Amazon Executive Suggests Employees Quit If Unhappy with New Office Policy

 

An Amazon executive has hinted that staff who are dissatisfied with the company’s new office attendance policy may want to consider leaving. Matt Garman, head of Amazon Web Services (AWS), made the remarks during an internal meeting, suggesting that employees who don’t support the five-day-a-week office mandate could seek employment elsewhere, according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters.

Garman emphasized that the vast majority of employees he had spoken with—nine out of ten—supported the new policy, which will take effect on January 2, 2025. The rule will apply to all office-based staff, except for those with special circumstances. “If there are people who don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to, that’s OK—there are other companies around,” Garman stated, adding that his comments were not meant negatively.

He further explained that Amazon aims to foster a collaborative environment where employees can innovate effectively, something he believes cannot be achieved through remote work. “When we want to really, really innovate on interesting products, I have not seen an ability for us to do that when we’re not in-person,” he said.

The decision to return to a full-time office schedule was first announced by Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy in September. In a note to employees, Jassy explained, “We’ve decided to return to the office as we were before the onset of COVID. Over the past five years, we continue to believe that the benefits of being together in the office are substantial.”

Amazon, which employs around 1.5 million people globally, had previously required white-collar workers to be in the office three days a week, similar to policies at tech giants Google and Meta. Garman expressed frustration with the three-day policy, saying that different work schedules made it difficult for teams to collaborate and learn from each other effectively.

Additionally, Garman noted that Amazon’s core leadership principles—such as the "disagree and commit" value—were harder to uphold in a remote work setting, particularly when using the company’s internal communications platform, Chime. “I don’t know if you’ve tried to disagree via a Chime call, but it’s very hard,” he remarked.

This shift reflects a broader trend among major tech companies in moving away from remote work as they seek to reignite in-person collaboration and innovation.