I'm an Amazon employee who's worked remotely since 2021. Now that we're returning to the office soon, I worry I'll lose the productivity and work-life balance I perfected during the pandemic.

Sarah Jackson
Thu, March 9, 2023

An Amazon program manager who has never set foot in the office says she dreads the enforcement of Andy Jassy's return-to-office mandate come May.

Amazon will require that employees return to the office at least three days a week starting in May.


One employee who has worked remotely worries what will happen if her military family has to move somewhere without an office site.


"The biggest issue employees have with this is we want to understand how the decision was made, but we're not getting any answers," she said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with an Amazon program manager and military spouse who has worked remotely since joining the company. Insider has verified their employment, but isn't naming them in order to protect their career. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.

My husband has been active duty for 20-plus years. He's gone on multiple deployments, which meant moving every two years, so it was hard for me to keep my jobs. Every time we moved, I was starting over — always at the bottom again.

Raising my daughter while my husband was deployed, I was always lectured that I needed a backup plan whenever I had to call out because my daughter got sick. In one job interview, I was told, "Oh, you're a military spouse, you're going to be gone soon; we need somebody permanent."

Eventually, I found work in federal contracting, but I got out in anticipation of my husband looking to possibly retire. My work there couldn't be done remotely, so if my husband retired, I wouldn't have been able to take it with me.

At the time, Amazon was remote due to COVID, and I'd also heard that the company worked with military spouses when they had a change in duty station.

I joined Amazon in 2021, and they've let me work fully remotely as a military spouse; I haven't gone into the office once.

With Andy Jassy's return-to-office announcement, I'm concerned what it will mean for me. Will I be able to get an exception? My family will probably have to move this summer, and I don't know what will happen if we have to move somewhere that doesn't have an Amazon corporate site. My managers are supportive, but they don't know what this will look like yet. Amazon touts itself as being military-friendly, but when they roll out these policies, are they really thinking through how a blanket policy like this could affect us?

My particular team is all spread out, so my return to an office feels kind of pointless. If we're working well the way that we're doing it now, why change that?

I'm also more productive working from home — there's more noise and distraction in the office versus when I'm at home and can focus solely work.

I can flex my schedule for doctor's appointments or if a global partner I'm working with needs something. Working in the office will make these things more challenging.

Employees are wondering whether there will be enough room for everyone since Amazon hired a lot during the pandemic. Are people going to be assigned desks? I don't want to fight over desk space 3 days a week.

Amazon prides itself on being data-driven, so when you make a policy like this without numbers backing it up, it goes against our leadership principles. People are speculating that they're doing this because they want employees to quit without having to fire them, or because of tax breaks.

We want to understand how the decision was made, but we're not getting any answers. Leadership hasn't come out with any policies or procedures beyond the announcement.

I don't feel like there was any empathy or forethought of how this affects their entire workforce. We just went through two rounds of job cuts, so employee morale is down from the layoffs. People are already on edge, and now they're adding this, too. It's like, what else will they throw at us? I think there's been a loss of trust.

To say in 2021 that "there is no one-size-fits-all approach for how every team works best," and then to turn around and give us exactly that is a huge misdirection.

I love my job. I'm calling this return-to-office plan a speed bump, and I hope leadership will do the right thing to accommodate everyone, but it's going to be a waiting game to see how everything is rolled out.