Amazon AWS CEO Matt Garman has said that employees who don't want to abide by the new rules coming into force next year, which will see workers come in for five days a week, can resign. Garman didn't seem to be saying it in an antagonistic way, just that some people may not work well in the new environment, and if not, there are always other companies around that will let you work from home.
Garman made the remarks yesterday during an all-hands meeting. He said that 90% of employees he had spoken to were on board with the new policy, according to a transcript seen by Reuters.
He was quoted as saying:
"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. By the way, I don't mean that in a bad way, 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."
As you'd expect, not everyone at the company is thrilled about the idea of spending extra time commuting. Some people point to the fact that the benefits of working in the office aren't supported by independent data.
Since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon has been running a three-day-in-the-office policy where workers go into work for just three days a week. Garman said that the switch to being in the office five days a week will eliminate the issue of missing colleagues if they choose to work on different days.
Going into the office five days a week is pretty much a return to the situation before the pandemic. Amazon believes that workers will get more done in the office so it's eager to get back to that. As many tech firms are doing layoffs, it will be unlikely that many people quit their Amazon jobs over this issue as it may be hard to get another job.
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