A top Amazon executive has bluntly told employees to quit their jobs if they don’t want to comply with a new rule.
In a meeting, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, Matt Garman, claimed that most employees agreed with the change.
He added that those who don’t agree can simply quit.
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The new policy will force workers to go into the office five days a week from now on.
This will essentially end the hybrid approach where employees can work from home some days in the week.
According to Garman, nine out 10 workers are in support of the switch up.
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In the meeting, he said: “If there are people who just don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to, that’s okay, there are other companies around.
“When we want to really, really innovate on interesting products, I have not seen an ability for us to do that when we’re not in-person.”
Prior to this rule change, Amazon enforced a three-day-in-office week.
CEO Andy Jassy said that working in person five days a week would help to ‘invent, collaborate and be connected’.
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Speaking about Chime, which is Amazon’s internal messaging and calling feature, Garman added: “I don’t know if you guys have tried to disagree via a Chime call. It’s very hard.”
However, not everyone is pleased with the switch up, in fact many Amazon employees are reportedly upset, saying that it wastes time with commuting.
Some employees who had not been compliant were told that they were ‘voluntarily resigning’ and they were locked out of the firm’s systems.
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But it doesn’t look like this has deterred the industry giant.
Garman said: “I’m actually quite excited about this change. I know not everyone is.”
He went on to add that while the ‘three office day’ rule was in effect, ‘we didn’t really accomplish anything, like we didn’t get to work together and learn from each other’.
Using the firm’s leadership principles as an example, the Amazon Web Services boss said that ‘you can’t internalize them by reading them on the website, you really have to experience them day-to-day’.
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In other Amazon news, Jeff Bezos revealed that he always schedules his first meeting of the day for 10am.
He said: “I like to do my high IG meetings before lunch.
“Anything that’s going to be really mentally challenging, that’s a 10 o’clock meeting and because by 5pm, I'm like, ‘I can't think about that today, let’s try this again tomorrow at 10am’.”