’Want to disrupt...’: Why Amazon Web Services’ CEO is pushing for work-from-office mandate

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman stated that the tech giant's work-from -office mandate was aimed at spurring innovation and execution speed. At the same time, Garman was also apprehensive about how many workers may quit the company when the mandate comes into force in January.

"Particularly as we really think about how do we want to disrupt and we want to invent on behalf of our customers, we find that there is no substitution for doing that in person," Garman stated while speaking at The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live event last Monday, October 23.

The US tech giant announced its latest work-from-office mandate in September, which requires employees to be in the office five days a week. Amazon's corporate workers now have until January 2 to adhere to the new policy.

'If not for you, that's okay…'

While several Amazon employees may have been unhappy because of the mandate, CEO Matt Garman seemed to shrug it off. "If it's not for you, then that's okay — you can go and find another company if you want to," said Garman.

The move has spurred backlash from some Amazon employees who say they’re just as productive working from home or in a hybrid work environment as they are in an office. Some others have said that the mandate puts extra strain on families and caregivers.

Roughly 37,000 employees have joined an internal Slack channel created last year to advocate for remote work and share grievances about the return-to-work mandate, a person requesting anonymity, said, CNBC TV reported.

‘Picked different set of three days’

Garman highlighted the advantages of workplace interactions, such as "writing on a whiteboard or you're talking to people in the cubicle next to you, or you're running into people that are in a different department, but you see them at the coffee line." These exchanges, Garman noted, don't occur in remote work settings.

The company’s previous work from office stance required corporate workers to be in the office at least three days a week, but proved unsuccessful as "everybody picked a different set of three days" to come in, according to Garman.