March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010
August 2010
September 2010 October 2010
November 2010
December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022 December 2022 January 2023 February 2023 March 2023 April 2023 May 2023 June 2023 July 2023 August 2023 September 2023 October 2023 November 2023 December 2023 January 2024 February 2024 March 2024 April 2024 May 2024 June 2024 July 2024 August 2024 September 2024 October 2024
News Every Day |

Read the letter sent to AWS CEO Matt Garman, signed by 500 employees, protesting his RTO comments

Amazon Web Services' CEO Matt Garman addressed its RTO policy in an all-hands meeting.
  • AWS CEO Matt Garman has been sent a letter from employees protesting his pro-RTO comments.
  • Garman had said most employees he's spoken to are "excited" about a five-day office return.
  • Over 500 employees have signed a letter, sent on Wednesday, urging Garman to reconsider the plans.

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman is facing backlash from some employees over his comments about its return-to-office policy, according to an open letter obtained by Business Insider.

Over 500 employees signed a letter sent to the AWS chief on Wednesday, criticizing his recent remarks about Amazon's mandate to return to the office five days a week, which is up from its previous policy of three days a week.

The letter "urges" Garman to reconsider his position on the RTO mandate. It comes after Garman told staffers during an all-hands meeting earlier this month that nine out of 10 employees he's spoken to are excited to return to the office full time.

Garman addressed the policy, announced in September, for the first time in the all-hands meeting, saying, "There are other companies around" for any employee who doesn't wish to abide by the new policy, according to a transcript of the meeting reviewed by BI. He added that he didn't mean it in a "bad way."

Some employees aren't buying Garman's comments that most people he had spoken to are "actually quite excited by this change," a copy of the letter and internal Slack messages viewed by BI shows.

The letter states, "By rigidly mandating a 5-day in-office culture and telling employees who cannot or will not contribute to the company's mission in this specific way that 'there are other companies around,' you are silencing critical perspectives and damaging our future in doing so."

Garman also said in the all-hands meeting that he hasn't seen people's ability to "really innovate" when they are not working together in person. The letter says his comments do "not align with the experiences of many employees."

One staffer wrote on an Amazon Slack channel, in messages viewed by BI, "This statement from Matt doesn't ring true with me or our teams."

Another staffer joked that Garman "ambushed- er spontaneously approached random AWS engineers" at the company's headquarters to come to the consensus that most employees he's spoken to are excited by the RTO mandate.

Garman's remarks came after Amazon said in September it would require employees to work from the office every day beginning next year. The policy is stricter than at Amazon's peer companies and, by some accounts, stricter than Amazon's office work policy before the pandemic. Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo announcing the new mandate, said that the company had made the decision to "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

Amazon had 1.5 million employees in 2023, most of whom work in warehouses. There are more than 30,000 employees in the internal Slack channel where the letter originated. The letter has been signed by 523 staff from Amazon and AWS, with 172 of those including their names.

In response to a request for comment about the letter, Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan told BI the company is offering resources to employees depending on their location, including elder care, pet sitters, caregiver referral services, and commuter benefits.

Read a full copy of the open letter below:

Mr. Garman,

As employees of AWS and Amazon who work tirelessly every day to obsess over and innovate on behalf of our customers, we were appalled to hear the non-data-driven explanation you gave for Amazon imposing a 5-day in-office mandate at the AWS Global Meeting on October 17th.

Your comments, in part, stated:

I think nine out of ten people are actually quite excited by this change. There's a number of reasons for it ... what makes Amazon special is our ability to debate and our ability to innovate. And when we want to innovate, 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. There is just no substitute for getting up on a whiteboard and walking through what's going on, having a brainstorm and stopping in the cubicle next to you and asking the person where it is, and grabbing coffee or lunch together and chatting about it, learning what other people are working on and it sparking something in what you're working on — that just doesn't work when you're working remote, it just doesn't happen ... And so we feel, and I feel very strongly that that is just such an important part of the company that getting us back in the office and in an office setting is super important.

Not only are these comments inconsistent with the experiences of many employees, they indicate an outright abdication of AWS' role as one of the world's most innovative companies and a leader in our industry. By making these statements, you are continuing and compounding a trend by Amazon's S-team of misrepresenting the realities of working at Amazon and the impact this mandate will have on the company and, by extension, its customers.

