One of Amazon’s (AMZN.O) top executives defended the new, controversial 5-day-per-week in-office policy on Thursday, saying those who do not support it can leave for another company.

Speaking at an all-hands meeting for AWS, unit CEO Matt Garman said nine out of 10 workers he has spoken with support the new policy, which takes effect in January, according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters.

Those who do not wish to work for Amazon in-office five days per week can quit, he suggested.

  • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ
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    153 hours ago

    Would really suck if people said “fuck it”, did return to work but intentionally decreased productivity. Best to get laid off than quit.

    • @UnderpantsWeevil
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      82 hours ago

      Amazon policy is to stack rank all of its employees and regularly fire anyone in the bottom tranche. So any kind of deliberate slowdown would need to be incredibly well-coordinated. Even then, there would inevitably be a ton of attrition as the automatic Fire Everyone triggers started kicking in.

      Its not enough to play by the rules with a company as vast and encompassing as Amazon. You need to take it a step further and start sabotaging the anti-organizing functions of the company. Start shoving monkey wrenches in the employee monitoring systems. Start dismantling the automation that allows the business to function at such a breakneck pace. You’ve got to get in there and break the machine before it breaks you.

  • mub
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    93 hours ago

    This was always what he intended. Get people to quit instead of paying redundancy when he has to reduce the work force. Classic stuff done by many big orgs over the years. Make the place shit to work at and people quit for you.

  • ThrowawayOnLemmy
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    115 hours ago

    CEO Matt Garman said nine out of 10 workers he has spoken with support the new policy

    Got news for you, Matt. 9 out of 10 workers are kissing your ass.

    • @Crashumbc
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      83 hours ago

      More likely it’s an outright lie.

      • @UnderpantsWeevil
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        2 hours ago

        I’m willing to believe he asked ten of his VPs and nine of them agreed with him. Also, that he’s currently looking to fill a newly opened tenth position.

  • @ohwhatfollyisman
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    126 hours ago

    “ceo of cloud company says employees must work on premise.”

    must do wonders for the marketing of the capability of their platform.

  • @RaoulDook
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    5611 hours ago

    “9 out of 10 workers support the policy” he decided to imagine and then say out loud

      • @[email protected]
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        45 hours ago

        I’ve always wanted to meet that 1 out of the 10 who don’t. Probably would be interesting to have a beer with.

        • @[email protected]
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          24 hours ago

          It’s probably one of the dentists I visited while in the army.

          “Toothpaste! Use sandpaper you bitch. No, I’m serious. Then floss with it.”

  • @thesporkeffect
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    6111 hours ago

    Let them enforce it. Don’t quit, that’s what they are trying to accomplish anyway.

        • @NatakuNox
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          76 hours ago

          Along with eating the CEO with a side of Jeff Bezos

    • @[email protected]
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      510 hours ago

      How would that work? People are just going to stay home in front of a disconnected PC and somehow not get fired?

      • @thesporkeffect
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        239 hours ago

        Institutional inertia is real. Obviously every situation is different but in most cases they are not blocking remote access, they’re just tracking if you badged in that day. If you are still doing work, it’s going to take them awhile to respond - they are hoping you quit rather than having to fire you.

        • @[email protected]
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          310 hours ago

          If the company doesn’t want you to work from home they’re not going to let you connect to their system.

          • @[email protected]
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            129 hours ago

            They want people in the office, but they still want people to be able to work when they’re at home too. No shot RTO comes with blocking remote access to corp systems, or even prod for that matter.

            How would oncalls be handled without it even?

              • @[email protected]
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                27 hours ago

                Oncall is usually a 24/7 type of thing, where speed is a major factor, and I doubt they would want to restrict oncall engineers to on-site only.

                • @[email protected]
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                  7 hours ago

                  I’m not seeing anything about 24/7 on call workers. The article is about five days a week employees. Did I miss something?

          • @thesporkeffect
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            39 hours ago

            Usually it’s phased and they don’t cut off remote access entirely. They still want you to be able to work on the weekend at home…

  • @expatriado
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    3411 hours ago

    RTO was always lay-off without compensation

  • @tabular
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    59 hours ago

    I beseech you god of Irony, make it so Amazon workers can vote him out of office.

  • Jo Miran
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    911 hours ago

    This lines up with their marked decrease in service quality. Azure is eating AWS’ lunch.

      • AmbiguousProps
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        311 hours ago

        Sorry, should have worded that differently. I was referring to the layoffs.