Amazon’s five-day return to work prompts employees to reflect on their work

A former Amazon engineer left the company after growing anxious about when he would have to return to the office.

He quit and moved to another remote-only technology company in July, just before Amazon tightened its in-person policy and required employees to work in the office five days a week.

Daniel, who did not want to give his last name for reasons of anonymity, told FOX Business that working as a software engineer at Amazon Web Services was like his “big break” and, in fact, he wanted to keep the job.

However, after working from home for ten years in various tech roles and starting a family in the midst of the pandemic, he was neither prepared for the move nor the commute to the office, nor would he have found it easy to uproot his family.

AMAZON TO EMPLOYEES: PERSONAL 5-DAY WORK WEEK STARTS NEXT YEAR

Amazon packages. (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Although many colleagues have decided to move, Daniel is aware that others will leave if they find a comparable position.

On the one hand, he said Amazon’s push for in-person work “has actually given other companies more bargaining power when negotiating with Amazon employees because they can use remote work as an advantage,” he said.

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The e-commerce giant, which employs more than 1.46 million people worldwide, has a network of offices, including based in Seattle and its second headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia.

CEO Andy Jassy told employees on Monday that the tech giant will “return to in-office work as we did before the COVID outbreak” starting Jan. 2, with the expectation that people will be in the office “except in special circumstances… or if you’ve already had an exception to work remotely approved by your S team leader.”

Amazon is asking its employees to return to the office. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

He said Amazon’s culture has been “one of the most critical parts” of the company’s success over the years.

Jassy told employees it was easier for them to learn, collaborate and teach each other in person. The past 15 months of returning to work in part-time offices “have strengthened our belief in the benefits,” he said.

In 2023, Jassy relaxed the attendance requirement by requiring employees to return to the office at least three days a week while the company reviewed the various work arrangements teams had used during the pandemic, including fully remote work, hybrid work with a few days in the office per week, and full-time office work.

“I joined at a time when a lot of remote work was allowed, so when I started, I assumed I would be a remote worker,” Daniel said. “When they announced the return to the office, I learned that while I was technically assigned to an office, no one from my team or extended team was in that office.”

He expected that at some point he would be transferred to the headquarters in Seattle or Virginia. He just didn’t know when. His colleagues didn’t know either.

There was a lot of concern, but people were also unsure of how serious the situation was, he said. Daniel also recalled receiving various conflicting messages from management. At one point he was told he had a year before he had to move, and another time he was told he only had a few months.

(Reuters/Pascal Rossignol)

“We didn’t have any real answers to that. So initially there was no urgent need to panic or relocate or anything like that,” he said.

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Over time, however, it became clear how serious the company was, he said.

In fall 2023, Amazon made it clear that employees who refused to comply with the retail giant’s return-to-work policy could jeopardize their career prospects and even face firing.

Daniel said he has been under a lot of stress at the company over the past year, trying to find out when he would be asked to move and whether he could find another job “of the same caliber somewhere at Amazon.”

“I didn’t realize how scared I was until I left,” he said. “I can imagine that all my colleagues who decided not to move are just as scared as I am.”

Still, he doesn’t believe he’s the only one leaving.