Amazon employees slam CEO Andy Jassy’s return-to-office mandate: ‘It’s just going backwards’

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s return-to-office mandate received heavy criticism from the employees. The 56-year-old took over the role of CEO from founder Jeff Bezos in 2021 amid the pandemic when most corporates around the world shifted to a work-from-home (WFH) structure. In his recent lengthy memo to the staffers, the CEO shared about a “couple of changes” the company is set to make to strengthen its “culture and teams," including shift from WFH or Hybrid model to work from office (WFO).

Message from CEO Andy Jassy

“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID. When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” reads a part of the memo by Andy Jassy, highlighting the RTO mandate.

“We understand that some of our teammates may have set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments,” he added.

How did the employees react?

Many employees were unhappy with this mandate and did not hold back while expressing their opinions.

"To the BI reporter who will inevitably quote mine this channel today," an Amazon employee wrote on Slack, reported the Business Insider. "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. This is not ‘going back’ to how it was before. It’s just going backwards,” the person added.

Another employee told the outlet, “What ever happened to ‘Striving to be Earth’s Best Employer," referencing one of the principals of the company.

Outrage on LinkedIn

Many also took to the professional networking platform to show their displeasure with the mandate. Among them is a system development engineer who activated his “#OpenToWork” tag while voicing his opinions against the return the office rule.

“Amazon has announced 5 day RTO, which is unfortunate because I’m interested in working for a living, not live-action role playing and virtue signaling. If you have remote opportunities available, please message me. Nothing is off the table. I’d rather go back to school than work in an office again,” the employee wrote.

Reddit reactions

Besides LinkedIn, many flocked to Reddit to share posts claiming they work for Amazon. An individual commented, “I have worked at Amazon corporate in Seattle and can confirm Amazon does not give a s**t about anybody who works for them, warehouse or corporate. All they care about is squeezing as much labor/profit out of their employees as possible before they inevitably burn out.”

More from Andy Jassy:

“Having the right culture at Amazon is something I don’t take for granted. I continue to believe that we are all here because we want to make a difference in customers’ lives, invent on their behalf, and move quickly to solve their problems. I’m optimistic that these changes will better help us accomplish these goals while strengthening our culture and the effectiveness of our teams,” the CEO added in the concluding lines of the memo.