AWS CEO says employees dissatisfied with 5-day work deadline can leave | Wilnesh News

AmazonOn Thursday, the company’s cloud chief gave a candid message to employees about the company’s recently announced five-day mandate.

Amazon Web Services Chief Executive Matt Garman said during an all-hands meeting at the company’s second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, that employees who disagree with Amazon’s new policies can leave.

“If someone doesn’t work well in that environment and doesn’t want to, that’s okay, there are other companies around,” Garman said, according to a transcript seen by CNBC. “At Amazon, we want to be in a common place We believe a collaborative environment is very important to our innovation and our culture. ”

An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that Amazon has observed that working in the office helps teams be more collaborative and productive.

Garman’s comments were earlier made by Reuters.

Amazon announced the new licensing last month. The company’s previous stance on reopening required employees to come to work at least three days a week. Employees have until January 2 to comply with the new policy.

The company is ditching its pandemic-era remote work policy as it looks to keep up with rivals MicrosoftOpenAI and Google In the race to develop generative artificial intelligence. It’s one of the top priorities for Garman, who took over AWS in June after his predecessor, Adam Selipsky, stepped down.

The move prompted a backlash from some Amazon employees, who said they could be just as productive working from home or in a hybrid work environment as they were in the office. Others say the rule puts additional pressure on families and caregivers.

About 37,000 employees have joined an internal Slack channel created last year to advocate for remote work and share dissatisfaction with return-to-work directives, according to a person familiar with the matter.

At all-staff meetings, Garman said he’s been talking to employees and “nine out of 10 people are actually very excited about the change.” He acknowledged that there will be some flexibility among employees in some cases. .

“What we really mean is we want to have an office environment,” Garman said, pointing to an example scenario where employees might want to one day work from home with their manager’s approval in order to focus on their work in a quiet environment.

“These are good,” he said.

Garman said the authorization is important to protect Amazon’s culture and “Leadership Principles” It lists more than a dozen business ideas designed to guide employee decisions and goals. He pointed to Amazon’s “disagree and commit” principle, which states that employees should respectfully debate and push back on each other’s ideas. Garman said this could be particularly difficult to implement through Amazon’s video conferencing software, Chime.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever tried expressing disagreement over a Chime call — it’s very difficult,” Garman said.

watch: Amazon steps up race for artificial intelligence chips