Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman speaks during the CNBC Power Lunch on July 1, 2024.
CNBC
AmazonThe cloud boss on Thursday gave employees a candid message about the company’s recently announced five-day mandate.
Executives who don’t agree with Amazon’s new policy can leave, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said during a press conference at the company’s second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
“If there are people who just don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to, that’s fine, there are other companies around,” Garman said, according to a transcript seen by CNBC. “At Amazon, we want to be in an environment where we work together, and we believe that collaborative environment is incredibly important to our innovation and culture.”
Amazon has noticed that working in the office helps teams be more collaborative and efficient, a company spokesperson told CNBC.
Garman’s comments were reported earlier by Reuters.
Amazon announced the new order last month. The company’s previous stance on back-to-work required corporate workers to be on duty at least three days a week. Employees have until Jan. 2 to comply with the new policy.
Company abandons pandemic-era remote work policies as it seeks to keep pace with rivals MicrosoftOpenAI and Google in the race to develop genetic artificial intelligence. It’s one of the main tasks ahead of Garman, who took over AWS in June after his predecessor Adam Selipsky stepped down from the role.
The move drew backlash from some Amazon employees who say they are just as productive working from home or in a hybrid work environment as they are in an office. Others say the mandate puts extra pressure on families and caregivers.
About 37,000 workers have joined an internal Slack channel created last year to support remote work and share grievances about the return-to-work order, according to a person familiar with the matter.
At the all-hands meeting, Garman said he’s talking to employees and “nine out of 10 people are really, really excited about this change.” He acknowledged that there will be cases where employees have some flexibility.
“What we really mean by that is we want to have an office environment,” Garman said, noting an example scenario where an employee might want to work from home one day with their manager’s approval to focus on their work in a quiet environment.
“These are good,” he said.
Garman said the mandate is important to preserve Amazon’s culture and “leadership principles”, which is a list of more than a dozen business philosophies intended to guide employee decisions and goals. He pointed to Amazon’s “disagree and engage” principle, which is the idea that employees should discuss and push back against each other’s ideas respectfully. This practice can be especially difficult to accomplish through Amazon’s video conferencing software, called Chime, Garman said.
“I don’t know if you’ve tried arguing via a Chime call — it’s very difficult,” Garman said.
CLOCK: Amazon is stepping up its AI chip race