Amazon To Experiment With Part-Time Tech Teams (usatoday.com)

Elizabeth Weise, reporting from USATODAY: In an effort to lure hard-to-hire tech workers and possibly recast its reputation as a harsh workplace, Amazon plans to pilot a program of part-time teams composed entirely of employees putting in 30-hour weeks. The Seattle company will test using entire teams of engineers and tech staff who will all work 30 hours a week, thus side-stepping many of the problems faced by part-time workers in a full-time environment. The pilot teams' core hours would be Monday through Thursday from 10 am to 2 pm, with flexible hours throughout the week. The 30-hour groups would receive the same benefits as 40-hour-a-week employees but less pay, Amazon said. The plan is smart from a recruiting standpoint and a unique strategy in the highly competitive tech world, said Kate Kennedy with the Society for Human Resource Management.

Comments

Hope this becomes a trend

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love the option to work for 20 or 30 hours/week even for half the money. I've always felt like I had to choose between 40-50 hour weeks or nothing.

Re: Hope this becomes a trend

[Anonymous Coward]

True. Since I reduced to 20-30 hours work is fun again and life too.
Typically I started to hate work and life every 6 months. Now I don't even have to take vacation and still no signs of burnouty feeling.

Re: Hope this becomes a trend

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are in high demand, then you decide, if you don't have enough bargaining power on your own, a Union might help. Or starting your own business and have only part time employees.

Re:Hope this becomes a trend

[Anonymous Coward]

> In an effort to lure hard-to-hire tech workers ...
> The 30-hour groups would receive the same benefits as 40-hour-a-week employees but less pay ...

Gee, I wonder why they're so hard to lure.

Re:Hope this becomes a trend

[rholtzjr]

I am still trying to determine who the term "hard to hire" is trying to describe.

Re:Hope this becomes a trend

[Anonymous Coward]

I know. It used to be pretty straightforward, you start with waving money in their face, then go on to describe the perks, creative freedom and fun environment that will clinch the deal.

Nowadays it's more like: "We pay competitive wages. And you haven't worked here yet, so who knows, you may like it."

Re:Hope this becomes a trend

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it doesn't become a trend because this is just another way to avoid paid overtime.

Re: Hope this becomes a trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Part time is 25 hours a week, full time is 40 hours a week. Americans work twice that. This sucks royally for industry wide expectations.

Re: Hope this becomes a trend

[Type44Q]

Actually, this might be just the ticket for allowing tech works to fit in that requisite second job... :/

Re:Hope this becomes a trend

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love the option to work for 20 or 30 hours/week even for half the money. I've always felt like I had to choose between 40-50 hour weeks or nothing.

I sure as heck wouldn't take only 1/2 pay for 1/4 less work.

Re:Hope this becomes a trend

[hoggoth]

In every job I've ever had programmers are 'exempt' and do not get paid overtime.

Look at that shift

[jwymanm]

I think it eliminates the chance of working for a lot of other jobs being 10am to 2pm only. If they moved this to different shifts outside of normal work hours I think it'd have a lot more applicants that already work another "day" job.

Re:Look at that shift

[Cowclops]

I'm pretty sure their goal is to pressure people into actually working less hours and have a life outside of work (while maybe saving the company some money in the process), not trick people into working two 30 hour jobs a week. I could be wrong, but this seems to be a whole different concept from "I work at McDonalds in the morning and as a janitor at night and I hate my lif!"

Re:Look at that shift

[rmdingler]

It's not a scheme by a large evil corporate entity to stick it to the working man?

What fun is that?

Re:Look at that shift

[ErichTheRed]

This is what I think too. I have always worked in "normal" environments, but there are plenty of stories about people in tech companies getting worked 90+ hours a week simply because that's the culture. Microsoft in the early 90s was like this, every dotbomb SV startup in the late 90s too -- and it's getting repeated for this current tech bubble.

I think part of it is companies self-selecting people who will put up with no life and love the idea of an "all inclusive" workplace. Not surprisingly, growing up and having real-life responsibilities like a family aren't compatible with this lifestyle long-term. Google provides 3 meals a day, concierge service, beanbag chairs...everything a recent grad needs to continue the college lifestyle. Amazon probably wants to try expanding out of the monoculture they have and see what happens when they don't burn people out. Might just be the effect of a mature company - Microsoft is still famously all-inclusive, but people have the option of going home at a reasonable time. They operate more on the academic model than the sweatshop model.

The problem is going to come when the MBAs and management consultants pick up on this and pervert it into "oh look, Millennials don't want stable jobs. They prefer to string together 4 part-time gigs to get through life." Then it just becomes an excuse to hire part-timers exclusively.

Re:Look at that shift

[Anonymous Coward]

Define no life. I pick my jobs and generally pick the ones that I would be doing as a hobby anyway. And large evil companies generally have better toys than I can afford.

Re:Look at that shift

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Wouldn't it be sufficient in most American companies to simply actually have 40-hour work weeks, instead of those "40-hour work weeks"?

Re:Look at that shift

[Anonymous Coward]

Define no life. I pick my jobs and generally pick the ones that I would be doing as a hobby anyway. And large evil companies generally have better toys than I can afford.

If that's what you want from life then go get it....

What happens at crunch time?

[toonces33]

Do you just check out at 2PM, or are you obligated to stay behind and put in extra hours to get the project done? I am guessing they hope for the latter.

Re:What happens at crunch time?

[Cowclops]

Well, 10-2 Monday->Thursday is only 16 hours a week, what they mean is that everyone has to be there during those hours, and then you can pick our own work hours for the other 14 hours you have to work. I.e. you could work 9-5, you could work 8-4, you could work 10-6, but you have to be there between 10 and 2 Monday to Thursday.

