Anonymous professional forum Blind has bad news for Amazon and its recent return-to-office (RTO) mandate, with 73% of employees considering looking for another job.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made waves in mid-September when he said employees would be required to work from the office five days a week, ending the company’s RTO policy. The backlash was swift and severe, with employees taking to the company’s Slack channel to voice their opposition to the decision.

Catch our chat on 73% of Amazon workers eyeing new jobs over the RTO mandate!

Blind Survey Reveals Imploding Morale

Blind conducted a survey of 2,585 verified Amazon employees in the wake of the RTO mandate, and it doesn’t look good. According to the survey, a whopping 91% of employees are dissatisfied with the decision.

“My morale for this job is gone, gonna totally check out till PIP,” one employee said. PIP refers to Amazon’s practice of giving an employee a low evaluation and setting nearly impossible goals they must meet to raise their score. When they fail to do so, they 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.”

Amazon Poised for a Mass Exodus

Even more telling, 73% of employees said they were considering looking for another job as a direct result of the RTO mandate. Four out of five, exactly 80%, said they knew of other employees who were already looking for a job, while nearly a third (32%) said they knew of someone who had already quit as a result of the mandate.

Some employees pointed out how the mandate did not account for those who had been hired for remote positions and were now faced with relocating or losing their jobs.

“RTO blanket policy is crazy, particularly for those of us who were hired remote and FAR from an office. I have kids and family here so unwilling to relocate,” a verified Amazon professional who identifies as a parent said in response to the mandate. “Even if I didn’t there’s too great a risk I’d be laid off in 6 months anyway so why risk a move?”

RTO Mandate Is Hurting the Hiring Process

If Amazon executives think it will be easy to replace any employees who leave, they may want to rethink that stance, as hiring managers are reportedly seeing candidates withdraw from the interview process as a result of the mandate.

A verified Microsoft professional said the following:

Candidates dropping out of Amazon recruitment pipeline in droves

I think the Amazon RTO order scared so many candidates that thousands of candidates are dropping out of Amazon’s recruitment process. I just had an Amazon recruiter blow up my phone and inbox 5 times in the last 24 hours to get me to provide my availability for an onsite interview. I just asked the recruiter why they are rushing to hire and he said the hiring managers are pissed that so many candidates dropped out of the pipeline in just the last 24 hours.

If you doubt that people would turn down an Amazon offer in a recession, remember that most candidates are still employed and likely working remote and were probably given false hope by the dishonest Amazon recruiters that they can ask to work remotely or hybrid. Yesterday’s announcement dashes the hopes of so many candidates who can’t be in the office 5 days a week for different reasons like having a disability or health problems, having childcare duties and commuting.

Unclear if Amazon’s RTO Will Be More or Less Strict Than Pre-Pandemic

A big question hanging over everyone’s mind is whether Amazon’s five-day-a-week mandate will be more or less strict than the company’s work policies pre-pandemic. As the company has increasingly forced people back to the office, it has instituted various badge-in measures to keep track of compliance. In contrast, the company did not have such measures before the pandemic forced a move to remote.

“I’m on the fence. If it truly is like pre-pandemic, then that means it’s way more flexible than the current 3x a week model with badge reporting. If they continue to have badge reporting, then it’s just monitoring us like children,” a verified Amazon professional said on Blind.

While that employee struck a hopeful tone, others have said the new policy is far more restrictive than the company’s pre-pandemic one.

“Please do note that this is (in a lot of cases) significantly more strict and out of its mind than many teams operated under pre-covid,” an employee wrote on Slack after the announcement. “This is not ‘going back’ to how it was before. It’s just going backwards.”

Andy Jassy Is Intent to Return to the Past

As WPN pointed out in our initial coverage of Amazon’s RTO mandate, Jassy is the stereotypical CEO who is currently pushing for a return to the office. Studies have shown that RTO mandates are largely being pushed by older, male, workaholic CEOs who are slow to embrace a changing landscape.

“Because the labor market is looser and there’s more talent to be hired, I think the employers think they’ll be able to get their way,” said Dr. Grace Lordan, associate professor in behavioral science at the London School of Economics.

“This belief of a certain cohort of people, and they are represented across all sectors, that presentee-ism is productivity, for them it’s perfectly rational that if somebody doesn’t want to come into the office then that basically means they’re not somebody who wants to add value to the firm,” Lordan added.

Unfortunately for those CEOs, the reality has been quite different, with many companies losing top employees and struggling to attract new talent as a result. In fact, 42% of companies saw higher attrition as a result of RTO mandates, while 29% struggle to recruit new employees. What’s more, 76% of employees say they will quit to find another job if flexible work is eliminated completely.

Amazon’s Plans May Backfire

It’s unclear what Amazon’s over-arching goal is. The company clearly knows how unpopular RTO mandates are, yet they implemented one of the strictest in the industry.

Some have speculated the company could be purposefully trying to reduce its headcount, pushing out employees who refuse to relocate or return to the office. While that may work in the short term, as the Microsoft employee above points out, it will certainly not help Amazon gain any goodwill among potential employees, given the company is reneging on previous promises that were made when remote employees were hired.

Ultimately, Jassy’s RTO mandate could be Amazon’s undoing, costing it some of its top talent in an industry where winners are defined by their ability to attract the creme of the crop.