91% of polled Amazon staff unhappy with return-to-office, 3-in-4 want to jump ship

'Decisions like the one from Jassy are a big reason why I don’t want kids'

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy last week sent a memo to staff informing them everyone is now expected in the office five days a week from the start of next year, and a poll of staff suggests this hasn't gone down well.

Over 2,500 Amazon employees were polled by Blind, an online forum of verified tech workers, about the return-to-office (RTO) requirement, and the results were striking - only nine percent of surveyed staff said they were happy with back-to-your-desks order. This was reflected in the fact that 73 percent are now considering moving jobs because of the edict.

“RTO blanket policy is crazy, particularly for those of us who were hired remote and far from an office. I have kids and family here so unwilling to relocate,” one Amazon staffer commented. “Even if I didn’t, there’s too great a risk I’d be laid off in six months anyway so why risk a move?”

According to the poll, carried out days after the official announcement, 32 percent of those questioned said they knew someone who had quit over the return to the office mandate, and 80 percent said that they knew people who were considering doing so.

Blind's shtick is that when you fully sign up for an account, you need to do so using your work email address so that if you say on the site you work for Amazon, it's checked that you actually have a corporate amazon.com address. People can change employer after creating an account, of course, so Blind's polling is not scientific but still a half-decent indicator. Fortune reported the other day that staff were voicing their dissent in an anonymous internal survey.

“I feel dejected about this five day RTO, but at the same time I am thankful that I have flexibility in my life. I don’t have kids to worry about so I have good savings to depend upon and I can easily uproot my life to something completely different that fits my needs,” a staffer at the cloud giant and online souk said on Blind.

“Decisions like the one from Jassy are a big reason why I don’t want kids. I don’t need others to impose rules that ruin my quality of life.”

It's not just staff leaving because of the new policy but recruitment is also being hit, it seems. A Microsoft employee chimed in on the message boards with a report that Amazon is having trouble hiring staff since the policy was announced, and employees at SpaceX and others agreed that RTO meant Amazon was off their list of folks to work for.

"I just had an Amazon recruiter blow up my phone and inbox five times in the last 24 hours to get me to provide my availability for an onsite interview," the Redmond staffer claimed. "I just asked the recruiter why they are rushing to hire and he said the hiring managers are pissed that so many candidates dropped out of the pipeline in just the last 24 hours."

However, more than a few on the message boards were skeptical, with many pointing out that office work had been the norm and people shouldn't complain. Others pointed out that losing staff not wedded to the business, or stealthily laying them off, could well be an aim of the policy, as it can be at other firms - notably, it's claimed, at Dell.

Amazon isn't alone in requiring more office working, although other tech companies haven't been as strict about it. Then again, if the rest of the tech industry follows suit in enforcing in-office life, people who love working from home won't have many choices. ®