- (from my peers) the MO for those who want to leave seems to be slacking until PIP/Focus/Pivot (for the payout) while looking for outside opportunities. There are a ton of companies out there that meet your criteria, but you’ll have to do some digging. YMMV
- A thought experiment, something you may not want to hear. Have you thought of playing along and see if you would actually like going back to office full time? Also, while you are at office 5 days a week, how about try to get to the next level before you switch? Many will leave (just like you are planning to) and hence it will be easier for the long timers to get promoted in an environment where there will be a lot of inflow of new employees at all levels.
I am not suggesting that this is the right way to think about your situation, but that it is 'another way' to think about it. Who knows, you might end up profiting from this adversity. Wish you all the best!
- If you're willing to take lower pay, there are a lot of good options out there.
I took a nearly 50% cut about 5 years ago (a few months before the pandemic) to join a smaller company with a much less stressful environment and a very flexible WFH policy, and I don't regret it at all.
- Idk why Amazon employees aren't unionizing over this. A major AWS outage due to striking employees could hit them where it hurts and make Amazon's management realize how stupid they are to consider this policy change.
- You join a union, or you join a different company. Or you threaten to, at any rate.
Understand your leverage: job marketplace bargaining power stems from your willingness and ability to do the latter, while structural bargaining power stems from your willingness and ability to strike and/or engage in sabotage.
- Have you had a conversation with your manager?
If the policy requires S-Team approval, it could be hard at the SDE 3 level, though it should be much easier at the PE level.
If your Director is willing to go to bat, and you have a track record, it’s not unachievable.
TBH, the policy is likely not aimed you…
Though I will say…back in my AWS days, I did gain a bunch from being able to drop into Mark Brooker’s office and ask questions about distributed systems.
I didn’t get always like it… but I learned a lot from it.
If you have a solid performance argument in your favor, make it and see what happens.
Worse case, they say “no” and you leave anyways.
- I quit when they introduced the 3-days RTO last year. I just called few people that called me for years and landed a new job within a month. It also came with the raise, as I was approaching the cliff.
Just pick on of the competitors of the AWS product you're working on.
- Keep working from home until they fire you, while making contingency plans. What are they going to do if many just keep staying home while actually doing work? At the very least this will drag out the resolution of the issue much longer.
- Hi OP I hope you figure this out. As most folks are saying if you’re a talented Amazon engineer basically you’ll have the “pick of the litter”, companies should be fawning over you. I think you’ll be fine finding new work be it at Microsoft or Google or at a bank like JPMorgan or a startup. Of course be sure they do fully remote before applying or during the process but I think you’ll be fine. You’re a SDE3 at Amazon!
Pivoting to an unrelated thing: do you know the PM for Redshift? I don’t want to shit on the team but Redshift compared to BigQuery or Snowflake sucks.
It’s missing features both at the SQL level and the developer UX level. For example the amount of hoops one has to go through to create an external table against S3 of parquet files is far more involved and annoying than say defining one against GCS on BigQuery.
I’ve tried engaging in conversation with Amazon people on LinkedIn or otherwise to no avail.
I just want to know what the roadmap holds and if there will be more efforts to bring it to parity with its main competitors.
I figured it was a long shot to ask but considering you’re a DB focused dev I thought I’d try.
- Talk to your manager and try to explain that it doesn't work for you, try and approach it like it's not reasonable in your case to demand 5 days a week - they talk about whenever humanly possible in the memo, I didn't read it in details, but you might be able to sway the fact that it won't work for you your way.
Do not mention quitting over it though, or you'll definitely go straight into the HR crosshair.
If you're done with Amazon, apply to local startups. Likely you won't get the same kind of money, but you might be happier and "you've got that on your resume".
- We’re hiring for these roles, fully remote. Email is in my profile.
- I left Amazon back when the 3-day RTO was announced. Their recruiters periodically ping and ask if I'd be interested in returning. So leaving on good terms will give you options to return if you want.
I haven't seen a recent who's hiring post, but searching for the most recent one can help you find jobs that are hybrid or remote friendly.
Also the startup I went to after I left is fully remote and hiring, my email is in my profile.
- Depending on your appetite for risk and in/stability, you should not have trouble finding work at a start-up (FT or consulting). Doubly so if your db-focus touches on vector search.
The timing is a tricky one, though. I personally know folks who were able to demand a premium for their past Amazon work experience but that cachet will fade quickly as people start jumping ship over this stupid, regressive policy.
- Unpopular opinion maybe...
Just put up with it for a while -- then leave when a better opportunity shows itself.
I flew more than half the country to work for a financial institution in NY, and enjoyed it for 2 years. I got to see a different part of the country, and racked up a bunch of frequent flyer miles. Another contracted me, wanted to keep me as a FTE, I told them I wasn't moving. They hired me as a remote worker.
- Palantir and Microsoft are north remote friendly and based in Seattle.
- Afaik netflix and Microsoft is remote.
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- Startups are a great option. Many are remote, have a super high upside, and have interesting projects you can actually be involved in every aspect of. If anyone is interested in the startup I’m at (Vertice AI), shoot me an email at lukew@verticeanalytics.ai - we’re hiring
- All companies are returning to 5 days RTO, don't kid yourself. I would just bite the bullet and hold out at AMZN until the job market unfreezes and then jumpship then.
- If you would enjoy a fintech and can readily out engineer the average AWS TAM, we're hiring "Work Anywhere" in the U.S. (preference for Americas/New_York TZ for better overlap with UK etc.). We fly you business class to HQ in NYC area for an Mon - Thu about twice a quarter.
You'd be on a small (4-8) capability or service owning team, including investment strategy (quant, strat, ML, discretionary, etc.) domain lead engineers on same team.
We are small enough 'talent density' is still high, and everyone -- even non dev parts of firm -- is a builder.
- If you're entrepreneurial minded, head to your nearest startup meetup/founder networking event and chat to founders. Nearly all the founders are non technical and have the same problem, no tech talent to build their product and no funding to to hire one.
But you could get a significant percentage of the business if you become a co-founder and you would basically have the pick of the bunch.
You probably don't even have to leave amazon if you can smash out a quick prototype over a weekend, then only leave if they get funding and the startup takes off.
- Shameless plug, I suppose: https://www.wellthapp.com/careers
Most of our engineers are WFH 3-5 days per week.
Come build systems (TypeScript, Postgres, ElasticSearch, Redis, AWS, Redshift, etc) that improve the lives of the neediest patients in the U.S. healthcare system through the power of behavioral economics.
- Downsize and move closer to the office
- You should definitely quit!
- they figured you have no where to go
Any SDEs who are thinking of leaving Amazon over the 5-day RTO announcement, what are the best options for WFH flexibility, interesting projects, quality of colleagues, and salary? I'm a DB-focused SDE3 in the Seattle area, but am open to general systems programming projects, with 0-2 days/week onsite.