The best thing that ever happen for my career (and finances) was to work (remotely) at AWS ProServe for three years.

The best thing that ever happened for my mental health was to get PIPd with a nice severance and forced me to look for another job (I found one in three weeks).

I knew from reputation and second hand experience that eventually Amazon is going to Amazon before I accepted the offer.

There was no way in hell I was going to uproot my life and move to work at Amazon. I initially turned down a chance to even interview for an “eventually on prem” role as an SDE.

The only reason I interviewed was because the department I was interviewing for was remote pre-Covid

This is so unbelievably stupid. Making it three days a week but not specifying which three days is a full-on admission that remote work is fine. Every meeting will be partially remote, all your team conversations still have to be in chat for someone on the team, you're just turning your physical offices into WeWorks and pretending that means something. Even when we were still in-office the thing you thought might benefit from physical presence, pairing, we did over teams because it made it easier to share screens.

The fact that you need the line managers to track and enforce the rule is the real kicker because it means you can't actually tell who's just on their two days or someone who doesn't show up at all. And no manager would be stupid enough to enforce this rule because they already have so little to offer their reports for retention that letting them break the rules a bit for QoL is basically a golden ticket.

Hear that managers, you now have an excuse to shrink your own teams and future promotion prospects!

>This conversation will 1) reinforce that return to office 3+ days a week is a requirement of their job

wonder if there are any employees who have a remote work provision in their contract. I would be surprised, but I would imagine a few were smart when they got hied on

This is why employees should run companies. Each board needs to be run by employees. It's funny we accept fiefdoms in our every day life.

After a decade in this industry, I'm still not entirely sure what managers actually do.

Is that AWS as well? Because half the AWS ancillary services are run by three guys in India who are out of the office 4 days a week from experience.

I, for one, can’t wait to see all those startups created in the near future. All that talent leveraged without any accountability to a manager.

Perhaps the idea here is for the high performers to leave and be replaced with obedient cult members at a cheaper price?

I typically don't respond to recruiters, but now I do all the time. If one reaches out for in-office job. I make sure to tell them I am not interest in non-remote work, but I could be convinced for a wild amount of money.

I used to have a pretty bad commute (2 hours total).

I can safely say that finding a fully remote gig was the single best thing that happened for me in terms of improving my quality of life. My relationships are better. My health is better. I am happier.