
Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek - djacobs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/08/26/amazon-is-piloting-teams-with-a-30-hour-work-week/
======
gfody
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.

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.

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.

~~~
nilkn
I'm skeptical of claims that developers are underpaid. Maybe I feel
differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub and am not faced
with the prospect of buying a multimillion dollar cottage, but when I compare
my life as a software developer to that of more or less anyone else I know,
including doctors and lawyers, I struggle to find a single person who seems to
have a more comfortable life than me.

I'm not _the_ highest paid person I know, of course. My low six-figure income
can't compete with $300k+ salaries that many surgeons get. I couldn't afford
the $1.2M Mediterranean mansion that my dentist lives in. And I'll never get
the sort of pay package that big law firm partners can command.

But I'm not performing life-altering surgery. I didn't even have to go to
medical school, let alone complete a residency.

I didn't have to start up my own dental practice. And I'm not in my
hypothetical dental practice every Saturday morning at 8AM taking care of
patients who couldn't make it during the week or couldn't afford to take off
work.

I never had to go to law school. I didn't have to pass a single licensing
exam. I took out no loans to get to where I am. And I was never worked 80+
hours a week as a young associate.

I worked less than these people to get to where I am, and I continue to work
less than them. My work is easier than theirs too. It's less stressful. Even
if a problem does consume me for days, including outside of work, it's just
not that big of a deal. I started making this income when these other folks
were doing nothing but accruing debt. My lifetime earnings won't be all that
different from theirs because I got such a tremendous head start.

If I look at friends who are not in any of the above three professions, not a
single person comes to mind who makes as much money as I do. Many make half as
much as I do but have much more stressful jobs, fewer perks, etc.

And yet apparently I'm underpaid. I don't buy it.

~~~
lettergram
You can usually just do the math. Let's assume last year I decreases the
loading time of our website by 50%, taking it from 2 seconds to 1 second. This
reduces the drop off rate of customers (people who switch websites before it
loads) by about 15%. That means a 15% increase in overall sales.

Now let's assume it was a $10 million a year business. That means it's now
making $11.5 million dollars a year because a software engineer optimized the
loading time. That engineer probably makes $100k or so, and he might get a 10%
raise since he did such a good job. The remaining $1.49 million gets
distributed amongst execs and investors.

Hardly seems fair, when most executives have no idea what's going on, and
provide zero value add for that case.

~~~
Dwolb
Why does everyone talk like the leverage of the business is the leverage of
the developer when discussing compensation? That's not how it works.

Compensation is set by the market: what is the next person who can do this
same job willing to be paid?

If we go out into the market to find all the people that can decrease page
loading time by 50% and have them bid against each other, we will probably end
up paying the lowest bidder who is capable of the job about the median salary
of the profession.

And another point on >the remaining $1.49 million gets distributed amongst
execs and investors. People who own equity in the company have legal claim on
the cash flows of the business. They balance free cash flows with reinvested
capital (assets,, SGA) to sustain free cash flows into the future.

~~~
crazy2be
Well, you are both right. Compensation is set by the market, but the ceiling
for compensation to perform a task is (roughly) the amount of value that a
employee can generate, in a rational market.

Of course, our market is far from rational, etc, etc.

FWIW, I don't think that software developers are overpaid, at all. It's a
difficult career, requiring years of intense study to do well. Sure, maybe not
as much as Doctors, at least not formally, but a lot of that has to do with
the structure of medical education in the United States (in particular, the
requirement to complete an undergrad degree prior to admission to medical
school). The job of a surgeon is certainly more difficult than the average
software developer, but compared to a SRE at Google, say, who is working with
real, "living" distributed systems that interact in complex ways, I would say
they are comparable. If anything, I'd expect, in a rational market, for the
SRE to be paid more, because their services are providing for millions or
billions of customers, while the surgeon is only providing for one at a time
(and maybe a few thousand over their carrer).

~~~
nexxer
What I usually reach when thinking along similar paths, using me (programmer)
vs my doctor friends, is the failure scenario:

If I introduce a bug it will hurt revenue in some way, possibly affecting the
company's operations. If most doctors mishandle a patient it could have
significant, immediate effect on that person's life.

I deal with the responsibility weighing on me, but they've had to get used to
dealing with a much heavier responsibility.

------
BookingPotions
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.

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.

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.