Re:What happens at crunch time?

[swalve]

Properly managed companies don't have crunch times. Good employees get their shit done on time.

Re:What happens at crunch time?

[jordanjay29]

Hourly is hourly. You don't pay them enough to care beyond their shift time. If you want workers who are dedicated beyond their scheduled time, you have to pay a salary and give them real benefits.

Re:What happens at crunch time?

[dgatwood]

I find it odd that they specify which days have core hours. I mean, an ideal 30-hour week for a lot of folks would be Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday so that they can have a break in the middle of the week. Or Tuesday through Friday, shifting Monday holidays to Tuesday. Or not having to work on the day when their kids have baseball/soccer/* games after school. It would make a lot more sense to say that you have to be there for those core hours on four days, without specifying which. It is not as though they're going to make use of the space on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday anyway.

For that matter, I find it really weird that they would choose 30 hours and not 24. If they hired people for 24-hour weeks (3 days), then they could have one shift from Monday through Wednesday and a second shift from Thursday through Saturday (or alternating days if folks preferred that). That would mean that their facilities cost for the second set of employees would be almost zero (maintenance and power only), and those savings would probably make up for the extra benefits. So they would be able to increase their output by 20% by increasing their costs by about 20%, all while employing twice as many people and giving employees the shorter work weeks that many of them would prefer, rather than decreasing their output by 20% by decreasing their costs by much less than 20%.

But maybe I've thought way too much about how to make part-time employment work at a tech company.

Re:What happens at crunch time?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it odd that they specify which days have core hours. I mean, an ideal 30-hour week for a lot of folks would be Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday so that they can have a break in the middle of the week. Or Tuesday through Friday, shifting Monday holidays to Tuesday. Or not having to work on the day when their kids have baseball/soccer/* games after school. It would make a lot more sense to say that you have to be there for those core hours on four days, without specifying which. It is not as though they're going to make use of the space on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday anyway.

You are missing the point of "core hours". The idea is that everyone on the team is in the office, and available during a pre-defined time. Meetings are scheduled only during those hours. Someone who needs to find you knows they can show up at your desk and you will be there. You will answer your phone during those hours. etc.

Arrange the rest of your schedule as necessary, but be at your desk/available during the core hours.

Re:What happens at crunch time?

[dgatwood]

I understand the point of core hours perfectly. I don't understand the point of them being dictated from the top of the organization down. Realistically, until you have five people in the meeting, there's no chance of not being able to find a day when everyone can be there, and you shouldn't typically have that many people in a meeting unless it is either a team meeting or a broad cross-functional group meeting. Both of these should be repeating events. Decisions about which day to pick for team meetings should be determined by the team based on what works best for everyone, and everyone should agree upon a particular day each week when they all agree to be there. Broad cross-functional meetings don't require a specific person from any given team, so the team or the team's manager should decide who is responsible for representing their team in those meetings based on who will be there on that day of the week.

Workers should be willing to occasionally take brief phone calls on their days off if they need to answer an urgent question about something. More significantly, there should very rarely be anything so urgent that it can't wait a day if it happens to be that employee's day off. If you are finding that such urgent blockers come up frequently, either:

• The work of certain employees is too tightly coupled (which means it should have been done by one employee over a longer period of time, and schedules are likely unrealistic).
• There isn't enough intra-team communication so that other folks understand what each other are doing at a high level.
• There aren't enough people working on an important piece of the puzzle, resulting in things that only one person understands.

Any of these things indicates a failure of management that should be corrected ASAP, and not just because it makes flex-time easier. It is also the only real way to protect against the "hit by a bus" problem, the "won the lottery" problem, etc.

Re:What happens at crunch time?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

They are paid a salary, and they get the same benefits as a 40-hour-a-week employee. Just 75% of the salary. So, with benefits, they make more per hour.

It's not a horrible idea. Although, at 40 hours a week, I already want to just do 10x4. The idea of doing a 10x3 is really appealing to me. 8x3 + 6 is a little less, but not horrible.

Re: What happens at crunch time?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're dedicated beyond their scheduled time, they are most likely bug generators and are holding back the people actually trying to just get stuff done. The fact that working a lot of overtime is a way to get promoted at places like amazon is why their code is so horrendous. Their best developers are almost invariably the first to leave as soon as they're rid of their golden handcuffs.

Re:What happens at crunch time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on my experience at Amazon, no one – and I do mean not a single soul – works less than 50 hours a week. That’s just the bare minimum to keep from getting fired. If you want even a chance of getting promoted or working on interesting stuff, you better be prepared to put in minimum of 60 hours. The high-flyers tend to work at least 80 hours a week. That’s not just during crunch time. That is the norm even during what should be a slow period over the holidays when, in theory, all platforms and systems are in lockdown.

So, I’m calling B.S. on this new policy. They may say you only have to work 30 hours a week, but you most certainly will be expected to work WAY more than that to keep your job. Plus, if this works out (if they get enough suckers to buy into it) those full benefits will disappear within a year or two – they aren’t required to pay benefits to part-time employees. And, at 30 hours a week, you are a part-time employee.

This is just another cynical ploy to lower costs.

"Gig Economy" indeed!

[ErichTheRed]

Isn't Amazon one of the tech firms that famously burns people out working them 90+ hours a week? If so, it just sounds like they're doing an experiment to see if hiring more people but working them less produces better results (Hint, it does in non-dysfunctional workplaces.)

