In the wake of Amazon’s disastrous RTO mandate, Google has become the second Big Tech company to reaffirm its commitment to hybrid work.

According to Entrepreneur, the question was posed to Google management during its latest “TGIF” (Thank God It’s Friday) monthly meeting. The query was specifically asked in the context of Amazon’s RTO mandate.

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In response, a Google VP assured employees that the current system—three days a week in the office—was working and the company was not planning to make any changes. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai added that the current system would remain in effect as long as employees remained productive, especially when working remotely.

Google and Microsoft Are On the Same Page

Google’s stand is very similar to Microsoft’s. In a meeting with employees, Microsoft VP Scott Guthrie similarly assured staff that the current hybrid work solution was working, and the company would not change it as long as productivity remained the same.

That stance is not particularly surprising from Microsoft, as the company has long been a proponent of hybrid work, even releasing studies showing the improved performance of remote workers.

“If you make the time to do it right, your employees will be more engaged, more productive, and more connected, even when they’re miles away,” Keith Boyd, a Microsoft IT senior director, wrote in an August blog post. “And they’ll be far less likely to leave for a competitor who has a more sophisticated and flexible model than you do.”

Amazon’s Stance Will Cost It

In a highly competitive market, in which top talent often decides where to work based on perks behind just a salary, Amazon is putting itself at a significant disadvantage. Microsoft and Google, its two biggest cloud rivals, will clearly have a leg up when it comes to attracting new workers compared to Amazon.

In addition to having more success in attracting top talent, Microsoft and Google will be able to retain their talent far better than Amazon. In fact, Amazon employees are already applying for other jobs, with a survey by anonymous professional forum Blind finding some 73% of polled employees are considering leaving the company.

“My morale for this job is gone, gonna totally check out till PIP,” one employee said, referring to Amazon’s practice of giving an employee a low evaluation and setting nearly impossible goals until they fail and are let go.

Another said their “plan for next year is badge minimum needed Mondays and Fridays and come in as usual the other days.”

“My months of struggling to make three days a week are over, and I know that my time at Amazon has to end,” an Amazon employee named Laura said. She was hired during the pandemic and assured remote work would remain an option.

“Honestly, I’ve lost so much trust in Amazon leadership at this point,” she added. “I’ve been updating my resume and portfolio, and rage applying to new jobs on LinkedIn.”

Laura is by no means alone in her sentiment.

“I was not complying,” an employee named Ben said, citing the three-hour commute he faced as the reason for not coming in the office during the previous three-day-a-week mandate.

“I decided not to make life choices as Amazon can fire me at will anyway, and I do not want to make long-term life changes because some manager decided I should start going to the office when I was hired virtual and promised I could work from wherever I want,” he added.

Microsoft and Google Know Something

It’s important to point out that big companies rarely, if ever, do something purely for the sake of being magnanimous. Microsoft and Google are not continuing to support hybrid work purely because their employees want it.

There’s clearly a reason, and likely several, including the following:

• Employees are happier when hybrid work is an option, and happier employees are more productive.
• Hybrid work can significantly reduce the need for office space and real estate.
• Hybrid work can reduce the number of other perks companies provide, since hybrid work ranks so high on employee wish lists.
• Flexible work arrangements are a major recruiting advantage, giving Microsoft and Google an opportunity to poach top Amazon talent.

It’s likely there are even more reasons why Amazon’s biggest competitors are not following in its footsteps, not the least of which is they are seeing the fallout Amazon is experiencing. The longer Amazon continues to push its RTO mandate, the more that fallout will grow, and the company could find itself at a competitive disadvantage against its biggest rivals.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff famously said, “Office mandates are never going to work” in mid-2022. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen was even more emphatic about the monumental shift remote and hybrid work is having, calling it a societal turning point.

“It’s potentially an earthquake,” Andreessen said in mid-2022. “It’s potentially one of those things that in a hundred years, people could look back and say, ‘That was a real turning point for how society developed.’”

Amazon may be demonstrating just how much that shift is having an impact, and how unwilling employees are to go back to the old way.