Amazon Requires Workers Return to Office 5 Days a Week

Remote work, coffee badging, and hybrid work at Amazon are over, according to a memo sent to all Amazon employees by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Jassy announced that workers must return to the office five days a week starting January 2nd, 2025.

“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” Jassy says in a memo sent to staff on September 16, 2024. The announcement expands the hybrid-work mandate of working from an Amazon office 3 days a week since May 2023.

An excerpt of the memo Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent to all Amazon employees announcing the change is shared below and is available on their public website:

Hey team. I wanted to send a note on a couple changes we’re making to further strengthen our culture and teams.

First, for perspective, I feel good about the progress we’re making together. Stores, AWS, and Advertising continue to grow on very large bases, Prime Video continues to expand, and new investment areas like GenAI, Kuiper, Healthcare, and several others are evolving nicely. And at the same time we’re growing and inventing, we’re also continuing to make progress on our cost structure and operating margins, which isn’t easy to do. Overall, I like the direction in which we’re heading and appreciate the hard work and ingenuity of our teams globally.

When I think about my time at Amazon, I never imagined I’d be at the company for 27 years. My plan (which my wife and I agreed to on a bar napkin in 1997) was to be here a few years and move back to NYC. Part of why I’ve stayed has been the unprecedented growth (we had $15M of annual revenue the year before I joined—this year should be well north of $600B), the perpetual hunger to invent, the obsession with making customers’ lives easier and better every day, and the associated opportunities these priorities present. But, the biggest reason I’m still here is our culture. Being so customer focused is an inspiring part of it, but it’s also the people we work with, the way we collaborate and invent when we’re at our best, our long-term perspective, the ownership I’ve always felt at every level I’ve worked (I started as a Level 5), the speed with which we make decisions and move, and the lack of bureaucracy and politics.

Our culture is unique, and has been one of the most critical parts of our success in our first 29 years. But, keeping your culture strong is not a birthright. You have to work at it all the time. When you consider the breadth of our businesses, their associated growth rates, the innovation required across each of them, and the number of people we’ve hired the last 6-8 years to pursue these endeavors, it’s pretty unusual—and will stretch even the strongest of cultures. Strengthening our culture remains a top priority for the s-team and me. And, I think about it all the time.

We want to operate like the world’s largest startup. That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it’s a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply-connected collaboration (you need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems), and a shared commitment to each other.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy

Remote Work and Coffee Badging at Amazon are Over

Amazon’s announcement reverses a previous three-day-a-week hybrid work schedule that the company began enforcing in May 2023. The mandate was audited for employee compliance, even tying in-office presence to promotion eligibility.

According to an Amazon spokesperson statement to Business Insider, employees who didn’t meet the required three-day office policy could be denied promotions for “not being in compliance with company guidelines and policies.”

This led many to start the trend of “coffee badging,” or showing up to work to badge in, grab a coffee, and leave after spending minimal time in the office.

However, Amazon wised up to the act by auditing the time between Amazon employee badge swipes.

Amazon Workers Blast the 5-day RTO Policy

Amazon is not the only large corporation to mandate a return to the office, but it is one of the few in “Big Tech” to enforce a 5-day RTO policy. Not surprisingly, Amazon employees are not happy to be forced to commute five days a week – especially after flip-flopping on remote work policies.

“I don’t see myself as part of Andy Jassy’s Amazon,” current Software Development Manager Carl Shimer, AWS, shared on LinkedIn. “I don’t mind riding the train into Bostonm to see my team, but do I really want to do this five days a week for the rest of my career? Nope,” Shimer continued.

“Can I negotiate my manager to PIP me,” one employee wrote about Amazon’s famously ruthless performance improvement plan. “Take my money and leave?”

“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,” another Amazon employee wrote.

It’s unclear whether this is an effort to force employee resignations by non-compliance to trim headcount or something the company believes will benefit from enforcing RTO. However, one thing is clear: the top-performing AWS and Amazon employees who aren’t interested in staying know their value and will swiftly gain employment elsewhere.