Amazon exec says full office return could take 3 years, per report

A top Amazon executive admitted to employees that the tech giant’s return-to-office process has been a bumpy ride, according to a new report.

Peter DeSantis, the e-commerce giant’s senior vice president of utility computing, said in a meeting that the push to bring teams closer together physically could take up to three years to complete, Insider reported Wednesday. He also reportedly admitted the firm has struggled to clearly communicate its policies to corporate workers, thousands of whom are based in the Bay Area, according to LinkedIn.

The firm’s return-to-office policies have been among the most hotly contested in the tech world, prompting blunt statements from various top executives, a worker walkout and emails threatening workers who hadn’t been swiping in often enough.

Amazon is headquartered in Seattle. Like its Bay Area-based peers Meta and Apple, the company is requiring that many of its workers come into an office three days a week. The change went into effect May 1. In August, Insider and CNBC reported that some Amazon employees were told to either move to an office hub (depending on the team, this could be San Francisco, Seattle, New York or another city) or find a closer team — or, if neither option was attainable, take a “voluntary resignation” with no severance pay. Insider reported that some workers got only 60 days to find a new team.

Amazon spokesperson Rob Munoz told SFGATE on Wednesday that the relocation requirement affects a small percentage of the company, that hub locations vary by team and that some employees can get exceptions. DeSantis, Insider reported, said that he would prefer “not to have to relocate everybody” and that he would update the language of his own team’s policy on relocation.

“We could definitely take another whack at clarifying this message,” DeSantis said, according to Insider. The outlet cited a transcript of the internal meeting as its source for the report.

In July, Mike Hopkins, the senior vice president of Amazon Video and Studios, reportedly said that he had “no data either way” to prove the benefits of in-office work. In the recent meeting, Insider reported that DeSantis cited faster decision-making and better mentoring and said three days a week in office is a “reasonable average.”

Speaking about remote-based employees, DeSantis reportedly said, “You can’t move all these people all at once, but over a two- to three-year period, I believe we can slowly kind of bring our teams back to some more rational state where coming to the office has more value.”

Hear of anything happening at Amazon or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.