Amazon AWS CEO: Resign if you don't want to return to office
Speaking at an all-hands meeting for AWS, the unit's CEO Matt Garman said nine out of 10 workers he spoke to supported the new policy, which will take effect in January, according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters.
People who don't want to work five days a week in an office at Amazon can quit, he suggests.
“If there are people who just don't work well in that environment and don't want to, well, there are other organizations around,” Garman said.
“However, I don't mean that in a bad way,” he said, “we want to be in an environment where we're working together.”
“When we want to really innovate on really, really interesting products, I haven't seen the ability to do that when we're not in person,” Garman said.
The policy has upset many Amazon employees who say it wastes time with extra commutes and that the benefits of working from the office are not supported by independent data.
Some employees who were previously non-compliant were told they were “voluntarily resigning” and locked out of company systems.
Amazon, the world's second-largest private employer after Walmart, has taken a harder line on returning to the office than many of its tech peers, such as Google, Meta and Microsoft, which have policies of two to three days in the office.
“I'm actually pretty excited about this change,” Garman said. “I know not everyone is like that,” he said, adding that it's too difficult to achieve the company's goals with only the mandatory current three-day office work.
“We couldn't really do anything, like work together and learn from each other,” Garman said under the three-day policy, because people could be in the office on different days.
In particular, Garman said the company's leadership principles, which dictate how Amazon should operate, are difficult to follow with the three-day-per-week requirement.
“You can't internalize them by reading them on a website, you really have to experience them every day,” he said.
One, “disagree and commit” — meaning employees can voice grievances but then dive into a project outlined by leaders — isn't ideal for remote work, Garman said.
“I don't know if you've ever tried to agree on a chime call,” he said, referring to the company's internal messaging and calling functions. “It's very difficult.”
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Reporting by Greg Bensinger; Editing by Sandra Maller
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