~~~
peatmoss
I never thought I'd want a clock-in, clock-out system until this moment. Early
in my working life (teen retail electronics job), I felt the pressure of the
clock, even as a super reliable worker. I just knew it was there.

Now, the idea of a clock that tells me to go home seems super appealing.

------
pjmorris
'Amazon is piloting 25% pay cuts'.

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.

~~~
andrewguenther
The pilot is a team-wide thing. You won't have a 30-hour employee on a 40-hour
team. 30-hour employees will work with 30-hour employees under a 30-hour
manager. I think that will help offset some of this, but it does put a limit
on what projects you could work on. For the pilot, anyway. I'm interested to
see how this pans out.

~~~
pjmorris
I recognize that 'You won't have a 30-hour employee on a 40-hour team'... my
point is that, unless they segregate them in another building, probably
another company, the pilot teams will interact with the non-pilot teams...
and, at some point in the hierarchy, will be managed by 40-hour people.

As jaded as I sound, I do think there's a place for workplace flexibility.
What would really tell me the executives are committed to it: Calculate their
actual FTE's - average work week hours divided by 40 - and make sure there are
at least that many physical FTE's.

------
smb06
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.

~~~
zzalpha
Precisely.

Amazon is a sweatshop. The expectation is salaried employees put in ungodly
hours.

All this is doing is giving people more freedom to burn themselves out at
home, while further blurring the lines between work and life and throwing in a
25% pay cut as the cherry on top.

It's like the opposite of Google campus life, but with the same goal.

~~~
abbasaamer
"Amazon is a sweatshop"

I wouldn't agree with this broad generalization. I work in Alexa and the work
environment on my team is pretty awesome. Lots of freedom to try new things,
good work life balance, and generally a high level of respect for engineers. I
turned down Google to come here and I have no regrets (though not to imply
that Google isn't equally awesome).

~~~
BookingPotions
I'd have to disagree. I've been at Amazon for 2 years, and while it's not a
sweatshop, it's definitly a challenging environment where I know of no one who
works an exact 40h week at all times.

There's zero buffer to slack off, a less productive day is followed by a
longer one.

I like working at Amazon. I like the challenge, the projects, the people I
work with are fun and smart, but it is not a place where you can easily
balance your life for a long period of time. I've never met someone past the 5
year mark that does not define his life as an Amazon employee first,
everything second.

You can try to keep yourself at 40h, but eventually it will hurt you, it'll
show in your review, it'll hold back your promotion, and if you're unlucky
enough to have a management switch at a time where the team is expected to
perform, you might even lose your job. I've seen it happen.

Now, maybe in some teams things are different, but in my 2 years, it's been my
impression that this is the culture here. You either like it, as I do, I enjoy
the rush and the busyness, makes my days fly by. Or you don't and you leave.

I'd be curious to know though, and be honest, you've really ever only worked
40h weeks? You havnt logged in on a weekend or an evening, stayed longer on an
Thursday, checked your mails when off work? Not ever? Ignoring on call time
offcourse.

~~~
biafra
> I'd be curious to know though, and be honest, you've really ever only worked
> 40h weeks? You havnt logged in on a weekend or an evening, stayed longer on
> an Thursday, checked your mails when off work? Not ever? Ignoring on call
> time offcourse.

I work 40 hours per week on average. For the 20 years I have been in the
industry.

I solved some problems in the shower, but I also slack away on my desk
sometimes.

------
20yrs_no_equity
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.))

Felonies, I'm not kidding.

------
ebbv
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?

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.

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.

~~~
draw_down
I'll agree on the reason why they're doing this, but I've actually always
wanted this deal, or something like it. Less hours for less pay, which as a
software professional would still be pretty good money. The challenge is
having that be accepted by the organization, which most American companies
won't because we're all supposed to love what we do or whatever.

If you're supposed to still accomplish the same amount of stuff in 75% the
time then that's just clearly not going to work. Can't fit 10 pounds of shit
in a five-pound bag.

But anyway, yes, I'm sure it's either a PR stunt or bound to fail or both.

~~~
thesimpsons1022
never heard of a bag that has a weight limit instead of a volume limit.

~~~
draw_down
Shhhh.

------
Falkon1313
> "Even names like that, 'part-time' or 'reduced,' make it seem like a
> deviation from the norm, like you're doing less."

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.

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.

~~~
GarrisonPrime
>Now is a good time to start nudging down expectations.

