Pamela Hayter just wanted someone at Amazon to answer “the why.”
After more than eight years at the tech giant, Hayter had come to expect that decisions large and small at the company were always rooted in data.
Following three years of pandemic-induced remote work, Hayter figured Amazon’s February mandate calling for corporate and tech employees to return to the office at least three days a week must have been a data-driven decision.
“There was no data,” Hayter said. “I kept trying to find the reason. That’s what we do at Amazon, we find the why. There was no why that I could find. And I think that really got to me.”
Hayter isn’t just another employee frustrated by having to leave the comforts of home to return to the office. A former executive assistant and program manager who has only ever worked for Amazon since moving to Washington state from Virginia, Hayter became a leading critic in the push back against return-to-office mandates.
She launched an internal Slack channel at Amazon called “Remote Advocacy” that quickly attracted 33,000 users. She helped organize a petition against the mandate, helped draft a six-page document (a nod to Amazon’s “six-pager”) advocating for remote work that was sent to company leadership, and she was an organizer of an employee walkout in May.
But when pushed to the brink by, among other things, concerns about being able to afford to commute again from her home in Kirkland, Wash., back to an office in South Lake Union, Hayter left Amazon this summer.
Now she’s contemplating what she learned about the company and herself, what she would do differently, and what she would say to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy about his return-to-office directive. Her story reflects the ongoing push and pull between employers and tech workers navigating when and how — if at all — to return to the office.
Learning to love remote work
When Hayter started at Amazon in 2015, she was completely bought in. She said she enjoyed working with smart and capable people. She appreciated learning, growing, and being allowed to try things and fail. She loved the culture.
“I loved it. Absolutely loved it,” she said. “I very, very much drank the Kool Aid, like everybody else does. I think a part of you has to, in order to just make it there, because it’s a very harsh environment. They don’t do a lot of hand-holding.”
In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in Seattle and elsewhere, word came down at Amazon, like many places where it was feasible, that employees were being sent home to work remotely.
Hayter learned of the directive while in the middle of a session training fellow employees as part of her work with the Learning & Development team. Before Zoom calls became commonplace, some people would even fly in to attend such week-long classes.
“How do we do this? How do we pivot?” Hayter said she wondered at the time.
Hayter admitted that she never really understood why anyone would want to work from home. There was too much distraction from family, chores and daily life.
“Then I had to work from home and I realized I didn’t know what I was talking about,” she said. “Everyone’s life is so different, and I can see how this is very beneficial to people.”
A mother of two daughters in their 20s, Hayter became especially sympathetic to working parents of little children, those who had to take care of an ill family member, those with disabilities, and women and minorities who discovered they were treated more equally on video calls than they were in in-person meetings.
In a new study by the women’s advocacy group LeanIn.org, the overwhelming majority of women and men surveyed said that working remotely or on a hybrid schedule made it easier to balance work and life. And that the arrangement made them more efficient and productive, according to Axios.
For her commute from Kirkland to downtown Seattle, Hayter used to take I-405, SR 520 and I-5. She said she was spending roughly $600 a month on tolls, plus gas, parking and wear and tear on her car. And she was losing more than an hour every morning and evening sitting in traffic.
“By the time I come home, I’m dead. I’m mentally, emotionally exhausted,” Hayter said.
Working from home, Hayter also went to work on herself. After three years away from the office, Hayter said she completely changed as a person. She got to spend more time with her daughters, she was healthier than she’d ever been because she ate better, and she wasn’t drained from driving back and forth.
She also got divorced, and lost half the income she relied on to pay for her commute and other expenses.
Turning anger into action
On Feb. 17, Jassy sent a memo to Amazon employees stating that it was time to return to the office for the majority of the work week. The company was hardly alone in bringing workers back or issuing mandates. Redfin, Disney, Starbucks, DocuSign, and Apple also set in-person requirements.
CNBC reported last month that 90% of companies in one survey plan to implement return-to-office polices by the end of 2024, though some companies such as Zillow Group are committed to remote policies.
“It’s easier to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture when we’re in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues,” Jassy told employees. “Collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective when we’re in person.”
Hayter read the announcement and felt what she described as a mixture of anger and incredulousness.
“‘Oh, hell no,'” she remembered thinking. “‘Wait a minute, this is not gonna happen.'”
She started thinking about her future, all that had changed while working from home, and all that she would lose again by returning to an office.
She started the Slack channel.
The online meeting place for those who were angry and confused, or those who just wanted to witness a venting of the anger and confusion, quickly blew up as thousands of employees joined. Someone added Jassy to the channel, but Hayter said the CEO never chimed in.
“It would have been lovely if he had. I wanted desperately for him to,” she said. “I wanted him, and any other leader in that company, to see that we were very serious, and we weren’t joking around. We weren’t just doing this to pass memes back and forth. It was human beings talking about how [return to office] is going to affect our lives, sometimes positive, majority negative.”
