Amazon employees push back against five-day office mandate, challenge CEO’s comments on remote work

Hundreds of Amazon employees have hit back at comments made by the company’s cloud boss about working from home.

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman claimed last Thursday that “nine out of 10 people are actually quite excited by this change” — the change being the business’s recently announced five-day in-office mandate.

However, more than 500 Amazon employees have come together to disagree in a letter obtained by Reuters and reported by the New York Post.

“We were appalled to hear the non-data-driven explanation you gave for Amazon imposing a five-day in-office mandate,” employees said.

Garman sensationally claimed during an all-hands meeting at Amazon’s second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, that staff who do not agree with the company’s new in-office mandate can leave.

“If there are people who just don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to, that’s OK, there are other companies around,” Garman said, according to a transcript viewed by CNBC.

“At Amazon, we want to be in an environment where we are working together, and we feel that a collaborative environment is incredibly important for our innovation and for our culture.”

Garman’s comments are “inconsistent with the experiences of many employees” and are “misrepresenting the realities of working at Amazon”, employees said.

His comments do not reflect any independent data and “break the trust of your employees who have not only personal experience that shows the benefits of remote work, but have seen the extensive data which supports that experience”, employees said.

The new mandate impacted protected workers, such as neurodivergent staff and staff with childcare responsibilities, staff said in the letter.

Anonymous employees detailed in the letter how complying with the mandate would not work for them, due to circumstances including family obligations, commuting times and medical necessities.

“I used to be proud of my work and excited about my future here,” said one. “I don’t feel that anymore.”

An Amazon spokesperson told the Post the company offered commuter benefits, elder care and subsidised parking rates, among other things, to help with in-office work.

Amazon has observed that working in-office helps teams be more collaborative and effective, a company spokesperson told CNBC.

Amazon announced the new mandate last month.

The company’s previous return-to-work stance required corporate workers to be in the office at least three days a week.

Employees have until January 2 to adhere to the new policy.

The company is rolling back its pandemic-era remote work policies as it looks to keep up with rivals Microsoft, OpenAI and Google in the race to develop generative artificial intelligence.

It is one of the primary tasks in front of Garman, who took over AWS in June after his predecessor Adam Selipsky stepped down from the role.

At the all-hands meeting, Garman acknowledged there would be cases where employees had some flexibility.

“What we really mean by this is we want to have an office environment,” said Garman, noting an example scenario where an employee may want to work from home one day with their manager’s approval to focus on their work in a quiet environment.

“Those are fine,” he said.

Garman said the mandate was important for preserving Amazon’s culture and “leadership principles,” which are a list of more than a dozen business philosophies meant to guide employee decisions and goals.

He pointed to Amazon’s principle of “disagree and commit”, which is the idea that employees should debate and push back on each other’s ideas respectfully.

That practice can be particularly hard to carry out over Amazon’s videoconferencing software, called Chime, Garman said.

“I don’t know if you guys have tried to disagree via a Chime call — it’s very hard,” Garman said.

-With CNN