Amazon chief Andy Jassy has ordered reluctant employees to come work from office, saying that staff would work on-site at least three days a week and that the situation would likely not “work out” for employees who could not commit to the decision even if they disagreed with it.
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The comments, which came during an internal meeting in August, were first reported by the news outlet Insider.
In a blog post on February 17, Jassy had said Amazon was working to bring its thousands of employees back to the office from May onwards, insisting that better collaboration and learning took place when people were working face-to-face.
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“Learning from one another is easier in-person. Being able to walk a few feet to somebody’s space and ask them how to do something or how they’ve handled a particular situation is much easier than Chiming or Slacking them,” he wrote in the post, adding this model of mentorship would benefit newly hired employees as well.
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Amazon announced over 25,000 job cuts in 2023 alone, according to AP.
Other tech companies such as Meta, Google, X (formerly Twitter) and Zoom - whose video conferencing solutions bolstered the work-from-home movement during the COVID-19 pandemic - are also urging employees to come back to the office at least a few days every week, in spite of employees’ resistance.