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Amazon one of the tech firms that famously burns people out working them 90+ hours a week? If so, it just sounds like they're doing an experiment to see if hiring more people but working them less produces better results (Hint, it does in non-dysfunctional workplaces.)

I'm sure this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with avoiding paying full-time benefits. /sarc

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[TimeTraveler1884]

I'm more cynical. I think they are pulling a page from Walmart in an attempt to pay less in employee benefits and unemployment insurance. Just like the other companies that abuse part time status, people will be pressured into working more than part time off the books.

Boss :"Sorry Bill, but we're going to have to let you go. You are the least productive team member."

Bill: "But... but... they all work 50 hrs a week!"

Boss: "Thats not what their time cards say. They are clearly working 30hrs a week, same as you."

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[rmdingler]

FTS: The 30-hour groups would receive the same benefits as 40-hour-a-week employees but less pay, Amazon said.

You didn't try at all.

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

5 days on 2 days off is a joke. 2 days doesnt afford time to actually have a break and do something, or even start something - Saturday = doing all the stuff you cant do during the week because work. Sunday, bah why bother - you cant get away anywhere because you're back to work the next morning.

3 consultive days off, time to get stuff done, time to go somewhere, time to start something and maybe finish it - or make some progress on it, time to feel like you've had a break.

In tech at least one could argue that over a 5 day week, people will screw around and waste most of at least one day not being productive. 4 day week after a 3 day weekend, BAM 120% effort.

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. 30hrs on site. 20hrs at home.

A free iPhone included in the deal.

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[AthanasiusKircher]

If so, it just sounds like they're doing an experiment to see if hiring more people but working them less produces better results (Hint, it does in non-dysfunctional workplaces.)

Actually, at least to a point, hiring the same number of people but working them less produces better results.

That's how we got the 40-hour work-week to begin with. It's generally assumed that time working has decreased over the centuries, but that isn't quite true. Medieval farmers, laborers, and craftsmen did work long days (perhaps 9-12 hours), but winter conditions and lack of light with short days meant that these long days were only for short segments of the year. Yes, during planting and harvest, the farmers might work like crazy, but then they'd have a long winter of time to recuperate. This combination works well both physically and mentally, which is the reason studies tend to show that people who never take "vacations" (especially extended ones) tend to be less productive than those who do.

It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution and the migration of poor laborers to big factories, along with advances in tech, power, etc. that workers could be exploited with long hours essentially year-round. The average medieval or renaissance peasant or laborer probably worked around the number of hours a 40-hour/week worker works today. But by the 19th century, factory workers dramatically increased that -- often working 70+ hours most weeks, sometimes with 14-16 hour days. Factory owners mistakenly thought that working their laborers to death (often quite literally) would maximize profit. What instead happened was increased accidents, along with unhappy exhausted workers who would fall ill and need to be replaced with other untrained laborers. (Reforms (sometimes violent) eventually brought limitations down to 12 or even 10-hour days in some places during the 19th century. Unions fought a piecemeal battle to try to get the requirements lower.)

But the largest reform happened in the early 20th century, when Henry Ford actually experimented with shorter work-weeks (i.e., our standard 5-day, 40-hour week) and realized it (1) increased productivity (not just productivity per hour but productivity per worker), (2) decreased accidents and errors (which were a major cause of decreased productivity on assembly lines, since a major accident could shut down the line for a long time), and (3) increased retention for trained, skilled workers, and (4) also had the side benefit of increasing worker happiness. In many cases, the actual weekly output of the same amount of workers who decreased hours from 60 to 40 per week increased by 50%.

Most of the classic studies of productivity have been done on laborers, and they have generally shown productivity is maximized somewhere between 40 and 50 hours per week. But that's laborers, and those classic studies have been undermined by subsequent studies in Europe in the past couple decades which seem to show people doing even fewer (30-35 hours/week) often are more productive than the classic 40-50 hour folks. Also, the summary mentions "engineers and tech staff," whose "labor" is primarily mental. Productivity studies are harder to design for those sorts of jobs, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that for some jobs the maximum productivity occurs at quite a bit lower than 40 hours/week.

Here's the difference today, though -- Ford paid his workers well, in fact increasing his salaries when he decreased the hours, because he saw the productivity increases. His workers responded well and did better work, because they likely remembered grandpa coming home exhausted from the mines and dying from black lung at age 55 -- and the 40/hour week with decent salary was amazing. Fast forward 80-90 years, though, and executives are all about cutting salaries as much as possible, viewing workers as completely ex

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they be on-call?

I'm wonder if these employees only being paid for 30 hours will only be expected to put in 60 hours?

There are reasons IT is often a salaried position. These reasons are called labor laws. In case people don't know, the hourly rate is actually pretty low for IT professionals after one factors in unaccounted for time.

Death marches are the norm in IT from help-desk support to video game testers. Nothing else can be expected from a whole section of Industry managed by people who put in random deadline dates without even guessing how long something should take. IT planning and scheduling is slightly worse than Hollywood and on part with consumer sales organized around fictional holidays.

If Amazon is hiring part-time workers the may find very quickly that laws have a very clear interpretation about things like on-call, per-deim, travel reimbursement and other concepts. Laws that were paid for by the labor unions of last century before they imploded with corruption.

But this is the twenty-first century. Want slaves but pesky morals and laws get in your way? Just call them 'Unpaid Interns.' Between making copies and running for coffee make them write reports about how wonderful it was. They get Real World Experience of doing stuff for no money that you somehow cannot get in school.

Seriously: spend less time in the seat crushed by anxiety and red tape. Then you'll get more stuff done. The less you work on average the more productive your society is. There have been studies on this.

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[HornWumpus]

The part you miss is Ford fired many of his old workers and hired the best available at his better rate.

