I work at Amazon and I plan on 'coffee badging' instead of working from the office 5 days a week

• Amazon announced a return-to-office mandate requiring five days a week in the office from January.
• One employee based in Germany told Business Insider that he plans to continue "coffee badging."

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with an Amazon worker in Germany who spoke anonymously to protect their privacy. Their identity and employment have been verified by Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Amazon notified all employees on Monday about the new return-to-office mandate requiring us to come into the office five days a week from January.

My entire team was very shocked and worried. Some people want to leave the company. This is a betrayal to many people, especially those who were hired as remote workers, and it is eroding our trust.

Before Amazon made the announcement this week, I already had a feeling that a stricter return-to-office mandate was coming in 2025. That's because the leadership had made it very clear that this was the direction they were going to take through the last mandate, and in the last few months, things have become much stricter.

In Germany, Amazon started enforcing the mandate that requires us to be in the office three days a week in June, but unlike in the US, we aren't required to come in for a certain number of hours a day. People are still trying to adjust to the last return-to-office push.

I live very close to the office, so I'm not personally so worried about having to do another two days in the office because I can just come in and swipe my badge, stay for 15 minutes, and go back, so we still have some flexibility.

I think the return to office policy is being used as a tool to carry out silent layoffs, as I've seen many bright engineers leave the company after the last mandate.

People are definitely terrified about what this will mean for them. A few colleagues have contacted me and told me they are considering leaving the company, even going to lower-paying jobs.

Having a flexible remote working policy did not have a big impact on productivity. If you create an atmosphere of growth and drive people, they will always deliver, regardless of where they work.

I think this has been sufficient as long as people do their jobs to their best. I see the value in coming together occasionally and brainstorming, but outside that, it's unnecessary to always work from the office.

The new mandate will be difficult for many people who moved away from the office during the pandemic, have childcare commitments, or experience social anxiety and are now forced to come into the office.

Apart from the RTO announcement, I found out in the news that Amazon plans to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers at least 15% by the end of next year's first quarter. It was a surprise because we already have a resource crunch. We have fewer people doing a lot more work, which has meant that I, and some other employees, have felt unhappy.

Now with Amazon wanting to reduce the head count going forward, it will make things very difficult for employees. In many teams, there are between eight and 12 people managed by one person; ideally, it would be six people under one manager. This means some managers are already overburdened, which will only worsen.

Cutting middle managers is going to impact everyone, because one manager overseeing so many people means that you don't have enough time to have conversations around career development, you can't work on innovation, or on stakeholder engagement.

The consensus among other Amazon employees I've spoken to is that they plan to leave when the economy and job market improve. They are already frustrated and under a lot of stress, and the new RTO policy and job cut plans are only increasing the tension.

I think other Big Tech companies will follow Amazon's suit and require employees to return to the office five days a week, too.

A spokesperson for Amazon told Business Insider that they observed that being in the office together makes it easier for employees to learn, model, collaborate, and be better connected to one another. They added that the return-to-office guidance is an effort to strengthen its culture.

Correction: September 18, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misdescribed Amazon's plan to cut managers. It plans to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of next year's first quarter, not cut 15% of middle managers.

Are you a tech worker with insight to share? Contact the reporter, Jyoti Mann, via the encrypted messaging app Signal (jyotimann.11) or email (jmann@businessinsider.com) from a nonwork device.