Difficult back at Amazon. While engineers and administrative employees were ordered to return to the office five days a week from January 2025, the transition was carried out in pain. Employees come up against logistical difficulties due to a lack of space and infrastructure, says the American daily Wall Street Journal. Not enough to convince these professionals who already returned to their premises by dragging their feet. Indeed, more than 90 % of them said they were dissatisfied, according to a survey of the professional social network Blind in September 2024, in the wake of the shock announcement of Amazon. In total, 350,000 employees were called upon to return to face -to -face, around a quarter of its total workforce, also including warehouse employees.
Except that the implementation of this policy at this online commerce giant, which has many sites, has come up against various problems. Still according to the Wall Street Journalemployees say they can find a parking space, a place or sit down and wander in the corridors looking for private rooms to make video calls. Some also find themselves alone in their open space and therefore forced to maintain meetings in visio with their colleagues. Too bad if they have sometimes swallowed several hundred kilometers to make an act of presence.
Other workers, assigned to certain places, are still waiting to know when they will really be able to go to the office full -time, for lack of space required. Difficult, under these conditions, to “collaborate, reflect and invent”, if we take up the remarks made by the director general Andy Jassy, last September. The American daily quotes a concrete example in the Bay of San Francisco: while Amazon has 18 offices in the region, the company is missing at least 800 places, according to a manager who discussed the question with a member of ‘team of installations. “The director spoke of the lack of space and parking, as well as the too long journeys now that workers must be present five days a week,” said the Wall Street Journal.
Three different offices but no colleagues …
Similar concern for employees of Austin, Texas, who struggle to find a parking space. “2,000 people, 900 parking spaces,” said Jeff Ferris, one of the employees of Amazon Web Service. Same speech tinged with bitterness for one of his colleagues in Portland, Oregon, who had also complained about his first week of face -to -face work on the LinkedIn platform. She wrote, in a post that the Wall Street Journal had time to consult before it was deleted, having occupied three different offices and having met … no colleague.
Last September, Amazon’s announcement caused a shock wave in the tech world, long renowned for its flexible working conditions. On forums of Redditusers said they had given up applying for the multinational founded by Jeff Bezos because of this rule. Others speculated that it was a method to degrease the workforce without social plan, at the risk that the group will lose its best elements. “Amazon hired a lot during the pandemic, when the work was remotely, and if the employees leave because they do not want to go to the office, that does not pose any problem to the company,” said Andy Jassy, hermetic to criticism.
And Amazon is not the only one who wants its employees to return to the premises. At the end of 2024, around a third of American companies required full -time presence, 38 % had a hybrid approach and less than 30 % left their employees to choose, according to the “Flex Index”, a study carried out by Scoop, Company of IT solutions. Teleworking, the end of an era?