It wasn't all the same workers being more productive.

Still, you are right about working too many hours and losing productivity. I've seen many that were net negative and couldn't see a way out.

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

... yet... By the way, do you mean people who work 40 hours a week, or do you mean salaried people expected to work 60+? Fuck Amazon. I walked, I suggest you do the same.

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[jordanjay29]

Not sure it's possible to take Walmart work home with you. At least not the jobs they offer at part time hours. Management at store level and above is salaried.

Re:"Gig Economy" indeed!

[Rinikusu]

I'd be interested in seeing if they keep a comparable hourly rate. I've always wanted a part time job paying what I make, on an "hourly" basis (salary blah blah blah). I don't *need* to make $X working 40-60 hours a week. I can get by comfortably on .5-.75 X and would gladly do it 20-30 hours a week so I can focus on projects outside of work.

I Can See It Now

[RoscoeChicken]

If you don't fill the quota numbers, you still work 60 hours a week just for less pay.

Would you prefer to go back to Starbucks Mr. 40-something white male?

Re:I Can See It Now

[rholtzjr]

Ummm, Yes!!, I would. Only difference I would see is that there would be less stress at the Starbucks. After the hours worked the pay rate would even out. Free coffee is a perk offered by both, but I am thinking Starbucks has better quality blends. So, if it came to life vs. job.... which would you prefer?

Re:I Can See It Now

[RoscoeChicken]

I currently work 20 hours a week at the local university. Dell offered me the same basic hourly rate to "test" their cr*ppy outsourced server code, but I passed at that opportunity.

Re: Amazon plans for benefits-free hiring for grad

[Anonymous Coward]

It says they get full benefits. RTFA

Re:Amazon plans for benefits-free hiring for grads

[jeaton]

The 30-hour groups would receive the same benefits as 40-hour-a-week employees but less pay, Amazon said.

It's right there in the summary. These employees will be getting benefits.

Maybe that explains all the poaching

[Anonymous Coward]

A certain software company of epic proportions in the greater Seattle area has been seeing quite a few of its senior people getting poached by Amazon recently. Now I'm really having a hard time understanding how Amazon is going to make any money with a bunch of people from the $200k base salary club only working 30 hours a week. Seems like this 30 hour a week promise is more likely a bait-and-switch tactic by the Dread Pirate Bezos.

Re:Maybe that explains all the poaching

[ErichTheRed]

Everyone's work situation is different. Some people want fixed, regular hours with well-defined time off. Some people just seem to want to be exploited to the maximum extent possible. Others have requirements that fit neither extreme.

For example, one of the reasons I work where I do now is the flexibility. I have 2 little kids, one of which is going into kindergarten this fall. My wife has a job that absolutely demands "butt in seat time" and a horrible commute. I make less than I could be making, but I can disappear when I need to and just do the work later on in the day. One very popular option I could see for people that work and have kids is work structured so that at least one parent can be home when the kid gets home from school and when it's time to leave for school, yet both parents still work. My job's not flexible enough to swing that, but I would certainly give up some pay for that flexibility.

I think employers in the long run will see that being flexible lets them keep a higher-quality work force. I've been looking into working in the state university system, since I would then have a 3-minute commute instead of a 25-minute one. Jobs just aren't available because once people get in, they stay. You have to wait until someone literally retires, partially because it's really hard to hire people, but partially because of long service. Several staff members I know have confirmed this, and a huge reason is flexibility...they certainly don't get paid market rates. You're working for the state and have to deal with bureaucracy, but academic jobs give people the freedom that some like more than money.

"Well, of COURSE they'd like that."

[jeffb (2.718)]

I'm sure a large company would love to hire people for 30 hours or less a week, thus dodging any requirement to give them full-time benefits.

<reads rest of summary>

The 30-hour groups would receive the same benefits as 40-hour-a-week employees but less pay, Amazon said.

...hmm. Now I'm intrigued. Count me among the group that would happily accept a 25% pay cut for a guaranteed cap at 30 hours per week, if I didn't have to give up benefits.

Actually, given the cost of benefits, the pay cut would probably have to be more than that, because the cost of benefits is mostly constant. If your 40-hour week earns you $100K/yr take-home, and your benefits cost another $50K, Amazon would want to pay $150K * 0.75 for three-quarters of the work, or $112.5K, of which you'd see $62.5K -- a 37.5% cut in take-home pay. But I still might consider it.

Re:"Well, of COURSE they'd like that."

[Anonymous Coward]

Count me among the group that would happily accept a 25% pay cut for a guaranteed cap at 30 hours per week, if I didn't have to give up benefits.

My wife works for a European based company. They have ingrained in their culture no more than a 40 hour workweek. This would work well for her company.

Amazon and the large tech company I work for - this would NEVER work and only cause more problems than help. Upper management would get the good publicity of out it, middle management would use it as a means to cut costs, and lowest management would inevitably end up dumping the extra workload on existing full timers who aren't subject to the hard cap. Coworkers end up resenting each other because either they are working more than are supposed to (if in the 30-hour group) or because they are working too much because of the mixed composition (if in the traditional 40+ hr group).

Amazon doesn't have the culture at their company to make this work - and that comes from the VERY top. Nice experiment but will never come to full fruition until the culture changes.

Re:"Well, of COURSE they'd like that."

[lxw56]

>A 37.5% cut in take-home pay If you're in the 25% tax bracket plus 4% state tax, you're probably going from, ballpark, 81k to 54k takehome - a 33% reduction. 21k per year ish.

Re:"Well, of COURSE they'd like that."

