SAN FRANCISCO – One of Amazon’s top executives defended a new, controversial five-day-per-week in-office policy on Oct 17, saying that those who do not support it can leave for another company.
Speaking at an all-hands meeting for AWS, unit chief executive officer Matt Garman said nine out of 10 workers he has spoken with support the new policy, which takes effect in January, according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters.
Those who do not wish to work for Amazon in-office five days per week can quit, he suggested.
“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,” said Mr Garman.
“By the way, I don’t mean that in a bad way,” he said, adding that “we want to be in an environment where we’re working together”.
“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,” said Mr Garman.
The policy has upset many of Amazon’s employees, who say it wastes time with additional commuting and the benefits of working from the office are not supported by independent data.
Amazon has been enforcing a three-day in-office policy, but CEO Andy Jassy said in September that the retailer would move to five 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 many of its technology peers such as Google, Meta and Microsoft who have two- to three-day in-office policies.
“I’m actually quite excited about this change,” said Mr Garman. “I know not everyone is,” he