AWS CEO Matt Garman has reportedly told workers that if they don’t like the company’s five-day-a-week return-to-office policy, they can look for work elsewhere.
Garman’s comments were made at an all-hands meeting, reported by Reuters. They followed Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s September memo informing staff that everyone was expected back at their desk five days a week from the start of 2025.
“If there are people who just don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to, that’s okay, there are other companies around,” the AWS boss told his workers.
Return to Office mandates boost company profits? Nope
“By the way, I don’t mean that in a bad way,” Garman added, “we want to be in an environment where we’re working together.”
A poll of more than 2,500 Amazon workers last month found that 91 percent were unimpressed by the RTO mandate, a stark contrast to the “nine out of ten” workers Garman said he had spoken with who supported the policy.
Garman’s comments echoed those made by Jassy, who in mid-September wrote: “We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another.”
While Amazon’s policy is one of the more aggressive, it is hardly the only tech giant ordering staff to return to the office following a change of working practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dell is also upping the ante with a demand that its sales team spend five rather than three days per week in the office.
Cynics might view wonder if return-to-office mandates will be the cause of resignations as employees look for more flexible opportunities, thus avoiding the poor optics of the mass layoffs seen in the tech industry in recent years. Amazon, for example, cut thousands of jobs in the last two years, chalking it up to the need to shed excess after overhiring during the pandemic.
Still, as a method for ditching workers, an unpopular (or wildly popular, according to Garman) the RTO command is no worse than Bandai Namco’s “Expulsion Rooms” where employees are bored into resigning.
The Register asked AWS to comment, and a spokesperson for the cloud cash machine directed us to Jassy’s comments and insisted that the effort was all about keeping teams connected and strengthening the company’s culture.
We also asked an Alexa device for its thoughts on RTO directives. It responded by quoting a Forbes article on how wonderful the concept was. Strangely, it did not reference The Register‘s previous article on the drop in morale and innovation that could arise from forcing staff back to their desks rather than engaging with them. ®
Editor’s note: This story was amended post-publication with comment from AWS.