AWS asks employees to leave if they don’t return to the office

Amazon Web Services chief reportedly orders employees to quit if they don’t like controversial new 5-day-a-week office work policy

Amazon Web Services employees have been given a harsh ultimatum over a new and controversial return to office politics.

According to Reuters, AWS CEO Matt Garman defended AWS’s controversial new 5-day-a-week office work policy at an all-hands meeting, saying those who don’t support it could leave for another company.

AWS parent company Amazon banned remote work in August 2023 amid some resistance to the previous return-to-office mandate and warned employees that their presence (or lack thereof) in the office was being recorded.

Dissatisfied staff

Amazon then warned that it monitors the presence of its employees in the US and will punish them for not spending enough time in the corporate workplace.

In February 2023, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy issued an order that “the majority” of the company’s 300,000-strong corporate workforce would return to the office effective May 1, 2023.

Disgruntled Amazon employees have reportedly taken to internal protest channels, pointing out that Jassy said in September 2022 that Amazon would not follow others in the tech industry by ordering its corporate employees to return to the office in a post-coronavirus world.

In May 2023, hundreds of Amazon employees took to the streets to protest the company’s decision to return to the office, the layoff of 27,000 employees and its environmental record.

Return or leave

But AWS employees have been warned they should look for jobs at other firms if they don’t like the office’s 5-day-a-week policy.

The new work policy was announced by Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy in a note to employees in September.

“We decided that we would go back to the way we worked in the office before Covid,” Jassy is quoted as saying. “Looking back over the past five years, we continue to believe that the benefits of office collaboration are significant.”

Now AWS CEO Matt Garman reportedly said nine out of 10 workers he spoke with support the new policy, which takes effect in January, according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters.

Those who don’t want to work in an Amazon office five days a week can quit, he suggested.

“If there are people who just don’t work very well in this environment and don’t want to, that’s okay, there are other companies around,” Garman reportedly said.

“I don’t mean that in a bad way, by the way,” he said, adding, “We want to be in an environment where we work together.”

“When we want to really innovate on interesting products, I don’t see us being able to do that without being in person,” Garman said.

Amazon’s previous office attendance requirement for employees was three days a week, in line with the policies of its tech peers Google and Meta.

At Microsoft, employees are expected to be in the office 50 percent of the time.