[BitZtream]

...hmm. Now I'm intrigued. Count me among the group that would happily accept a 25% pay cut for a guaranteed cap at 30 hours per week

Cap in payed hours at 30 per week.

You still have to get the same amount of work done or you're fired.

Re:"Well, of COURSE they'd like that."

[dgatwood]

It is a lot easier if you make it a per-team plan rather than a per-employee plan. Hire people into specific parts of the company with the understanding that those entire teams will work the alternative schedule. If someone wants to work a normal schedule, put that person on a different team that works a normal schedule.

Re:"Well, of COURSE they'd like that."

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bitztream, the autism-hating Slashdot troll!

part time?

[quenda]

sacré bleu! 30 heures? Zees is full-time, no?

Re:part time?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is America! 12 hours a day = half time. Or so my boss keeps telling me.

Seriously?

[bistromath007]

How much of a shit do you have to be to spin part-timer exploitation as a move to help the workers? All this shows is that you think of even your management as peons unworthy of benefits.

Re: Seriously?

[bistromath007]

Wait, fuck, disregard. I can't read.

Re: Seriously?

[bfootdav]

Yes you can read -- between the lines. Remember, Amazon is famously anti-union. Do you think they don't have some kind of ulterior motive here? Save money, lower/eliminate benefits eventually, make even the "skilled" employees interchangeable and easily replaceable. Being at the very bottom rung of the economic ladder in America, it's nice to see that the upper middle-class is finally starting to get a taste of what's happening to everyone else.

Sorry for the early morning cynicism. From the bottom we're all just saying "duh, what did you expect?"

Not convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on... everyone saying "RTFA" and "Its right there in the summary"... I think saying that they'll still get benefits looks great on a press release. And the part-timers probably will for 6 months or so. Then they'll quietly drop this perk for new hires... then some day, when everyone's forgotten all about this bold new direction, decide they can't support those benefits for the part timers either.

Re:Not convinced

[dgatwood]

Then they'll quietly drop this perk for new hires...

Legally, they can't do that. For ACA purposes, for example, if someone works 30 hours or more, they're considered full-time employees legally, and you have to pay for their health insurance. And you cannot legally limit 401(k) matching unless the employee works fewer than 1,000 hours per year (19.23 hours per week).

At 30 hours per week, about the only thing they have any flexibility on is the number of vacation days. And nobody is going to join a company that makes them work 3/4 time with no vacations, so if they attempted that, it would quickly become a self-correcting problem.

So the only hope of good employment is

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the only remaining hope for good employment in the future is to be a CEO. Even if they AI and automate the whole company they are still going to need a warm posterior in the chair. Hmm, with a company as a legal entity they might even be able to AI entire companies.

Correct that to only good employment will be corporate board memember.

Re:So the only hope of good employment is

[RabidReindeer]

Or not.

If you have a competent AI running the company, the "CEO" job would devolve into something more like a Wal-Mart greeter. A friendly public human face for the company. I guess that puts Larry Ellison out of a job, though, doesn't it?

And why have "a" CEO if that's all the job entails? Hire an even half-dozen or so of them, take a quantity discount and never lack for corporate PR at all the best public functions.

Re:So the only hope of good employment is

[Anonymous Coward]

$35 state registration fee and you too can be a CEO. I say go for it. It's a very cushy job and pays well.

Insurance savings

[pablo_max]

I am sure this has nothing to do with it...... But, if your employee is not full time, there is no obligation to offer health insurance, vacation, or sick time as large companies currently need to do.
Seems like Amazon would save a ton of money by having everyone move to "part time".

Re:Insurance savings

[aaarrrgggh]

Keeping core healthcare and 401k match benefits and cutting back vacation pay and some of the other soft benefits is pretty much a win-win for everybody, provided you can find enough additional employees and not just have existing staff elect to drop down to 30h.

Personally, I am a big fan of the 4-9-4 workweek, with the half-day Friday as a work-from-home (or somewhere) day. But, we don't have kids, so my needs are different.

Self-driving packages of USB cables

[PopeRatzo]

It'll be like Uber for Amazon tech teams!

Benefit dodging by Amazon?

[sethstorm]

Unless they readjust pay to offset the reduced hours, it's still a wash.

Then again, this is Amazon, where backstabbing is encouraged.

No health insurance!

[DogDude]

They're doing it so they don't have to pay health insurance and other benefits. This is truly shitty, but hey, people are stupid, and I'm sure they'll have plenty of suckers willing to bust their hump for them.

Re: No health insurance!

[Anonymous Coward]

How do so many of you not even finish the summary? I get the difficulty of clicking to the article, but stay you missed was only 2 sentences away.

Re:No health insurance!

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't even read the summary. It stated they "would receive the same benefits as 40-hour-a-week employees."

The problem is that they're going to require the employees put in sixty hours minimum for less pay. For some people, that's better than the usual eighty hour a week demand from Amazon, but it still isn't honest of them. I know when my roommate got a part time job there, they told her she would only be required to work every other week in her UX position, and that is what she wanted since she works on a lot of side projects. She finally got fired for not putting in a minimum of forty hours on her weeks off.

Re: No health insurance!

[Anonymous Coward]

The abuse I took for refusing to work on Sundays was just stunning. Before I took the job, I clearly stated I couldn't work Sundays. I finally got fired and threatened if I filed for unemployment. I did so anyway, and Amazon got it blocked because they said I voluntarily quit by not being in the office seven days a week. Also, it took me nearly a year to get my last pay check.

Re: No health insurance!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see getting fired for not working on your weeks off. I got fired from Amazon for not answering my phone or email for four hours while I was not on call. I was in the hospital after getting hit by a car that ran a red light. Boss didn't care since he got in trouble because he couldn't fix a production problem and was told he had to fire someone.

