Some Amazon workers are refusing to “dissent and commit,” one of the company’s famous leadership principles that requires employees who don’t agree with a decision.
Instead, hundreds of employees at the online retail giant have complained that CEO Andy Jassy’s five-day office work week announcement last week is negatively impacting their lives and productivity at work, and they want the company to reverse course.
The feedback came from an anonymous survey created by Amazon employees and viewed by Fortune on Tuesday. Amazon workers have been sharing it widely through the messaging app Slack, including in a “Remote Advocacy” Slack channel with more than 30,000 members that was created by a former employee when Amazon first announced its three-day return-to-office order last year.
As a result, employees who support remote or hybrid work may have been more likely to respond to the survey, potentially skewing the findings.
As of the afternoon of Sept. 24, the average satisfaction level with RTO mandates among survey respondents was 1.4 on a 5-point scale (with 1 meaning “very dissatisfied” and 5 meaning “very satisfied.”) In the survey’s preface, the survey’s creators said they plan to compile the results and share them via email with Jassy and other company executives to “provide clear insights into the impact of this policy on employees, including challenges identified and proposed solutions.”
“We are seeking honest and constructive feedback on our recent decision to mandate a five-day return to the office schedule,” the survey begins.
An Amazon spokesman declined to comment.
Amazon had been adopting a hybrid workforce for the past 15 months before Jassy’s shock announcement that most employees would be required to work five days a week from their local Amazon offices starting in January.
“Looking back over the past five years, we continue to see significant benefits to being in the office together,” Jassy wrote last week. “We’ve discussed these benefits before, but to summarize, we’ve found that it’s easier for teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen culture; collaboration, brainstorming, and invention are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from each other is more seamless; and teams tend to feel more connected to each other.”
The explanation of Jassy’s new role, along with a second announcement of plans to cut middle management positions, was seen as a tacit acknowledgement that the company’s culture has been fraying in recent years, as recently detailed by Fortune magazine.
Fortune has spoken and messaged dozens of Amazon employees since the announcement last week, and the majority oppose Jassy’s decision, citing a lack of productivity during work days due to the RTO policy change and a lack of trust from management in rank-and-file and supervisory roles. They also complain about the impact the policy has on single parents and the lack of data to explain the decision from leaders who frequently talk about data-driven decision-making.
But in correspondence with Fortune, others praised the move, arguing that avoiding a five-day work week because of the length or cost of a commute would have seemed irrational just a few years ago, before the pandemic.
Still, the majority of respondents either opposed the change or pointed to the complications the new policy would create.
“I work with people across many time zones,” one response read. “RTOs take away the flexibility to easily change hours or collaborate. A three-day workweek had an immediate impact, but five days would be even worse.”
As a solution, he suggested employees “have more realistic work expectations if they are going to eliminate working from home.”
“Amazon has gotten used to employees working an extra 5-10 hours a week because there’s no longer a commute,” the employee said. “RTOs mean there will be no extra time to spend with Amazon, and employee expectations will need to adjust accordingly. Similarly, you’ll need to accept that RTOs impose strict limits on meeting times. You can’t jump into an 8am meeting with people in HQ2 or on the East Coast anymore. When I was at home, I could easily hop into early morning or late night meetings, but now I physically can’t do that.”
Several respondents focused on the element of trust, or mistrust, and the concern shared by many employees that the move will drive out top talent who can easily find work elsewhere, leaving other groups with fewer options.
“The first people to leave are the good engineers who want to work with us,” one person wrote. “Those who can’t find new work or can’t leave because of visa issues are left feeling miserable and quietly quitting. The people who really want to work are left to fill the gap.”
Yet another respondent echoed others in saying they believe the mandate “ignores the difficulty of requiring employees to come into the office, while all employee work and meetings are conducted by chime or video conference.”
Most of those who selected “Satisfied” or “Very Satisfied” either did not leave any comments other than their rating or left negative comments indicating they may have mistakenly selected a positive rating.
The bad news for those unhappy with the new return-to-the-office rules is that a group of Amazon employees sent a six-page memo to management last year arguing that the original three-day in-office requirement should be scrapped, but was turned down. With Jassy and his team pushing harder for the RTO, this outcome is unlikely to result in any major changes.
If you have opinions on this topic or are a current or former Amazon employee with tips you’d like to share, please contact Jason Del Rey at jason.delrey@fortune.com, jasondelrey@protonmail.com, or through the secure messaging app Signal at 917-655-4267. You can also message him on LinkedIn or @delrey on X.
Datasheet: Stay up to date on the latest happenings in the tech industry with in-depth analysis of the biggest companies in the industry.
Sign up here.
