An overwhelming majority of Amazon employees are not happy about the company’s mandate to return to the office five days per week, and many say the directive has them considering a search for new work. Those are the findings in a new survey by Blind, the forum for anonymous/verified workers.
In a blog post this week, Blind says it surveyed 2,585 verified corporate employees at Amazon about their feelings on the company increasing in-office work from the current standard of at least three days per week to five, starting in January.
The nature of such an unscientific survey is likely to mainly draw responses from individuals who are upset about the issue. With that caveat, here are some results, as reported by Blind:
- 91% are dissatisfied with the new policy.
- 73% are considering looking for another job because of the policy.
- 32% know someone who has quit because of it.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the change in a companywide memo on Sept. 16, telling employees “we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID.”
The loss of of work-life flexibility made possible during the past few years by remote and hybrid work is a presiding fear when it comes to return-to-office mandates. In Seattle, around the company’s headquarters campus, some expressed displeasure over the coming change. Others, including small businesses that rely on employee foot traffic, and the Downtown Seattle Association, called it a “home run.”
Posting anonymously, Amazon employees and others didn’t hold back in some of the comments rounded up by Blind:
- “My morale for this job is gone, gonna totally check out till PIP,” one verified Amazon professional said, referring to the company’s performance improvement plans.
- “RTO blanket policy is crazy, particularly for those of us who were hired remote and FAR from an office,” said another employee. “I have kids and family here so unwilling to relocate. 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 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 verified Microsoft professional said on Blind. “I just asked the recruiter why they are rushing to hire and he said the hiring managers are pissed that so many candidates dropped out of the pipeline in just the last 24 hours.”
Others in the comments, from Amazon and elsewhere, expressed their belief that employees leaving over the RTO policy would just be a way for Amazon to thin its corporate/tech ranks without doing mass layoffs and paying severance. Others said Amazon’s move will be the straw that breaks the back of remote work, and other companies will follow suit.
More discussions around RTO at Amazon are visible in this channel on Blind. And an internal Slack channel at Amazon, called “Remote Advocacy,” attracted some 30,000 employees who have been airing concerns about returning to the office for more than a year.
Longtime Amazon reporter Jason Del Rey wrote this week in Fortune about an anonymous survey created by Amazon employees that highlights dissatisfaction with the new RTO policy. They survey is being shared via Slack, including in the “Remote Advocacy” channel, Del Rey reported.
Amazon employs roughly 50,000 corporate and tech workers in Seattle, and another 12,000 in Bellevue, Wash., and neighboring communities. The company employed 1.5 million people globally as of June 2024, down from a peak of more than 1.6 million people in 2022. A majority of employees work in Amazon’s fulfillment network. Its corporate workforce numbered around 350,000 in early 2023.
In his memo, Jassy reiterated his belief that in-person work is better for collaborating, brainstorming, teaching, learning, and inventing.
“If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits,” he wrote last week.
Blind’s survey was conducted Sept. 17-19, and the questions it asked can be seen in the methodology portion of its blog post.