddit the other day with hundreds of comments agreeing that it's not a great time right now in the US. It hasn't just been FAANG companies laying off tech workers, it's been all over:
These are not isolated incidents. According to Layoffs.fyi, 384 tech companies have laid off more than 124,000 employees in 2024, adding to the 428,449 tech workers who lost their jobs in 2022 and 2023.
That's over 500,000 tech workers in just under 3 years. A huge chunk of job postings for IT jobs are just ghost jobs, meaning they're perpetually posted without actually ever intending to fill that slot. There are lots of reasons why companies do this, but that's off topic and lots of articles already cover the topic, e.g. https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/07/15/the-ghost-jobs-haunting-your-career-search/
Anyway, hopefully this slump recovers soon.
Currently, tech unemployment is under 3%. Salaries are 2x-5x the national average depending on specialty. If this is a slump, I'm hard pressed to imagine a boom.
You have to keep in mind we're coming off a decade of industry growth, particularly in the wake of COVID. These 500,000 jobs are a fraction of the IT jobs created annually.
Demand for IT even in 2023 is up yoy.
I guess the anecdotal evidence I've seen among all my peers and social networks contradicts those numbers, so we can agree to disagree. It's easy to massage those stats, especially with the advent of bullshit jobs like "AI prompt engineer," as an example.
Anyway, good luck to anyone that gets laid off. Shit sucks regardless, and that was really my main original point.
I guess the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen among all my peers and social networks contradicts those numbers
Definitely possible that Silicon Valley is in some kind of IT recession. They've been swinging for the fences at crypto, VR, and AI going on six years and wiffing like crazy.
But if you're just a glorified digital accountant (like me), I'm here to report that IT is doing perfectly fine. You can earn a high-five / low-six figure salary at any number of mid-cap businesses. Even basic SQL experience is in high demand. Tons of legacy infrastructure to support. Tons of interfaces to build and data to massage between systems. Tons of new applications to deploy and customize. The real work is endless. The phony baloney bullshit work is what ran out.
1-2 is way better than 5.
Oh for sure, it's just that lots of folks want pure WFH so they can live wherever they want, especially since the cost of living near these companies tend to be stupid expensive. So while hybrid is better than nothing, it still greatly reduces flexibility in that regard.
So, you think on,y the best workers will leave? Not a great policy then.
I'm not remotely shocked Amazon is pushing this asinine policy given that Bezos unabashedly believes workers are lazy.
I know that Bezos is no longer the CEO, but he's cultivated a company culture that reflects these beliefs and this policy push is more evidence management has bought into the nonsense.
He's still executive chairman, very likely had a hand in this.
I quit my last job because management wanted us back into the office at first one, then two, then three days a week - all so that we had to commute into an office pointlessly and then either spend the entire day on Teams calls, or just sit at desks writing exactly the same code that we would have at home.
When I accepted my new role, I made very sure that my contract of employment was explicitly set up for full time remote work only.
I wish the best of luck to anyone attempting the same switch at the moment, the job market in general (and especially in tech) is in a crazy situation at the moment.
Sounds like some pathetic manager is starting to realize that the only way he can get friends is by paying them to be with him and now that isn’t even enough so he is having to threaten their job as well.
My old boss actually thought it was a waste of time bringing everyone back as well. This was a big enterprise, all the RTO orders were coming down from the C suite and senior leadership.
Same, dude. I'd commute for an hour each way to sit at a desk alone, and video conference with people all around the country. After a couple months of that I was very open to new offers, and eventually pursued one. Had they not pulled that shit I would have outright rejected the offers. I was the only person left on the team that knew how everything worked. Shortly after I left the entire team fell apart.
I know of two L7/Principles planning to quit by January. People with a ton of experience.
RTO always sheds the staff you can least afford to lose. My last place lost half their senior team, and have clearly learned absolutely nothing.
I watched co-workers quit over a 3/2 hybrid schedule.
"considering job hunting"
Which is likely the intended outcome. They'll replace these people with AI or unpaid interns.
AI? AI can't replace a fraction of those workers.
Nor can unpaid interns, but they will overwork the ones that stay to make up the difference.
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