A ‘home run’ or a ‘cowardly’ decision? Amazon’s new in-person work policy elicits cheers and jeers

Some Amazon employees may not be happy, but January can’t come soon enough for many of the Seattle organizations and businesses that have been lobbying the company to return to five days a week of in-person work.

With Monday’s announcement from CEO Andy Jassy that the company’s corporate and tech workers will return to being in the office the way they were “before the onset of COVID,” downtown Seattle and the neighborhoods around Amazon headquarters should expect another boost in daily foot traffic. The new policy will go into effect in the new year.

“Downtown’s largest employer bringing people back more frequently is a home run for downtown,” said Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association, in a statement to GeekWire. “Amazon’s decision reinforces the value of in-person work to the success of companies and organizations.”

DSA has been applauding Amazon’s efforts to get workers back to their South Lake Union and Denny Triangle office buildings for more than a year, when the company first insisted that workers show up in person three days per week.

Restaurants, food trucks, doggy daycares and others in those neighborhoods have also cheered the increased business — especially Tuesday through Thursday when most employees make the trip in to the office.

In February 2023, when Jassy announced the three-days-per-week policy, he said he was optimistic that it would provide a boost for businesses located around Amazon’s Seattle-area headquarters as well as those in Virginia, Nashville, and other cities around the world where employees go to the office.

“Our communities matter to us, and where we can play a further role in helping them recover from the challenges of the last few years, we’re excited to do so,” Jassy wrote at the time.

The May 2023 company mandate to return to three days of in-person work per week wasn’t well received by everyone. That included some 30,000 people who took to a “Remote Advocacy” Slack channel to air concerns about returning, those who walked out in protest last year over the return to office and other issues, and some who ultimately quit, including workers who were forced to relocate.

Pamela Hayter is a former Amazon employee who launched the “Remote Advocacy” Slack channel that is still active inside the company today. She quit last summer after the first call to come back to the office, saying she had concerns about being able to afford to commute to Seattle again from her home in Kirkland, Wash.

Reacting to Monday’s latest directive from Jassy — in which he said, in part, “returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments” — Hayter said via email that she felt sad for those at Amazon who will be negatively impacted by the change.

“They know it’s not popular, they know it’s not right, but they are doing it anyway,” Hayter said. “It is cowardly. I still cannot imagine being a leader and being that callous towards those I am supposed to be leading. It’s heartbreaking. Why five days? It just makes no sense.”

GeekWire visited several businesses earlier this summer and saw and heard about an increased vibrancy around Amazon HQ since the three-days-per-week policy started. Some business owners were calling for five days, and Jassy answered that call on Monday.

“We’re excited about it. It’s gonna be a lot more business,” said an employee behind the counter at Ba Bar, a restaurant at the corner of Terry Avenue North and Republican Street. He was hoping having more customers on Mondays and Fridays would even things out a little bit, because the other three weekdays are “total chaos” right now with big lunchtime crowds.

On multiple corners throughout South Lake Union, Amazon workers and others lined up for food truck offerings during the lunch hour on Monday.

“I think it’s good to have people around,” said Brandon Vogel, who works in the neighborhood for a biotech company. “You can definitely tell when people are working from home — the buses are empty, there’s no traffic. It is nice to see people in the area. It feels like a society.”

It will still take some effort to make things look and feel like they did pre-pandemic. Downtown Seattle averaged more than 90,000 workers per weekday last month — just 62% of the traffic seen in July 2019, according to DSA data. Seattle lags most other U.S. cities as measured by foot traffic in the new hybrid work world.

At Amazon banana stands, between office buildings, entering and exiting coffee shops, the policy change clearly had Amazon employees buzzing. While people were typically distracted by their phones and earbuds on the street, GeekWire overheard several instances where Amazon-badge-wearing employees were discussing “five days a week” with each other.

“It sucks,” one Amazon employee near the Spheres said when asked for his reaction to Monday’s news. He said he already works five days per week, and enjoys the less crowded Mondays and Fridays around campus that make it “easier to move around and get stuff done.”

When told Jassy likes the culture of in-person work and collaboration, the employee said, “More like he wants to fill up the parking lots.”

Related: Amazon’s new back-to-office mandate fuels debate over remote work and productivity