Key Points
- Starting in January, Amazon will require employees to work in the office five days a week.
- AWS CEO Matt Garman believes that in-person collaboration is key to innovation.
- Employees who prefer remote work are encouraged to explore other job opportunities.
- Many Amazon workers are upset with the policy, citing long commutes and concerns about productivity.
- Amazon has a stricter return-to-office policy compared to other tech companies.
Looma News
Amazon is making a major change by requiring all employees to work from the office five days a week, starting in January. This decision was shared by Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS), during a company-wide meeting. Garman explained that face-to-face collaboration is important for driving innovation and helping Amazon achieve its goals.
Garman also made it clear that employees who don’t want to return to the office are welcome to look for jobs elsewhere. He told Reuters, “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.” He added that the best work at Amazon happens when teams collaborate in person, especially when developing new products.
While Garman claimed that most employees support the change, saying that 9 out of 10 people he spoke to were in favor, many workers are frustrated by the new policy. They say it forces them to deal with long commutes and added stress, without clear proof that in-person work is more productive than remote work. Studies suggest remote work can be just as effective, or even better, than working in an office.
Before this announcement, Amazon had already required employees to work in the office three days a week. But some employees pushed back against that policy as well. Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy recently explained that the switch to five days was necessary for the company to “invent, collaborate, and be connected.” Employees who didn’t follow the three-day in-office rule were locked out of company systems, as if they had “voluntarily resigned.”
In contrast to other big tech companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, which let their employees work from home two or three days a week, Amazon is enforcing a stricter five-day rule. Garman, while aware that some employees aren’t happy with the change, believes that close teamwork and success at Amazon can only happen when everyone is physically in the office.
As this new policy takes effect, Amazon employees now have a clear choice: either follow the return-to-office rule or look for a job elsewhere that offers more flexibility. With Amazon now being the second-largest private employer in the world, the company is making it clear that this change is an important step toward achieving its long-term goals.
