AWS staff ‘appalled’ by order to return to offices five days a week

More than 500 AWS staff sign letter urging u-turn on CEO Matt Garman

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AWS staff ‘appalled’ by order to return to offices five days a week

AWS staff who have been working from home since the outbreak of Covid-19 have claimed that they are “appalled” at the order to return to their offices, issued by CEO Matt Garman.

More than 500 employees sent a letter to Garman this week rejecting his claim that the back-to-work order, issued in September, enjoyed broad support, and urged him to reconsider. While the letter was signed by 523 AWS staff, only 172 included their names.

Garman had justified his order by claiming that “nine out of ten people are actually quite excited by this change… what makes Amazon special is our ability to debate and our ability to innovate. And when we want to innovate, 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.

“There is just no substitute for getting up on a whiteboard and walking through what's going on, having a brainstorm and stopping in the cubicle next to you and asking the person where it is… that just doesn't work when you're working remote,” he wrote.

He added: “I feel very strongly that that is just such an important part of the company that getting us back in the office and in an office setting is super important.”

However, the protesting staff claimed to be “appalled” at the “non-data-driven explanation” explanation Garman had provided.

They continued: “Not only are these comments inconsistent with the experiences of many employees, they indicate an outright abdication of AWS’ role as one of the world's most innovative companies.”

They added that he had misrepresented the reality of working at Amazon and suggested that it would be damaging to the company and its customers. They cited independent research that had indicated that flexible in-office policies is more inclusive and better for diversity and, hence, “essential to AWS’ ability to hire and retain exceptional talent”.

The AWS back-to-work order, issued by Garman in September, came as a flurry of big-name companies ordered office-based staff back into their offices. The justification for such orders include the belief that staff working from home might be slacking off when they should be working hard, and the challenge of collaborating with remote workers who might not be easily available, regardless of the proliferation of applications like Microsoft Teams.

In addition to IBM, Salesforce, Disney and Starbucks have all introduced mandates for in-office work of either three or four days per week.