Re: No health insurance!

[Anonymous Coward]

The abuse I took for refusing to work on Sundays was just stunning. Before I took the job, I clearly stated I couldn't work Sundays. I finally got fired and threatened if I filed for unemployment. I did so anyway, and Amazon got it blocked because they said I voluntarily quit by not being in the office seven days a week. Also, it took me nearly a year to get my last pay check.

That's your fault for not getting the job description in writing before accepting it. If you had, the Washington Employment Security Department would have ruled in your favor.

When I was hired by amazon, my agreement said I would never be required to work more than twenty-one days in a row. After over twenty-five days of working 12+ hours a day, I overslept and was late to work. I was fired for that a few weeks later after QA approved the project I was working on. At first, my unemployment was denied since I was notified I had to work, but didn't show. WA reversed that after I sent them a copy of my employment agreement that said I would get at least one day off after twenty-one days. At normal companies, you get two days off after five days, so Amazon is just unreasonable.

Re: No health insurance!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those 21 day on schedules are brutal. I once went nine days without seeing my son awake. After that, I started refusing to go more than three days without spending time with him. That got me moved to a really crappy job, but it was still worth it.

Re: No health insurance!

[Anonymous Coward]

For me it was Saturday's since I'm Jewish. It started with screaming and death threats after not answering my phone on Saturdays. My wife and I were fine with that since I had a nice retention bonus. Where she drew the line and made me quit was after my boss walked into my house uninvited one Saturday morning demanding I come to work.

Re:No health insurance!

[Anonymous Coward]

She finally got fired for not putting in a minimum of forty hours on her weeks off.

Seen several coworkers here fired for not working while on vacation. I almost did when I went on an Alaskan cruise, and the Internet access was down. Fortunately, we were close enough to the coast that my iPhone still worked, and I could SSH from it. My boss told me later that his boss told him to fire me, lie so I don't get unemployment, refuse my last paycheck, and threaten to sue me if I complained if I didn't fix the problem before 5pm. Amazon takes the idea that your employer owns your entire life very seriously.

Re: No health insurance!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not grounds for quitting. Grounds for getting a guard dog. Or a shotgun. Your boss will only make that mistake once.

Re: "It says they get full benefits."

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if it's in an article, it MUST be true!

Everyone knows that the contents of a newspaper article are treated as equivalent to a contractual agreement in civil court - right?

Without an actual itemized list of the benefits this is all meaningless.

I suspect these commenters of being shills for Amazon.

Do your diligence and quit looking for an easy way out.

~childo

Sounds like typical part-time work ...

[perpenso]

Hope this becomes a trend. I would love the option to work for 20 or 30 hours/week even for half the money. I've always felt like I had to choose between 40-50 hour weeks or nothing.

Sounds like typical part-time software development work, the sort I had during most of my undergraduate and my graduate school days. Working 25-30 hours a week at real companies, albeit usually small ones, although my hours were somewhat dependent upon class schedules in undergraduate days.

Its great Amazon is doing this but is it really something new and different in the "industry"?

Amazon's reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

When they expanded to put a local office in my area our CIO was asked about his considerations on any impact to retaining talent.. His response was to the effect that he considered them a source of talent instead of a potential place to lose staff to. His words were roughly "they churn through people so fast I expect to quickly start picking up former staff".

Something rotten in Denmark

[rsilvergun]

It's not the health benefits. They've already said they'd give them those. But in every IT job I know of companies work you like a dog. Usually low level hourly work goes to contractors or outsources so companies can treat those employees like crap w/o having to admit the fact. Maybe this is just to get some good press? Or maybe this lets them pay people for 30 that they give the usual 60/hours of work to.

On-time requires good estimates and goals

[perpenso]

Properly managed companies don't have crunch times. Good employees get their shit done on time.

Well, when a good employer does a proper job of estimating the work involved.

I fortunately once had such an experience. I led a five person team on a 14 month project and we only had about two weeks of crunch, and it was relatively minor crunch. It was a small company and I manically kept developers focused on priority features. I did not allow my boss or the company owner to insert their ideas into the current tasks. Its not that their ideas were bad, its that they weren't contractual obligations. We were developing the software for someone else and had a very hard immovable due date, it was software to be physically bundled with a chemistry textbook and a contractual feature list.

The conversation usually went "That's a great idea, and it will only take a day or two, but it has to go on the end of our features to implement list. Its not core functionality. We can't risk being late or missing one of our contractual features so the contractual features have to be at the top of the list." The boss and owner were usually disappointed but persuaded. While they did not have software development backgrounds they were otherwise intelligent and reasonable people. Yes at other companies I probably would have been fired. As I said, an admittedly fortunate experience.

I did that 18 years ago

[Zoxed]

FWIW I am in a "tech job" and I went from 40 to 30 hours a week just before our 2nd child was born, so that was over 18 years ago. Loved it so much I stayed at that level, even as she got older. And I always thought that my employers get the *best* 30 hours of my week, not the hours spent hanging in the coffee room on Friday afternoon!

40 hours - 9x4 + 4

[perpenso]

I once worked at a company that's normal schedule was 9 hours a day Monday through Thursday and 4 hours Friday morning.

Absenteeism was lower and management happy with these and other metrics. People naturally scheduled offsite things like doctor's appointments for Friday afternoons. But more often they just started their weekend early. People were overwhelmingly happy with the schedule.

Alas California put an end to this. Employees apparently don't have the authority to move a non-overtime hour from Friday to another day of the week and exceed 8 hours in a given day.