In Amazon’s view, the plan to bring employees back at least three days a week would yield the best long-term results for customers, business, and culture.
“While we understand some people didn’t agree with the direction, they were in the minority,” Amazon spokesperson Rob Munoz said. “Now that we have several months under our belts of people in the office more frequently, there’s more energy, connection, and collaboration, and we’re hearing that from employees and the businesses that surround our offices.”
Speaking to the crowd at the employee walkout in May, Hayter called the Slack channel “the largest concrete expression of employee dissatisfaction in our entire company history.”
She was joined that day at the podium by Emily Cunningham, co-founder of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. Cunningham was fired by Amazon in 2020 and ultimately settled with the company in 2021 over allegations of illegal retaliation for her activism.
Hayter said she started to notice her work environment was changing. She was “below bar” on her annual review for the first time in eight years, and in June she said she was investigated by an employee relations team.
“They basically were saying that I was instigating, leading people into being angry at leadership, if you will,” Hayter said. In July she was told she was going to be placed in a program called Pivot, which is intended for employees who are not performing to standards.
She spoke with her manager about potentially shifting to a virtual role, perhaps with a different team, but Hayter said she didn’t find anything that interested her in internal job postings. In August she decided it was time to leave Amazon, voluntarily, and at least get some severance.
She has since filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against the company.
“We respect the right of every employee to share their experience, but these claims are without merit, and we will demonstrate that through the legal process,” Amazon’s Munoz said.
‘Listen to your people’
In a Washington Post story last month about workers quitting rather than returning to the office, Hayter was among those profiled. She said, “I assumed Amazon was going to be my forever company.”
Her goal isn’t to get her job back. She doesn’t even know if she’d work in tech again, much less for a massive company. She just wants people to understand how the return-to-office decisions at Amazon and other companies are negatively affecting many workers.
Asked if she would do it all again, she said, “1000%” yes, and that she would go at the company even harder.
“I don’t think I did enough. I would have just gone all in from day one. I didn’t because I was nervous. I was afraid of losing my job,” Hayter said. “Not to downplay anything that we did, because we did a ton of stuff, but I think that I maybe would have set a different tone and a different pace.”
‘The whole time you’re at Amazon, you’re told you’re an owner and a leader. Treat us like those things that you say that we are.’
— Pamela Hayter
Amazon has changed its own tone and pace in recent months when it comes to letting corporate and tech workers know how serious it is about getting them back in the office.
In July, the company started asking some workers to relocate to ensure they’re close enough to work in person with others on their teams. The company has said that requests for exceptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Last month, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported that Amazon told employees it’s monitoring their individual badge swipes into office buildings. Other companies such as TikTok are implementing similar tracking tools.
Amazon’s Munoz said in a statement that the “information will help guide conversations as needed between employees and managers about coming into the office with their colleagues.”
Hayter said it’s fascinating to see that step by Amazon actually playing out.
“When we first started the [Slack] channel, that was one of the things that we were talking about: how long until they start tracking?” she said. “It was almost kind of a joke. Now, fast forward. They know who you are, where you are.”
Longtime human resources professional Mikaela Kiner, founder and CEO of Seattle-based HR consulting company Reverb, said there’s speculation that large employers in particular are using return-to-office mandates to force attrition, especially given the economic downturn and layoffs of the past year.
Amazon in January announced an 18,000-person layoff, the largest in its history. An additional 9,000 layoffs were announced in March.
“As always, people react negatively to any kind of monitoring of their whereabouts,” Kiner said.
She added that workers are choosing companies and roles that are location agnostic. It shows “how much of a driver that is in terms of attraction and retention,” she said.
“The policies I’ve seen that make the most sense lead with flexibility, are thoughtful about when and why people should come together, and use incentives (carrots not sticks) to encourage people to use the office,” Kiner said.
A recent survey of CEOs by professional services giant KPMG found 90% of CEOs saying they will “reward employees who make an effort to come into the office with favorable assignments, raises or promotions.”
Even though she never connected with him over Slack, Hayter still has a message for her former CEO. She said Jassy should be upfront about the real reasons and data — “the why” — behind making people return to the office.
“If it’s because of taxes, just say it. If it’s because of your real estate investments, just say it,” Hayter said. “We’re not children. The whole time you’re at Amazon, you’re told you’re an owner and a leader. Treat us like those things that you say that we are.”
And she said Jassy, and other corporate leaders making the same policies, should trust employees to know what is best for their own lives and livelihoods.
“Listen to your people,” Hayter said. “They are telling you what they need, and you’re turning a blind eye to it. You know how that makes people feel? It certainly isn’t conducive to culture that you keep carrying on and on about. And it really isn’t conducive to productivity. It’s not going to make people be loyal to you. It certainly isn’t going to make anyone want to go work there.”
