Something about this bothers me. Time-keeping is already not straightforward for an engineer. Because the work is done in our heads and doesn't necessarily stop just because the workday is over. You don't have to be sitting at a keyboard for your head to be grinding on a problem. More often some problem takes hold of you, occupying some mental bandwidth even while you're away, at home trying to enjoy time with your family or whatever - technically you're still working, your mind is preoccupied, you might not be able to sleep or when you do you dream about the problem.<p>From the outside it might appear like you came back to the office after a nice weekend break and quickly knocked out whatever task it was that was on your mind. But it's not that simple and after unloading that task, even though it's Monday you could be feeling like you need a break because you actually just worked through the weekend on it.<p>Because of this, I feel like engineers are already massively overworked and/or underpaid when you consider their salary based on a 40hour workweek when the real mental effort can be pushing 60-80 hours a week. Things like unlimited/discretionary PTO, flex hours, and management that understands the balance of overtime and undertime keeps things fair. Establishing a 30-hour workweek just seems like going hard in the other direction.
As an amazon SDE myself, one who doesn't think working at Amazon is that bad, but do admit that it is challenging, and often do work much longer then 40h a week, I would need to have a guarantee that my pay cut comes with a no more then 30h a week clause.<p>I'd like to see proper hour counting, like a check in and check out. Where any hour above 30h comes at an extra cost to Amazon, like double pay. So that they would be incentivised to actually tell me to stop working and send me home.<p>I know some people might say, that's up to you, just don't let yourself work extra, but at a company like Amazon, you can actually lose your job or at least not be promoted from delivering less then the other employees. You're ranked against your peers, so deciding to work only 30h would hurt you in the long run if the others started putting in 35h, 40h, 45h, etc.
'Amazon is piloting 25% pay cuts'.<p>I wonder if the group that does this will be viewed as lesser, e.g. work on less interesting projects, be less likely to be promoted, than the "40" hour employees.
I think what they really mean is "30-hour workweek while being physically present in the office". I would find it difficult to believe that employees wouldn't continue working from home under pressure from management or simply because of tight timelines.
This plus stack-ranking means 60 hour workweeks. I worked at Amazon for several years, their culture may pretend to support this, but, like almost everything you read about Amazon, it's PR fluff. Never going to happen.<p>Simply only showing up in the office 30 hours a week would be enough to put your team on the bottom end of the stack.<p>Amazon is organized such that the politics are vicious and anything that can be used to put another team down (And thus elevate your team in the stack) will be used.<p>Managers like Bezos are proud of creating this toxic cult like culture because they rationalize it and are not interested in hearing about how they are screwing up.<p>A real example of this is Bezos claiming after the NYT article that if anyone saw abuse they should email him directly... and now the ex-amazon alumni group has grown by several people who did exactly that and were fired.<p>My boss was committing felonies on the PacMed grounds on a regular basis, drove %80 of his team to leave, and he still got promoted.<p>Because he was good at politics and BS (and terrible at actually getting product done, easily wasting %25 of our time with nonsense because he didn't understand how the system worked but wanted to "manage" (which really meant micro-manage.))<p>Felonies, I'm not kidding.
I hate to be cynical (really, I do) but this seems like a clear attempt to soften Amazon's current public image as being a horrible place to work. It seems like all surface/headlines and no real substance. The headline makes you assume "Oh employees are going down to 30 hours a week but still being fully paid." because in order for this to be really noteworthy at all, it would have to be, right? But that's not what this is. They are basically just knocking people down to part time but keeping benefits, apparently?<p>That doesn't seem like a good deal to me. I don't want a 25% pay cut for 25% fewer mandatory hours of work. As other commenters have pointed out, unless this comes along with a reduction in responsibilities and/or increase in staff, the same amount of work still needs to be done. And most exempt employees already work more than 40 hours a week.<p>Add to this the fact that the Washington Post is owned by Bezos, and this just seems like a clear PR stunt to me, and a lame one at that.