Re:40 hours - 9x4 + 4

[dgatwood]

Sounds like they were ahead of their time. That must have been more than seven years ago.

California employment law changed in 2009 to explicitly allow what they call an "alternative workweek schedule" (Title 8, Section 11170, part 5). That allows employees to work up to 10 hours per day without overtime as long as your total hours don't exceed 40 per week and as long as it doesn't result in any shifts less than four hours long.

There are specific rules and exceptions, of course:

• The workers have to vote to enact the policy. It cannot be forced upon them by management.
• If the employer cuts someone's hours below the number agreed upon in the original policy, they have to pay according to the normal overtime rules.
• The employer must make a reasonable attempt to accommodate any employees hired prior to adopting the alternative schedule who cannot make that schedule work for them.
• Certain fields have different rules for safety reasons.

But otherwise, what you described is perfectly fine in California now, unless I'm missing something.

Re:40 hours - 9x4 + 4

[Anonymous Coward]

A company I worked for in Sunnyvale, CA in the late 90s implemented a compressed workweek. The state gave the company a tax break for adopting the compressed work week and reducing traffic congestion.

We implemented it as 9 hours a day Monday thru Thursday, and 8 hours every other Friday, with the staff split into two teams with alternating Fridays off.

Re:40 hours - 9x4 + 4

[perpenso]

Yes this was quite a while ago. Glad some common sense eventually prevailed.

The big problem

[SvnLyrBrto]

Unless Amazon also changes their culture of overwork, those "30-hour" weeks are rapidly going to become 50 hour weeks, the same way "40-hour" weeks became 60-hour weeks. Rather than gimmicks, I'd rather just have an employer that was honest and upfront about what is expected, with competent enough project management to meet that expectation, from both sides.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

From Amazon's Eventbrite page, they are composing the teams as both engineers AND managers... so "everybody's got skin in the game" in terms of driving process efficiency and improved work product quality.

When people are disgruntled from a sense of obligation of working 40 hours on-premise (and admonished or ridiculed for being more efficient with their time), then it makes more sense to establish a hard (or soft) cap of 30 hours and allow those more-efficient workers a break... and this 'break' becomes a perk of a job well done.

part time?

[Anonymous Coward]

30 hours = full time

https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/identifying-full-time-employees
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/full-time-employee/
https://justworks.com/blog/part-time-vs-full-time-employees-what-qualifying-hours

It's a trap

[Anonymous Coward]

The number of hours will go down. The amount of work that needs to be done will not.

Amazon is hoping to get more bang for their buck, so to speak.

More companies should do this

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to take a part time tech job. I can comfortably take less money while also working 20-30 hours a week, but a part time job in the tech industry would more likely be only 45 to 60 hours a week.

Even when I tell my employer that I only want to work 15-20 hours a week and I would like it to be in 2-3 days a week they always push for more time. And being good at my job, enjoying it and having a good work ethic always seems to work against me.

10 hours work day?

[Anonymous Coward]

And only 3 days a week? I could have TWO jobs. Oh shit, everyone else is going to do that too. How will I afford a house? Ugh now I have to have two jobs. :-(

Hard to hire? Doubtful

[damn_registrars]

I haven't applied to Amazon though I have applied to a lot of other major employers in my area. What is the most common response? Nothing at all. Not even a form rejection letter, just nothing - drawn out over a long time.

It seems the majority of employers in our country are reliant on various shitty HR algorithms to evaluate resumes en masse, and most often the employers don't know shit about how those algorithms work. The employers then congratulate themselves about how many resumes they were able to avoid reading, and then they get stuck with a thoroughly illogical collection of resumes written by people who happened to match the correct combination of keywords (which were often not included in the job posting).

If they would actually have human beings read the resumes, they would find hiring gets a lot easier.

Re: "It says they get full benefits."

[jordanjay29]

As much as I agree that Amazon is looking to cheap out on benefits for these groups eventually, calling someone shills because they point out your error makes your comment entirely laughable.

Tech work can't be done part time

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why currently we are paid to work 40 hours but are expected to do 60 or 80. This is just a ruse they are trying to pay people less for the same amount of work.

Jobs Are Jails: Part-Time Ripoff Edition

[alternative_right]

I can tell how this one is going to go down.

Amazon: Erm, you don't quite qualify for one of our full-time positions, but we have a new part-time program. Unlike most part-time work, it is 30 hours and not twenty, aaaaand we expect you to go the extra mile and stay late sometimes.

Job-Seeker: So basically, work 40 hours and get paid for 20, without benefits or any expectation of future employment?

Amazon: (Sadistic Chuckle) Not officially, but that's what you'll end up doing. Now, do you want to advance your career, or not?
 

Working Mothers

[tomhath]

Look at the core hours: 10-2 when the kids are in school. This is obviously an attempt to improve their gender equality numbers.

Good idea if it works for them though.

Re:Working Mothers

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, I think it's a great idea.

Amazon: DO NOT WANT

[TiggertheMad]

As a senior multi-language full stack dev, I have talked to Amazon before. The reason I laugh and hang up on their recruiters that cold call me is because they are dicks, not because the money is bad, or even the hours being uneven. They have a lot of people, like MS did 15 years back, who are convinced that because they work for a company that is currently doing well, that they are 'the shit' and anyone else is garbage. They earned the nickname 'Am-holes' for a reason.

Rather than trying to fire off the bottom 20% of the company's performers each year, perhaps they should be trying to fire off the 20% that are anti-social, abusive, or poor team players.

Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

... employees putting in 30-hour weeks ...

