Amazon’s efforts to bring employees back to the office five days a week boil down to a fairly blunt assertion that if employees don’t like it, they can work elsewhere.
During an all-hands meeting at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) division, CEO Matt Garman bluntly told his colleagues that if they didn’t like the company’s controversial policies, they should resign..
Big tech companies’ efforts to get employees back to their desks five days a week haven’t been easy.
in February of last yearsom16,000 employees took to a Slack channel to start a petition against CEO Andy Jassy’s call to return to the office for “the majority of the week.”
As of February 2023, employees were required to work only three days a week, but by September 2024, this had been expanded to require them to come to work every weekday from January 2025.
This week’s office phone call—First reported Reuters— Garman The company further emphasized the decision, saying it doesn’t want employees who can’t stand coming into the office frequently.
“If some people don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to work, that’s OK. There are other companies around,” Garman said, according to Reuters.
“I don’t mean that in a bad way, by the way,” he continued. He said he wants his staff to be in a “collaborative environment.”
Garman said he hasn’t seen enough evidence to support the idea that the company founded by Jeff Bezos is innovating fast enough under a hybrid work model, adding: Ta. You can do this even if you are not face to face. ”
Given the fact that the team participated for 3 days, not necessarily the same 3 days, “we didn’t really accomplish anything by not being able to work together and learn from each other.” “I did,” Garman reportedly added.
Amazon did not immediately respond. Fortune’s Request for comments.
popular issues
According to records of full participation confirmed by CNBCGarman claimed that “nine out of 10” of the colleagues he has spoken to are looking forward to the new mandate coming into force.
Perhaps Mr. Garman was just blessed with the people he could talk to. Posting on social media sites and internal channels, staff have expressed anger that the goalposts have shifted yet again, impacting their commutes and family relationships.
“Amazon has announced a 5-day RTO, which is disappointing because I’m more interested in working for a living, not live-action role-playing or virtue-sharing,” said Amazon Web Services. says the engineer. Posted On LinkedIn, employees announced their intention to leave with the #OpenToWork banner.
“If you have a remote opportunity, please message us,” the staff member continued. “Nothing is wrong. I would rather go back to school than work in an office again.”
A wave of layoffs at companies offering more flexible offices and hybrid work arrangements has left tech workers facing a tough balance as they leave Amazon for jobs at rival companies.
For example, Meta allows staff to work from home two days a week, and Google has a similar policy.
Meanwhile, Microsoft allows its employees to work as flexibly as they want, and the company’s vice president recently told employees that this policy will remain in place as long as they are productive.
learning principles
Amazon’s culture is very closely tied to its leadership principles, many of which harken back to the days when billionaire entrepreneur Bezos was at the helm.
Current CEO Andy Jassy remains a supporter of this principle, and Garman said not having his team together and working face-to-face full-time gets in the way of these guiding ideas. he reportedly added.
Garman reportedly said of leadership principles, “You can’t understand them by reading about them on a website. You have to experience them every day.”
In addition to well-known ideas such as Amazon’s “customer obsession,” there is the concept of disagreement and commitment, where individuals express their opinions but add to the overall consensus whether they agree or not. there is.
“I don’t know if you tried to push back through chime calls,” Garman continued, referring to internal messaging platforms. “It’s very difficult.”