> "Even names like that, 'part-time' or 'reduced,' make it seem like a deviation from the norm, like you're doing less."<p>This is a telling statement. Why are we still stuck on a minimum of 40 hours being 'full-time'? After over a century of productivity increases, and with ever-increasing automation, we could soon be at the point where a 15-hour work week is the equivalent of an old 'full-time' work week. Now is a good time to start nudging down expectations.<p>The pay cut is wrong, however. The fact that people are producing much more now in 30 hours than they used to produce in 40 argues against that. If a company is profiting from the benefits of that productivity, but can't afford to pay the employees for their work, then it needs to change something else.
The folks I know at Amazon may have been in the office for a normal amount of time, but they worked long night after long night from home. If they're approaching a 30 hour work week as a reduction from 40, it's bound to fail. They have to realize it would be q reduction from 60 or 80
So while this is really good for people that have dependents at home, or other consistently demanding activities. I would not enjoy such an arrangement.<p>The arrangement I'd be most excited by is a team with forced three month sabbaticals yearly (or honestly even 6 month sabbaticals). Of-course with the normal amount of vacation time added as well.<p>The way it would work is: Say a team is supposed to have 8 people. Hire 25% more people and schedule sabbaticals such that there is always ~8 people working. Additionally, you could ensure that there is never a time where two developers go more than 2 months without working together.<p>Benefits: Increases the supply in the job market; Reduces income disparity; Improves employee work-life balance.
What is likely occurring at Amazon is that the board has outlined that executive and line managers should be paid based on number of reports beneath them and this is a scheme simply to get more butts in seats so manager can be paid more. Before you say that can't possibly be correct, consider you don't know Amazon. At Amazon this sort of out in the open cheating or ability to game the system is seen as a mark of power. It's the same as cheating vendors or publishers. It's seen as a <i>positive</i>. Secondly the management culture is that employees are mere chaff to be used in any way possible to increase management compensation and power. There is absolutely no way this has anything to do with making Amazon better as a business.
Makes sense to me. For most of my 40+ years of working, I worked a 32 hour work week and this was mostly for large corporations. I simply informed HR that I would not be working Monday's and to pay me 80% of my salary. It always amazed me that I was able to do this decade after decade, but the trick was that I worked really hard the 4 days I was in the office.<p>I mostly used the extra time for friends and family, and to write books.
This is fantastic news. It's absurd that it's basically impossible to have a successful career working a bit less than full time. This is way overdue in the modern world and hopefully becomes an option in more companies going forward.
I've been told by people that work for Amazon that they can barely keep their teams properly staffed and working over is just a common occurrence, I doubt a 30-hr work week is viable for a company that is more or less (now) a logistics company. Doing so would require higher headcounts, losing money, or both. Not a viable solution, even with the automation push Amazon has.<p>The only type of companies I could see getting away with this would be pure software companies or agencies. Otherwise, I can't see it fitting many models or personal finances.
The 75% pay / 100% benefits thing is likely the factor that prevents many companies from doing this. This is part of the reason I love the idea of a single-payer health system. If companies were no longer on the hook for the most expensive benefit, then more flexible wrking arrangements with concordance between work and pay would be possible.
Just wondering, but it strikes me as odd to have the Washington Post report anything about Amazon, since bezos owns them both. It's like Bloomberg reporting on Bloomberg's flirtation with a third party bid.
I have quite a few friends who work at Amazon and what I hear from them is that the quality of your experience is completely dependent on team you're on.<p>There are teams where all horror stories you hear are common occurrences(although less so in recent years) and others where it's an absolute pleasure.
I work for Intel, and just a couple weeks ago switched to a 32-hour-a-week schedule. I had to get approval from my boss, and presumably my boss had to get approval from his boss, but it was a pretty easy switch. So far, it's been great. Benefits are the same, salary amortized at 80%, and stock grants are reduced a bit more than that.<p>I think most people would rather have the extra money, for various reasons. If I owed a couple hundred grand on a mortgage or was saving to send my kids to college, I might think the same but as it is I have no house and no kids and relatively low living expenses, so I can afford to be a little bit self-indulgent and take a 3-day weekend every week.
This is an excellent step to getting people more motivated and productive.
I don't find working more hours improve my life in any positive way. It's much less satisfying as I want to commit some hours to learning or creating something new.
"These 30-hour employees will be salaried and receive the same benefits as traditional 40-hour workers, but they will receive only 75 percent of the pay full-time workers earn."<p>How does this sentence make any sense?