I foresee some problems: With each employee being less 'productive', Amazon will need bigger teams, increasing the wages cost. When Amazon is struggling to make its 4% quarterly growth, staff will be cut very quickly. The real issue is management attitude: With IT being an infrastructure cost that managers try to ignore, teams tend to provide maintenance by exception, putting out brush fires instead of improving services and project outcomes. Both of those behaviours result in IT teams not receiving sufficient resources for the next update or roll-out, with the result of everyone having to work overtime to meet deadlines.

How charitable of them (sarcasm)

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, it's Amazon, come on, they are not trying to be charitable and make the lives of devs easier or better. Most devs don't have to work real actual jobs and so won't see this downside. But do you know why Walmart doesn't have any full time employees in their stores? To save money, not to be charitable. They can treat part time employees horribly and don't have to pay for things like benefits or over time. It's the same with uber drivers, uber doesn't want to consider drivers as real employees in order to save money on benefits. We tech people are "disrupting" away and driving towards comoditizing the work force and funneling wealth to fewer and fewer people. Sure, we get paid ridiculously now but this will not last forever. For example, what do you think self driving cars mean for the tens of millions of people that drive for work? Sure, tech might be safe for longer than most but there will always be a drive to automate and eliminate, and you might think you're the dude from Mr. Robot, but sorry you will be outsourced and/or automated away eventually. Minimum basic income will be around the corner to keep the plebs from causing trouble.

All lies... once a sweatshop always a sweatshop

[markwaukwis]

Echoing some of the other comments .. once I read this story 1) As everyone else knows.. oh yes we have 40 hour a week IT jobs... when is the last time you had a consistent 40 hours? so they're saying hmm we'll pay them for 30 and get the same hours out of them 2) Again - cutting other key benefits such as health insurance - employer provided ones that is ... I am sure they won't be equal to other works -- be it options or perks etc. What companies say and what happens in reality I'm sure are different things... Maybe it's benefits .. but scaled down ... I'd like to get a chat with a 30 hour worker after the honeymoon is over and see what happens 3) Once a place is deemed a sweatshop, unless the place gets turned over inside and out, ownership and management-wise... it's always a sweatshop

...and still with a pager

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is famous for the fact that everyone is always on 24/7 on-call duty and have to respond to pagers, even including their SW architects. Imagine fun at 3am. Now you will be offered 30h/week + 24/7 pager duty :-DDD

Guaranteed overtime pay?

[misnohmer]

Just like full timers are not checking out after 40hrs, why would these part timers be checking out after 30? Unless of course there is a new policy requiring overtime pay so a part timer working 40 hrs get 30+1.5*10 = 45hrs worth of pay. All full timers will want to become part timers! :-)

After reading some of the other comments...

[jeffb (2.718)]

...let me amend that to "I'd happily accept a 25% pay cut for a 30-hour work week, but not at Amazon."

I could possibly be earning more money working somewhere else if I were willing to put up with 24/7 on-call. Not interested. Not interested in the quality-of-life sacrifice, and not interested in helping perpetuate the myth that you can do that to people without impairing the work they do during "normal hours".

I could definitely be earning more money working 60-80 hour weeks for a nominally "full-time" position. But what would I do with the extra money? I'd have no spare time to spend it. I couldn't use it to buy back my kids' childhood, or my marriage. And by the time I'd "saved up enough to retire early", I would've forgotten how to enjoy it.

what works for the Swedish goose...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is interested in the results of the Swedish experiments with the 30 hour work week from last year. Apparently humans are more productive when they feel rested and secure, or at least when they don't feel like they're trading their lives with their families and friends for depreciating income.

Re:Hard to hire? Doubtful

[chihowa]

This has been my experience as well. When I've been able to identify and directly contact the actual hiring manager, they seem delighted to talk to me and always lament the complete lack of qualified applicants (none of them ever got my resume passed to them from HR). So far I've ended up turning down most of these offers, but you have to wonder how many other qualified resumes the hiring manager never even sees.

Any communications with HR, even if addressed to a specific person, are just blackholed. I have no idea why companies even have these useless departments or if there are actually any real people in them at all.

Re:Hard to hire? Doubtful

[Anonymous Coward]

I applied at Amazon, and they deemed me good enough to fly to Seattle, put me up in a hotel room, and interview with them.

Interviews went well, but it is a single-strike and you're out interview situation. One problem I was given (white board programming) had the review panel of three interviewers arguing with each other, to the point of yelling. The job paid what I was later offered in Houston, where the cost of living was about 40% less.

Needless to say, it never hurt my career taking the same pay and putting more of it in my pocket. Amazon may be a big name, but I was not impressed by their chance to impress me. Even during the interviews they talked about "doing what was necessary" with hints of fifty hour work weeks. By then I knew that if they hint at a number of hours, typically it's 10 hours above that. From what I've gathered from those who did work for them, I was right.

I can't believe they'd actually cap you at 30. Odds are they'll push it to 40, and then you'll go home. That way instead of getting 60 hours at full time pay, they'll get 80 hours at full time pay.

If they want qualified applicants, they only need to pay a reasonable market rate, not kill their employees with overtime, and stop acting like they're only out to hire the top 10%. If I can wow them with the "elevator design problem" by simply asking if all the elevators are in a single location visible by all the occupants, or if the system needs to accommodate multiple banks of elevators not visible from a single vantage point, then they didn't have the top 10% then, and I doubt they're getting the top 10% now.

Re:Amazon plans for benefits-free hiring for grads

[Agripa]

The 30-hour groups would receive the same benefits as 40-hour-a-week employees but less pay, Amazon said.

It's right there in the summary. These employees will be getting benefits.

For now.