One in all Amazon’s top executives defended the brand new, controversial 5-day-per-week in-office policy on Thursday, saying those that don’t support it may well leave for an additional company.
Speaking at an all-hands meeting for AWS, unit CEO Matt Garman said nine out of 10 employees he has spoken with support the brand new policy, which takes effect in January, in accordance with a transcript reviewed by Reuters.
Those that don’t want to comply can quit, he indicated.
“If there are individuals who just don’t work well in that environment and don’t wish to, that’s okay, there are other corporations around,” said Garman.
“When we would like to actually, really innovate on interesting products, I actually have not seen a capability for us to try this once we’re not in-person.”
The policy has upset lots of Amazon’s employees who say it wastes time with commuting and the advantages of working from the office aren’t supported by independent data.
Amazon has been enforcing a three-day in-office policy, but CEO Andy Jassy said last month the retailer would move to 5 days to “invent, collaborate and be connected.”
Some employees who had not been previously compliant were told they were “voluntarily resigning” and were locked out of company systems.
Amazon, the world’s second-largest private employer behind Walmart, has taken a harder line on returning to office than lots of its technology peers comparable to Google, Meta and Microsoft who’ve two- to three-day in-office policies.
“I’m actually quite enthusiastic about this variation,” said Garman. “I do know not everyone seems to be,” he said, noting it’s too hard to perform the corporate’s goals with only the mandatory current three days of in-office work.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.
Garman said under the three-day policy, “we didn’t really accomplish anything, like we didn’t get to work together and learn from one another.”
Particularly, Garman said the corporate’s leadership principles, which dictate how Amazon must operate, were too difficult to stick to under the present policy.
“You possibly can’t internalize them by reading them on the web site, you actually need to experience them day-to-day,” he said.
One, “disagree and commit” — which is known to mean that employees can express grievances but then should dive right into a project as outlined by leaders — just isn’t ideal for distant work, Garman said.
“I don’t know when you guys have tried to disagree via a Chime call,” he said, referring to the corporate’s internal messaging and calling function. “It’s very hard.”