My company (Administrate - <a href="http://www.getadministrate.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.getadministrate.com</a>) went to a 4 day, 32 hour week (but paid for 5) a little over a year ago. It's been a huge success, and we haven't seen any drop in productivity. We have had to be a little bit more efficient in some areas but overall the productivity gain was more or less "automatic". I'd recommend trying it to anyone, but understand it can be a scary thing to implement, mainly b/c it can be an easy thing to blame when things aren't going well. We have had some brief periods (usually when we're hiring) where teams have had to work 5 days, but overall we've been pretty consistent.
This is one of the things I really, really love about being in my current Ops/Engineering position: I have a defined shift. I work 4x10<i>, fixed hours (flexible within certain rules, like if I'm running 15 minutes late or leave 30 minutes early, my boss doesn't come down on me), a few weeks of vacation, and no on-call. I still get to work on interesting projects </i>and* I have people who work before my shift and after my shift who also handle tasks and projects so there's no institutional reason to come in early or stay late to pull extra hours. (Barring a major service meltdown, of course.)<p>To each their own, but this is why I don't want to dev for a living.<p>* - 3 day weekends every week is an awesome thing for me.
The most difficult thing to do is to stop work after 30 hrs (or whatever the time-to-be-paid is) It is counter to stop working if the job is not completed. But one must learn the discipline to stop.<p>Even if you can squeeze more productivity into 30 hours the temptation should be resisted.<p>The outfit I work for intentionally gives 9 hours of work to new employees and has them work an 7.5 hour day. It's intentional and brilliant. New people do not know they don't have to do 9 in 7.5. Old timers coach them but it is a very hard thing to tell someone to work slower.<p>I think Amazon will realize more productiviy in 30 than in 40 (in some cases)
I thought Amazon employees were routinely burned out. At least that's the perception I get from reading the news. Maybe this is to help combat it?<p>What's next? Unlimited PTO? :)
i've been working a 30h/week job, 6 hours a day, with flex hours (without overtime pay but comp time) for the last couple of years and i absolutely love it.<p>last job i worked at had 42 hours and after 2 years i've been totally burnt out; now i'm motivated, usually well rested and concentrated. when my concentration drops i go home for the day, if i'm working on a hard problem that occupies my mind i'll stay a couple of hours more (but only if i want to, which i usually do). i haven't had to do crunch time for several years and when that was the case they asked if you wanted to volunteer and if you said no that was ok.<p>also if my project lead tells me there's not much work to do right now and if i want to take off time now would be a good time to do so i'll usually do it.<p>additionally, if you want to it's possible to work from home if there aren't any reasons speaking against it (meetings) - many colleagues work one fixed day a week from home (i don't because i love the quiet conditions and free, potent coffee).<p>in my opinion this benefits both me and my employer. i'm motivated, concentrated, productive and loyal - currently i can't imagine working somewhere else full time, even for higher pay. i do regard my employer as fair and really want the company to succeed, not only because of my workplace security but also because i think they're doing it right and that's how it should be done. there's no us-vs-them mentality.<p>pay is good but i'm probably not going to become a fabled startup millionaire here; quality of life is, in my opinion, unbeatable. currently i don't know any people who lead a more comfortable life than i.
I see a lot of skepticism in the comments..
is a 30 or even 20 hour week (for commensurate pay) even possible? I have lived fine on very little money before and I value my time much more, but it seems like my only option for not slaving away is working for minimum wage.
Cool, perhaps that's why I was required to work more and be oncall all the time, have meetings after 18:00, have no life, have high blood pressure.
Could it be that this has to do with Obamacare? I read that it is cheaper to have part time employees in the US right now, but I might be wrong on that.
guys lets not pretend Amazon doesn't operate in Europe and already have this setup - if its already working over there dipping their toes in the US is reasonable. it's a pilot.
The most important thing about this is that it will give other companies institutional cover to implement this within their firms.<p>I love my job but I have had jobs I've hated. Work sucks, go Amazon. If widely adopted, this would represent a massive reduction in taxation imposed on the average American family. A two-income family working 25% less hours pays over 25% less in taxes. Progressive taxes work both ways, Feds :)