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Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

Kind of think people not being able to return to the office is the goal. It lets them reduce head count without the need for severance. Kind of like in office space when they just stopped paying the guy.

I did laugh at the part about being the world's best employer. Pretty hard to do with mandatory pips and firing warehouse employees via algorithms.

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Constructive dismissal is still a layoff.

I'm all for remote work in tech, but I also think it might be difficult to convince a court that "please come to work" is creating a hostile work environment.

I guess it depends on the circumstances. Like if they were told they could go full remote, and the employee moved out of state and settled down somewhere where there is no office, now to be told j/k get back in here, seems like a case could be made.

There is no case to be made in the US unless the constructive dismissal was discriminatory in nature. It is legal to get people to quit by making working conditions worse, as long as you don't break any employment laws by doing so.

Say that I want you some of my employees to quit. I say you are only allowed to have meetings while doing handstands, but I provide reasonable accommodation for disabled people who can't do handstands. If I fire you for not doing a handstand or if you quit because you don't want to do handstands, I have done nothing illegal under US law.

Doesn't mean it's a good system. But that is the system we have.

Constructive dismissal is legal. The point is that if an employee can show that you changed the rules to make them quit, they get unemployment benefits.

Of course it’s discriminatory based on age, familial status, and disabilities. There’s data, just wait.

Unfortunately US courts have not been very receptive to disparate impact claims recently

Especially if they were hired with remote in their original agreement. Changing the location of work would necessitate some additional consideration and a new agreement.

I have numerous emails and messages from agents (recruiters) of the company assuring me that positions were fully remote. I was sent plenty of job descriptions that specifically stated they were fully remote positions.

Maybe that means I would have been rif'd in one of the "okay we have to call it a layoff" layoffs before this policy tho.

Significant changes in job location absolutely do count. Forcing people to work from home would probably be enough to count, actually - If the employee objected. Forcing an employee who had promises about WFH availability to come into an office is going to be a slam dunk, for essentially zero gain - The damages will generally be too small to be worth it, at least in the US with at-will employment. But as a matter of labor law, it should be classified as a layoff.

Agreed on damages. It's been my limited experience that US lawyers won't even bother with such a case unless they think there is a very good chance of a jury awarding punitive damages. Which, practically speaking, is very rare and only happens in the most egregious of cases. I suppose it matters somewhat what the local jury pool is like, but generally if it isn't something absolutely flagrant and politically charged juries don't award punitive damages in these cases.

"Please come to work where we can better surveil you for 100% of the day, penalize you based on sensitive activity signals and metrics, and better take away your privacy (spyware) and civil (going to the bathroom) rights."

Welllll, when you are a cloud for the world's governments and systemically important financial institutions, you have operating functions that keep you being able to retain those customers. AWS has had issues in the past with employee retention in those types of departments.

If there is a theory of RTTO as a form of soft layoffs, it still seems like we have a lot to learn about how that impacts the compliance and security capabilities of companies using such tactics.

Re "AWS has had issues in the past with employee retention in those types of departments." Amazon as a whole is the only first tier tech company where people I know wanted to get jobs, and later decided to leave because the work environment was bad.

I've always thought of Amazon as a step into Faang. You get a job there, it pays really well. It sucks. You maybe survive 2 years and leave or don't and get a nice severance. Now you have faang on your resume and can go somewhere else. Never thought of it as a long term type place as you are very much not a person but a line item or even worse a hire to fire.

Isn’t most of FANG/MAMMAA like like that?

Honestly not sure. I'd never thought it was. Always heard google and Netflix were good places to work. This recession appears to potentially be changing that though

> when you are a cloud for the world's governments and systemically important financial institutions, you have operating functions

You can do all of that and still have plenty of money left over. Don't forget all the wasted money amazon has sunk into Alexa (recent news is the whole division is failing to turn a profit) and their attempts to dip their toes in video games (New World) which failed spectacularly. Yeah they can afford to do a lot of things better, and it's all a write-off for them either way.

Money doesn't matter if you can't attract and retain talent, which is my main point. IDK exactly what you are getting at.

I remember an article a while ago where Amazon execs were expressing concern about blowing through all of the available warehouse talent around their large warehouses because they hired and fired so quickly.

I'm saying that Amazon has no excuse for it's inability to improve working conditions. It's able to bleed money elsewhere, it damn well should be bleeding it to the tune of improving workers' conditions and salaries

I think the 2 of you are saying the same thing just in a different way and at each other

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