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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Leaked screenshot shows Amazon is now tracking individual employee office attendance records, reversing its anonymized data policy::Amazon is now sharing individual employee office attendance records in its latest move to force workers back to the office.

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[-] MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 84 points 1 year ago

Red flag, working conditions must be bad.

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 14 points 1 year ago

Always have been.

[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

I mean they are notorious for having horrible working conditions even for developers lol

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 62 points 1 year ago

The more people agree to work for and comply with evil corporations, the more the world will come to reflect their evil ideas.

[-] DudeDudenson@lemmings.world 10 points 1 year ago

I doubt the guy working as a slave in an Amazon warehouse has a gamut of options to choose from

[-] coffeeaddict@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

They actually have many options, no way Amazon is the only employer that would employ them, and they chose Amazon probably because it's actually the least evil of options or somewhat "better" in something. It doesn't have to be actually better in terms of work or pay etc. but perhaps how easy it was to commute (though I heard Amazon has plenty of work benefits actually)
Now other employers have to compete because they need an employee too. So they try to one up Amazon. If they get good enough Amazon will lose too many employees and have to one up the other employers. etc.

Ok but this clearly doesn't seem to work well, right? Wages stagnating and harsh work etc. This is probably related to many factors but I guess job security is a big one, people don't job hop as much and fear getting fired homeslessness etc. Another one is too many potential employees to choose for limited spots (with the increasing levels of automation in every kind of work), so much that employers can actually down on their work conditions and say "ok then, whoever can stand these conditions for this price can work here".

I'm not some economist or something but I believe UBI or some derivative of it at least would be the leverage for that. If someone who just got fired were to receive 1000$ per months on top of their current savings for 24 months, they won't be so much of a risk and won't be inclined to work in a 1200$ per month job either. We don't actually need this constant race of upping minimum wage and many other band aid regulations if that could be a thing.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

The premise is the same, unfortunately. Desperate people do desperate things, but it reflects on the world around them.

[-] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 54 points 1 year ago
[-] AttackPanda@programming.dev 29 points 1 year ago

I’m wondering if they get away with it despite the lack of stock movement. So much of staff compensation is tied to stock price. Staff previously got RSUs allocated and stayed because they went up in value every year but lately it’s been stagnant. People are less likely to put up with this bullshit if there is no big payout at the end.

[-] CustodialTeapot@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

What stock price are looking at? It's up 50% this year.

And before you quote that it's lower than its peak during COVID, so is the majority of not all big tech firms.

[-] AttackPanda@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

The stock vests across 4 years and then you get a refresh. There are a lot of staff that started 2019-2022 that are thinking about their lost value. Amazon will offer extra stock so they don’t lose money but many people are driven to work there from stories of the people previoiusly that would see their share price increase dramatically month to month like from 2013-2020. That’s what everyone got used to. So if you were told you got 60k of RSUs across 4 years, you knew it was really like 150k at least. For those that started like 4ish years ago that is no longer the case and I wonder how it will impact staff attrition.

[-] whitecapstromgard@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 year ago

Isn't this illegal in Europe?

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 20 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The new badge report for individual employees is a reversal from Amazon's previous policy of only tracking anonymized, aggregated office attendance data, which it said was shared with managers, primarily for safety and space planning purposes.

For example, at a recent internal townhall meeting, Amazon's SVP Peter DeSantis told his engineering team that office badging data is "informational" and only shared in "very aggregated ways," as Insider previously reported.

In an email to Insider, Amazon's spokesperson Rob Munoz said badge data does not account for reported paid-time off, personal time, or work from a non-corporate building.

The memo added badge data is not available to employees in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Korea, or Taiwan.

"We're providing this data to help guide conversations as needed between employees and managers about coming into the office with their colleagues," said the memo, obtained by Insider.

Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy, meanwhile, told employees in an internal meeting last month that it's "past" the time to commit to the company's RTO policy, saying "it's probably not going to work out" for those refusing to comply.


The original article contains 547 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] dimath@ttrpg.network 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wow, an employer is tracking when employees are at work? Outrageous!

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Yes, but not sarcastic.

Why does your employer need to track all employees? Do those employees not generally have managers? Are those managers unable to see when an employee is absent? That never seemed to be an issue before such technology existed. Was productivity so down that it became necessary?

Also, don't they have basic timesheets? I'm salaried and I still have to fill out a timesheet.

[-] Gyrolemmy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

It says its made to assist managers with decision making.

Not sure on the timesheet thing.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Why do they need assistance with that? They never did before.

[-] uzay@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

It's not about tracking if they are working, it's about tracking if they are at the office.

[-] willya@lemmyf.uk 9 points 1 year ago

This has always been a thing, at least while I was there. I was able to look up Bezos’ performance and attendance. Internal stuff was pretty transparent and it’s what I loved about the job.

[-] Ferris@infosec.pub 15 points 1 year ago

erm. What would a Bezos performance quantification look like?

[-] Spendrill@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

Was a 100% bald, greedy fuck all day.

Baldness and greediness increased by 12% Year over Year. We saw an overall decline in employee health, for that I want to thank the board and our shareholders, we couldn't have done it without them.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago
[-] willya@lemmyf.uk 2 points 1 year ago

I wish I had a screenshot myself… haven’t been there for 3 years now. None of this information is visible without being on site with a physical security key fob. May have had to of also been a tier 3 employee and up.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I left Amazon as an L6 after a decade, and we never had access to that sort of data.

[-] willya@lemmyf.uk 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is it possible that you were a clueless L6? I may be mistaken at the level of stuff you could see but you definitely could view everyone’s task and the time in which they were on it. Bezo’s had a lot of “time off task” logged. As just a tier 3 I knew more about a majority of things that my L4’s never bothered to learn or know about.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Is it possible that you're full of shit?

[-] willya@lemmyf.uk 1 points 1 year ago

No, I’m not one to completely make up shit on the internet, but I do know who to steer clear of when I come across them.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago
this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
554 points (100.0% liked)

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