Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman is under fire from some employees over his recent comments on the company’s stricter return-to-office (RTO) policy, as detailed in an open letter.
Over 500 employees have signed the letter, which was sent to Garman on Wednesday. The signatories criticized his remarks supporting Amazon’s new mandate that employees return to the office five days a week, an increase from the previous three-day requirement. The letter urges Garman to reconsider the mandate, following his comments in an all-hands meeting where he claimed that nine out of ten employees he’d spoken with were enthusiastic about returning to the office full time.
Addressing the policy, which was announced in September, Garman suggested that employees unwilling to comply could find “other companies around” where remote work is more feasible. This statement, employees argue in the letter, alienates those with differing opinions and harms the company’s culture. “By rigidly mandating a 5-day in-office culture and telling employees who cannot or will not contribute to the company’s mission in this specific way that ‘there are other companies around,’ you are silencing critical perspectives and damaging our culture and our future in doing so,” the letter reads.
During the meeting, Garman added that he had not observed the same level of “innovation” among employees working remotely. The letter counters that these comments “do not align with the experiences of many employees.” One staffer even described Garman as having “spontaneously approached random AWS engineers” at headquarters to gather a consensus, suggesting skepticism about the claim that most employees he encountered were “excited” about the RTO mandate.
Amazon’s stricter RTO requirement, scheduled to begin next year, is reportedly more stringent than policies at comparable companies and even pre-pandemic standards at Amazon. CEO Andy Jassy explained in a September memo that the change was meant to “further strengthen” Amazon’s culture and teams.
The open letter originated in an internal Slack channel with over 30,000 members. So far, it has been signed by 523 Amazon and AWS employees, 172 of whom included their names. With Amazon’s workforce totaling 1.5 million in 2023, largely comprising warehouse workers, this pushback highlights growing tension within its corporate ranks over the RTO mandate.