Amazon claims to be a data-driven company, and statements which rely on "we believe" and "I feel," or exclaim how many people are excited about something to justify themselves fail to achieve our standard of decision making for critical issues that impact hundreds of thousands of the company's employees and its customers. Your statements indicate that either you have not collected enough data to support your position but are moving ahead anyways, or you have seen the data which indicates otherwise and are choosing to ignore it, or you have motivations to support this policy which you are not being forthcoming about with those it impacts. All of these possibilities break the trust of your employees who have not only personal experience that shows the benefits of remote work, but have seen the extensive data which supports that experience.

Data from independent research has shown time and time again that companies which embrace flexible in-office policies allow a more diverse set of workers to sustainably and effectively contribute to the shared goals of businesses like ours. If being inclusive and understanding of employees' personal working styles and circumstances isn't enough to justify why this is the right approach for us to take, research is clear that diverse perspectives lead to more innovation, productivity, and resilience. This diversity in backgrounds, locations, and working styles is essential to AWS' ability to hire and retain exceptional talent and remain a market leader and innovator in the future.

By rigidly mandating a 5-day in-office culture and telling employees who cannot or will not contribute to the company's mission in this specific way that "there are other companies around," you are silencing critical perspectives and damaging our culture and our future in doing so. Moreover, this does not uphold Amazon's espoused "Strive to be Earth's Best Employer" leadership principle, especially for select and protected groups who have sought a safer, more inclusive, and healthier work environment and are disproportionately impacted by these policies. These groups include but are not limited to working parents (especially those with young children), employees who are neurodiverse or have disabilities or disorders, workers with caretaking responsibilities, and workers on a visa who have no choice but to comply or risk having to leave their home by quitting.

While your remarks focus on some of the benefits you perceive in in-person collaboration, they fail to even acknowledge the significant challenges it presents to these valued workers who have often overcome adversity at every level in order to contribute to Amazon's mission. In order to highlight these challenges, we have included a selection of anonymous stories from Amazon employees about the impact Amazon's 3-day in-office policy has already had on their life and work with this letter. In addition, studies show that Return To Office mandates tend to push out more senior and tenured employees across the board , who may be best poised to participate in and give insight into these white-boarding and brainstorming sessions you refer to, while hurting the morale of those who stay.

You have not addressed these issues nor presented any solution to them while touting the new and even more impactful 5-day policy. We do not accept this from our leaders. We see and value contributions from workers of these groups every day, and will not stand silently by while you dismiss their humanity and trivialize their impact.

Our time working remotely during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic proved that we are effective, creative, and successful without being primarily in-person, and to take no lessons from that experience would be extremely disappointing, because Amazon is and always will be a global company. We will always collaborate with teams and stakeholders in different physical locations, countries, and timezones where the primary, and potentially only, interaction is virtual. We have tools and approaches to do this effectively which are not novel or difficult to use. On the contrary, pushing for more time in-office will harm these countless cross-regional interactions as there will be significantly fewer overlapping working hours between collaborators. This can lead to meetings that might have been done by videoconferencing now taking place via asynchronous mechanisms like email, which slows the velocity of decision-making from minutes to hours or days.

Finally, by taking this action, AWS is not living up to its full potential and is creating a bleak outlook for its future. While it is absolutely true that there are challenges with flexible and remote work, we have always been a company that solves problems in new, exciting, and innovative ways, rather than relying on antiquated approaches that happened to work well some time in the past. The cloud computing industry that we now base our work and livelihoods on might not exist today if we had adhered to that restrictive thinking in our early days.

Given the scale of the problems we tackle across a workforce which is distributed all over the world, we are not content with relying on spontaneous in-office conversations to make progress and drive new ideas. We are instructed to collect, interpret, and act on data and invent new mechanisms to affect the outcomes we want to see, not to sit back and hope good things happen. We worry that when customers see us encounter a true challenge and refuse to solve problems that stand in the way of embracing it, they will rightly lose trust in AWS' ability to innovate.

For these reasons we urge you to reconsider your comments and your position on the proposed 5-day in-office mandate. Remote and flexible work is an opportunity for Amazon to take the lead, not a threat. We want to work for a company and for leaders that
recognize and seize this moment to challenge us to reinvent how we work.

Respectfully signed by 523 Amazonians, 172 of whom have elected to include their name below.
Editor's note: BI has removed the names of the employees who signed the letter to protect their privacy.

Are you a tech-industry employee or someone else with insight to share?

