Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s brutal message to remote workers refusing to come back to the office: ‘It’s probably not going to work out for you’

Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, appears to have lost patience with remote employees who refuse to return to the workplace.

Some of the biggest corporations in America have struggled with the return to work issue due to employees who want to maintain their pandemic-era flexibility, including Meta, Disney, and Starbucks.

Unfortunately for Amazon's executives, calling employees back to work has generated a lot of controversy.

And it appears the Amazon CEO has run out of options after receiving everything from criticism to staff petitions.

Jassy is said to have laid down the challenge at a fireside chat known as a "fishbowl" earlier this month, implying that if employees didn't return to their desks they would be fired.

Jassy was heard saying, "It's past the time to disagree and commit," in an audio that Insider was able to secure. We are returning to the office at least three days a week, so it's not appropriate for some of our teammates to be in three days a week and for some people to refuse to do so. If you can't disagree and commit, I also respect that, but it probably won't work out for you at Amazon.

It is understandable that Amazon employees are reluctant to go back to work. Jassy informed the workforce in September 2022 that he had no intention of asking them to go back to their workstations.

It followed a more liberal statement from Jassy in October of the previous year, in which she stated that managers would

According to reports, Jassy reaffirmed a message that has become more prevalent in recent months: if you disobey the call to run for government again, you'll pay the price.

According to a July Insider story, unless an employee was one of the select few who had received approval from the S-team, the company's leadership group, they would be pushed into a "voluntary resignation" if they refused to go back to work.

When Fortune contacted Amazon for comment on the most recent development, they did not answer.

           Switching positions on the 'future of work'

According to reports, Jassy stated at the meeting that he had spoken to between 60 and 80 CEOs, "virtually all" of whom desired to have their employees back at work.

There is little doubt that several well-known figures have modified their position on remote employment.

The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, extolled the merits of remote work in May 2020, claiming it would enable the company to employ people from further afield that had never been feasible before.

Likewise Zoom used to be the epitome of remote work; after all, it was a solution that let tens of thousands of companies to maintain communication when under lockdown.

Zoom's chief financial officer, Kelly Steckelberg, told MarketWatch that less than 2% of its employees were working in the office in January 2022 and that workers "truly want choice and flexibility."