Agreed. As technology advances, we have a much less need for labor. Yet we are
not yet at the stage of "Star Trek abundance", so people still need to work
for a living. A cultural shift to a shorter standard work week will be
essential, I feel, to avoid having catastrophic waves of unemployment.

I'm not sure about the pay cut being wrong however. That may be necessary to
some extent, society-wide. But if nearly everything is becoming automated and
dirt cheap, one's standard of living need not necessarily decrease. It may
dramatically increase, even if the dollar amount of your paycheck doesn't
change (or even if it goes down).

------
krisdol
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

~~~
citizenflynn
And my team at Amazon almost every day has only 4/5 engineers at the office
because one is taking it easy working from home. Sometimes people take hour
lunches and leave after 7 hours. Sometimes they want to finish something and
stay later.

~~~
gtrubetskoy
In which way is "working from home" "taking it easy"?

~~~
andrewguenther
Because working from home is usually light on working.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Your viewpoint, without experience, is toxic to rational discussions regarding
remote work (and is ironic, considering your employer).

~~~
Spooky23
No, it's just a different viewpoint.

If you don't have measurable inputs and outputs (i.e. Tickets, service
requests, widgets, cases, etc), you typically lose productivity. Not
necessarily because of the employee, but also because of managers who don't
function well with out of sight people.

Personally, I think in many cases you'd get better outcomes out of sending
people home at noon on Fridays than having them telework.

~~~
Falkon1313
> If you don't have measurable inputs and outputs

Of course if you're not giving employees anything to do, you'll get reduced
productivity. That's also true if you force them to sit in a chair in the
office and do nothing. If you can't come up with anything for them to do (slow
season, sales pipeline stalled) maybe let them pitch ideas for things they'd
like to work on and give the ok on some.

Either way, if they have something to do and you keep in touch with them on
how things are going, things should keep moving even without specific granular
measurements. But why not use tickets or tasks or something to make it
visible?

> also because of managers who don't function well with out of sight people

Those people probably shouldn't be managers, at least not working with remote
workers. Communication is critical. A remote team should feel like they're
communicating at least as much as an in-office team, if not more.

------
yazaddaruvala
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.

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.

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.

Benefits: Increases the supply in the job market; Reduces income disparity;
Improves employee work-life balance.

~~~
rdl
Also ensures good handoff on projects -- if you work 60h/wk for, say, 8 weeks
to ship something, and 40h/wk for 2 weeks before/after to handle turnover, and
then are basically AFK for 8 weeks, you'll probably do a pretty good job on
handing it off.

(My personal ideal is ~8 days on (12-16h/day), 6 days off, and then a month or
two off twice a year.)

------
amzn-336495
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 _positive_. 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.

------
mark_l_watson
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.

I mostly used the extra time for friends and family, and to write books.

~~~
JamesBarney
BTW if you went around and asked a bunch of software engineers how they
finangled there way into working a sub-40 week and collected that into a
e-book. I would buy the shit out of that. And judging from other hacker news
posts there are lots of other developers who would as well.

I would do it myself but I don't have the extra day to write books :) and I'm
a terrible writer.

------
spectrum1234
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.

~~~
malcolmgreaves
There's a 25℅ reduction in pay. This policy is another one of Amazon's "screw
the worker" policies.

~~~
crucifiction
Working 75% of the time for 75% of the pay is screwing the worker?

------
partiallypro
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.

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.

~~~
jchendy
> I've been told by people that work for Amazon that they can barely keep
> their teams properly staffed

I think that's true of every tech successful company. There's always more +EV
work to be done than people to do it, and recruiting quality people is never
easy.

It seems short-sighted to suggest that the existence of this problem
necessitates working long hours. There are lots of factors to consider:

* It's possible that somebody working 30 hours is actually more productive than somebody working 40 hours, so productivity goes up under the new policy without hiring anybody new.

* It's possible that many more people could enter the workforce if a 30 hour week with a flexible schedule was possible. This working style could be appealing to students, retired people, stay-at-home parents, artists, etc.

* Maybe it's actually okay for productivity to go down. If the company is able to remain stable while getting slightly less done and having much happier employees, perhaps that's a net gain to society.

------
peatmoss
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.

~~~
radafor
Agreed. I don't think healthcare should be tied to work.

------
kiddz
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.

------
rezashirazian
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.

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.

------
elihu
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.

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.

~~~
dasmoth
Good for you. I can assure you that there are plenty of people with kids who
like this idea, too!