Contact the reporters, Jyoti Mann and Ashley Stewart, via the encrypted messaging app Signal at jyotimann.11 or +1-425-344-8242. Email them at jmann@businessinsider.com and astewart@businessinsider.com. Use a nonwork device.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Москва

Заместитель управляющего Отделением Фонда пенсионного и социального страхования Российской Федерации по г. Москве и Московской области Алексей Путин: «Клиентоцентричность - наш приоритет»

Revealed: SC Freedom Caucus leader had numerous electronics seized by federal officers

You need the eyes of a movie hero to spot the 5 horror villains lurking near the crime scene in under 90 secs

Bay Area high school football: Weekend scoreboard, how Top 25 fared

Inside the dark world of randy sex pest dolphins who terrorise swimmers & try to ROMP with humans

Ria.city






Read also

RAID: Shadow Legends ultimate guide

Can Celtics Sustain Three Or Bust Offensive Strategy?

Valley man was behind murders of Fullerton couple he met in furry community and their friend, prosecutor says

News, articles, comments, with a minute-by-minute update, now on Today24.pro

News Every Day

Bay Area high school football: Weekend scoreboard, how Top 25 fared

Today24.pro — latest news 24/7. You can add your news instantly now — here


News Every Day

Lindsay Hubbard's Baby Shower Details Revealed, Including Which 'Summer House' Co-Stars Attend



Sports today


Новости тенниса
ATP

Борис Беккер назвал теннисиста с одной из лучших подач в нынешнем ATP-туре



Спорт в России и мире
Москва

Мебельная компания «Мария» поддержит шахматистку-вундеркинда из Саратова



All sports news today





Sports in Russia today

Москва

Более 500 спортсменов приняли участие в «Оранжевом марафоне» в Ставрополе


Новости России

Game News

AMD's Dr. Lisa Su predicts AI GPU market will grow to $500 billion by 2028 or 'roughly equivalent to annual sales for the entire semiconductor industry in 2023'


Russian.city


Москва

Актер «Кадетства» Головин накопил сотню штрафов: топ «звездных» нарушителей ПДД


Губернаторы России
ЛокоТех

Команда СЛД «Раздольное» филиала «Забайкальский» компании «ЛокоТех-Сервис» заняла I место в военно-спортивной игре «Профсоюзный прорыв»


Гормональный сбой и деменция: врач Сибирский объяснил, почему опасно спать при свете

В Мытищах состоялась отчетно-выборная конференция профсоюза жизнеобеспечения

Le Monde: эффективность санкций против России сильно снизилась

В Мытищах состоялась отчетно-выборная конференция профсоюза жизнеобеспечения


Разводы с американками, дети за границей и жена на 32 года младше. Джаз, закруживший Игоря Бутмана

"Инстасамка нужна Шнурову сильнее…". Экс-солистка группы "Ленинград" оценила новость о сотрудничестве скандальных персонажей шоубиза

Балетную обувь Майи Плисецкой, Екатерины Максимовой и Владимира Васильева продали на аукционе почти за миллион рублей

Цискаридзе на марафоне Знание.Первые поделится опытом и расскажет о просвещении


Россиянка Шнайдер с победы стартовала на турнире WTA в Гонконге

Борис Беккер назвал теннисиста с одной из лучших подач в нынешнем ATP-туре

Познер о включении Шараповой в Зал славы: «Представители тенниса умнее и дальновиднее своих коллег по другим видам спорта»

Стефанос Циципас одержал 100-ю победу на турнирах серии «Мастерс»



Заместитель управляющего Отделением Фонда пенсионного и социального страхования Российской Федерации по г. Москве и Московской области Алексей Путин: «Клиентоцентричность - наш приоритет»

Отделение СФР предоставило 11 жителям региона с нарушениями зрения собак-поводырей

Компания «Мария» рассказала о новых решениях для девелопмента на конференции Московского Бизнес-клуба

Компания «Мария» рассказала о новых решениях для девелопмента на конференции Московского Бизнес-клуба


По алфавиту: россияне стали чаще покупать украшения с буквами

Спектакль «Волшебная лампа Аладдина»

Metallica — Black Album, if it was recorded in the 60s

«Химки» — «Динамо» Москва. Прямая трансляция: смотреть бесплатно РПЛ


Тайны мёда: врач Кутушов рассказал про целебные свойства и особенности нагревания

Эндокринолог Калошина назвала снижающий уровень холестерина овощ

Гормональный сбой и деменция: врач Сибирский объяснил, почему опасно спать при свете

Думали, что червь: в Москве спасли женщину с 25-сантиметровым тромбом в мозгу



Путин в России и мире






Персональные новости Russian.city
Игорь Бутман

Разводы с американками, дети за границей и жена на 32 года младше. Джаз, закруживший Игоря Бутмана



News Every Day

Bay Area high school football: Weekend scoreboard, how Top 25 fared




Friends of Today24

Музыкальные новости

Персональные новости