The return-to-office mandate is a sharp change from its current hybrid policy , which requires employees to work from the office at least three days a week.
“So if I go in 5x week, that means I can leave my laptop at work right? There’s no reason to bring it home,” one staffer fumed in an internal Slack channel seen by Business Insider , referencing Amazon’s intense work culture.
The five-day-a-week mandate is part of an effort to foster collaboration seen pre-pandemic, making it easier for teammates to “learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture,” Jassy said.
Jassy said the new mandate will operate like most office environments prior to the pandemic. It will be “understood” if an employee has an exceptional circumstance, like a child who is home sick, a house emergency or time spent on the road meeting with clients or partners.
Not all Amazon employees were swayed.
“Please do note that this is (in a lot of cases) significantly more strict and out of its mind than many teams operated under pre-covid,” one employee wrote on Slack, according to BI. “This is not ‘going back’ to how it was before. It’s just going backwards.”
The Slack channel was “burning” with frustrated comments and reactions after Jassy’s announcement on Monday, an Amazon employee told BI.
“Can I negotiate my manager to PIP me,” one Amazon employee wrote, referring to the company’s harsh performance improvement plan that employees have called a prerequisite to being fired.
“Take my money and leave?”
“What ever happened to ‘Striving to be Earth’s Best Employer,” another employee wrote on Slack, nodding to one of Amazon’s leadership principles.
Quit whining. You are getting paid handsomely so you should go on sunday too. No, you are not doing anything ultra special compared regular IT folks getting nominal pay. These regular folks support nights, weekends, holidays for 1/3 rd of what you get paid. Try getting a job outside of FANG companies you will quickly hit the ground of reality 😂
Alan Chan
11m ago
If they are so unhappy because of a reasonable request (back to office 5x a week), they should seek employment elsewhere.
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