But what's the justification for a more-than-pro-rata loss of stock grants?

~~~
elihu
I still get full benefits even though I'm only working 4/5ths the hours, so it
makes sense they'd take that out somewhere else. I don't get a lot of stock,
so I think it works out numerically that the stock I don't get is probably
about equal to a fifth of the cost of my health insurance. I think that's
fair.

------
randyrand
When I was at amazon I was routinely putting in 170hr+ work weeks. It was
impossible.

~~~
zzalpha
I'm gonna assume you meant 70+, not 170+, unless you're a time traveller...

Or you really did mean it was impossible, in which case... math checks out.

~~~
flamedoge
He was doing 4 men's jobs, but not even close to 10xer's 400 hr/wk

------
sangd
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.

------
tdumitrescu
3/4 pay for 3/4 butt in seat time. Seems like Amazon is getting a great deal
here!

~~~
imh
Compared to the alleged 80 hour norm, it's 3/4 pay for 3/8 of the butt in seat
time. If it's truly just 30 hours per week, that's a great deal for the
workers!

------
itaysk
"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."

How does this sentence make any sense?

~~~
sokoloff
It means that they get the same [non-cash] benefits as other workers and that
their cash compensation is the only thing scaled down in proportion to nominal
hours worked.

(I'm assuming you were confused by "same benefits" and "75% pay". Benefits, in
this context, is the non-cash benefits: health insurance, PTO accrual, etc.)

~~~
itaysk
I was (still am) confused because they say employees will be 'salaried' the
same and than receive 75% of full time 'earn'. Salary and earn are the same to
me.

~~~
sokoloff
Salaried means an employee is paid a fixed amount per _calendar time_ (per
week, month, or year). The word "salaried" doesn't specify the _amount_ , just
the _structure_ of pay.

The alternative is "hourly" where the employee is paid per _hour worked_ or
"piecework" where the person (typically not an employee) is paid per unit of
work (bushel picked, unit assembled, etc)

From the original quote: "These 30-hour employees will be salaried and receive
the same benefits" means:

"These employees will be salaried [not hourly]." and

"These employees will receive the same [non-cash] benefits."

Nowhere does it say nor imply "These employees will receive the same salary."

------
nemesisj
My company (Administrate -
[http://www.getadministrate.com](http://www.getadministrate.com)) 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.

------
techsupporter
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 _, 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 _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.)

To each their own, but this is why I don't want to dev for a living.

* - 3 day weekends every week is an awesome thing for me.

------
losteverything
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.

Even if you can squeeze more productivity into 30 hours the temptation should
be resisted.

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.

I think Amazon will realize more productiviy in 30 than in 40 (in some cases)

------
freestockoption
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?

What's next? Unlimited PTO? :)

~~~
jerkstate
Yes, it seems like this move is to help combat the perception that Amazon
employees are routinely burned out.

------
stefs
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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

------
radafor
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.

------
groaner
I would much rather have 75% pay for 13 weeks of PTO. Highly unlikely anyone
will ever offer that.

------
AlphaWeaver
"Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post."

------
atopuzov
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.

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DominikR
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.

~~~
swiley
That's true but I don't think it's cheap enough at these pay levels for that
to matter a whole lot.

~~~
DominikR
Well if it was Google or Facebook I certainly wouldn't entertain this thought
but with Amazon? They are known to do things that some (not me) regard as
pretty shady to shave off costs wherever they can.

I wouldn't object to that as Amazon didn't create the rules, they are just
operating within the system in the most efficient way they can.

What I find concerning is that the rules are changed in the West to
incentivise part time work (which doesn't pay living wages in other sectors
than IT) over full time work, effectively leaving more and more workers
dependant on welfare.

It's what we see here in the EU too since the crash in 2008. Many jobs were
lost and the recovery was mostly in part time jobs where the government has to
support these workers with additional payments in order for them to survive.

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balls187
Get two jobs working 30 hours, each paying 75%, and you'll work the same as
one demanding software job, and make 50% more!

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sidcool
With the speed and aggression that Amazon moves, it's going to be a challenge
to implement this for Engineers.

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mbloom1915
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.

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namelezz
> 30-hour workweek

Amazon, is that 30 in decimal or hexadecimal?

------
megablast
Not for the guys in the factories though.

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jecjec
The most important thing about this is that it will give other companies
institutional cover to implement this within their firms.

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 :)

