Former Amazon engineer says company's 5-day return-to-work policy causes employees to rethink jobs

A former Amazon engineer left the company after facing growing anxiety about when he would be required to go back into the office. 

He quit and joined another tech firm that was fully remote in July, shortly before Amazon bumped up its in-office policy requiring employees to come in five days a week.

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Daniel, who didn't want to provide his last name to keep his anonymity, told FOX Business that becoming an Amazon Web Services software development engineer felt like his "big break." In fact, it was a job he intended to hold on to.

However, after working from home for 10 years in various tech roles and starting a family in the midst of the pandemic, relocating and commuting to an office wasn't something he was prepared to do, nor would uprooting his family be an easy task. 

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While many colleagues have chosen to relocate, Daniel said he knows that others are going to leave if they can find a comparable role. 

On one hand, he said that Amazon's push for in-person work has "really given other companies more leverage when negotiating with Amazon employees because they can use… remote work as a benefit," he said.

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The e-commerce behemoth, which employs more than 1.46 million people worldwide, has a network of offices, including its home base in Seattle and its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

CEO Andy Jassy on Monday told employees the tech giant was "going to return to being in the office in the way we were before the onset of COVID," effective Jan. 2, with the expectation that people "will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances… or if you already have a Remote Work Exception approved through your s-team leader." 

He said Amazon's culture has been "one of the most critical parts" of the company’s success over the years. 

Jassy told employees that it's easier for them to learn, collaborate and teach one another in person. The last 15 months they have been back in part-time office has "strengthened our conviction about the benefits," he said.

In 2023, Jassy eased into the in-office mandate by requiring employees to return to the office at least three days per week as the company reviewed the various work arrangements teams used during the pandemic, including fully remote, hybrid with a few days in the office each week, and full-time in the office. 

"I joined during the era where they were allowing a lot of remote work. So, my understanding when I joined was that I was joining as a remote worker," Daniel said. "Once they made the initial return to office announcement, I found out that I was actually technically assigned to an office but none of my team or extended team was at that office." 

He anticipated that he was eventually going to get a relocation mandate to either the Seattle or Virginia headquarters. He just didn't know when. His colleagues didn't know, either. 

There was a lot of concern, but people were also unsure of how serious this was, he said. Daniel also recalled getting various mixed messages from management. At one point, he was told he had a year before he'd have to relocate, and on another occasion he was told he only had a few months. 

"We didn't really have those answers. So initially, there was no sense of urgency to panic or relocate or anything like that," he said. 

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As time went on, however, it started to become clear how serious the company was, he said. 

In the fall of 2023, Amazon made it clear that employees who refuse to comply with the retail giant's return-to-office policy would jeopardize their pursuit of promotions and could even get fired.

Over the past year at the company, Daniel said he was very stressed about finding out when he was going to be asked to relocate and if he could find another job "of the same caliber working somewhere like Amazon."

"I didn't even realize how much anxiety I had about it until I left," he said. " I imagine that all of my colleagues who have chosen not to relocate are feeling the same type of anxiety that I had."

Still, he doesn't believe he's the only one who is going to leave.