Three quarters of Amazon corporate staff looking for another job after huge WFH call
The boss of Amazon made a major announcement to staff about working from home, and it has led to a big problem for the retailer.
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Tech giant Amazon is facing an exodus — with three in four of its corporate staff members threatening to walk out since the CEO of Amazon told employees the working from home era is over.
In a note to employees earlier this month, chief executive Andy Jassy said all corporate staff would need to come back into the office permanently from January — in a move to “strengthen our culture and teams”.
However, the company’s staff have made it clear they do not want to return to the office five days a week.
Ninety-one per cent of Amazon professionals surveyed by the professional social network Blind are dissatisfied with the decision. The survey polled 2,585 verified Amazon professionals one day after Mr Jassy sent the memo.
It found a whopping 73 per cent are considering looking for another job because of the policy. Four out of five professionals polled said they knew someone at the company who was considering looking for another job — while a third said they knew someone who had already quit in response.
“My morale for this job is gone, gonna totally check out till PIP (performance improvement plans),” a verified Amazon professional told Blind, referring to the company’s rigorous employee performance culture.
‘A big reason why I don’t want kids’
The move has angered parents, those wanting to start a family and those who were hired to work remotely.
“RTO (return to office) blanket policy is crazy, particularly for those of us who were hired remote and FAR from an office. I have kids and family here so unwilling to relocate,” a one told Blind. “Even if I didn’t there’s too great a risk I’d be laid off in 6 months anyway so why risk a move?”
“I feel dejected about this 5 day RTO, but at the same time I am thankful that I have flexibility in my life. I don’t have kids to worry about so I have good savings to depend upon and I can easily uproot my life to something completely different that fits my needs,” another told the survey. “Decisions like the one from Jassy are a big reason why I don’t want kids. I don’t need others to impose rules that ruin my quality of life.”
The survey also found some Amazon hiring managers saw candidates drop out of ongoing job interviews in response to the upcoming loss of remote work.
“I just had an Amazon recruiter blow up my phone and inbox 5 times in the last 24 hours to get me to provide my availability for an onsite interview,” a Microsoft professional told Blind. “I just asked the recruiter why they are rushing to hire and he said the hiring managers are p**sed that so many candidates dropped out of the pipeline in just the last 24 hours.”
However, some employees were resigned to the changes and believed that other big companies will follow suit.
“Remote is a thing of the past. Those who choose to stay remote are going to continue to lose out,” a Block professional told Blind. “Amazon will not do this unless they know their peers aren’t going to do something similar in the future.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of employees have expressed their displeasure. A survey has been circulated internally among the employees found and the average employee at the company is “strongly dissatisfied” with the return-to-office edict, according to Fortune.
The survey was created by Amazon employees who then shared it to at least 30,000 members who reportedly logged into a Slack channel called “remote advocacy”.
It found that respondents had marked down a 1.4 on a scale of up to 5 — with 1 meaning “strongly dissatisfied” and 5 being “strongly satisfied.”
The authors said they plan to aggregate and share the results by email with Mr Jassy and other executives so as to “provide them with clear insight into the impact of this policy on employees, including the challenges identified and proposed solutions”.
Amazon aims to ‘remove layers’
In his bombshell memo, the Amazon boss also revealed the company was planning to “remove layers” from the organisation by having fewer managers in place by the end of quarter one in the 2025 financial year.
“We want to operate like the world’s largest start-up,” he wrote in a lengthy note.
Mr Jassy told staff he had created a ‘Bureaucracy Mailbox’, where he suggested they send any examples of “unnecessary process that’s crept in and we can root out”.
He also said Amazon leadership had “decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of Covid”, but stressed that there would still be some flexibility.
“Before the pandemic, not everybody was in the office five days a week, every week,” Mr Jassy wrote.
“If you or your child were sick, if you had some sort of house emergency, if you were on the road seeing customers or partners, if you needed a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment, people worked remotely.
“This was understood, and will be moving forward as well.”
He continued to say it was expected staff would be in the office “outside of extenuating circumstances”, like those he mentioned above.
“We understand that some of our teammates may have set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments,” Mr Jassy wrote.
“To help ensure a smooth transition, we’re going to make this new expectation active on January 2, 2025.”
Australia at a ‘critical crossroads’
The backlash comes as Australia sits at a “critical crossroads” in the working from home debate.
Commonwealth Bank faced an internal revolt last year when its 49,000 staff were ordered to come back into the office just 50 per cent of the time.
More recently, Australian betting giant, Tabcorp, said this month all employees across its Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane locations would be required to return to the office five days a week.
The memo stated the change would be “effective immediately”, but noted some staff members may need time to “adjust schedules and routines”, and they would be given a four-week period to do so.
In August, NSW Premier Chris Minns sparked backlash from government workers when he announced remote working privileges introduced in 2019 would come to an end, with all public servants forced back into the office.
There are fears that Victoria could follow suit, with Melbourne mayoral candidate and former AFL star, Anthony Koutoufides, saying his “first priority” if he wins the election will be to get the city’s government and corporate workers back into the office.
It seems an increasing number of Australian leaders are becoming more vocal about their desire for in-office mandates to return.
A recent survey of 500 Australian business leaders, conducted by HR platform Rippling, found that 62 per cent believe a mandatory return to office would have a beneficial impact on company productivity.
Of those surveyed, one in four said they were already implementing a return to office mandate or were considering doing so within the next year.
Given the findings, Matt Loop, VP and Head of Asia at Rippling, said he wouldn’t be surprised if more organisations in the public and private sector start to follow suit in terms of return to office mandates.
“All signs indicate that we’re at a critical crossroads. Businesses are grappling with stagnant productivity and a stalling economy, while simultaneously being asked to provide greater worker rights and flexibility,” he said.
“This is creating a crisis of trust between employers and their employees.”
— with Heath Parkes-Hupton and Ally Foster
Originally published as Three quarters of Amazon corporate staff looking for another job after huge WFH call
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