Amazon Tells Thousands of Employees to Relocate or Resign Amazon says the move to bring teams together will make them more "effective."
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- Amazon is asking thousands of employees to relocate to its main hubs across the country — or resign.
- One Amazon employee said they were given 30 days to decide, and that they would not receive severance pay if they resigned.
Amazon is giving some employees a choice: relocate or resign.
Bloomberg reports that Amazon is ordering thousands of workers on several U.S. teams to move to main hubs in Seattle, Washington; Arlington, Virginia; and Washington, D.C. Amazon has 1.56 million full-time and part-time employees spread across its global business, including 350,000 corporate workers.
The effort to get some employees to relocate has been taking place "for more than a year now," as "some teams have been working to bring their teammates closer together to help them be as effective as possible," an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Related: 'Not a Cost Play': Amazon CEO Clarifies Why Employees Have to Come Back to the Office
One Amazon employee shared in the company's internal messaging platform, in messages viewed by Bloomberg, that their manager gave them 30 days to decide whether to relocate or resign. They had 60 days after that to begin the relocation process or to leave the company — and if they chose the latter, they would not receive severance pay.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
The mandate means that some workers will have to move across the country. Instead of rolling out the requirement through mass emails, Amazon is informing employees that they must relocate through one-on-one meetings and town halls.
Amazon workers already face uncertainty about their jobs being replaced in the next few years by AI. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a memo to staff earlier this week that he expects Amazon's workforce to decrease "in the next few years" as AI automates tasks, prompting concerns from employees about possible layoffs in the coming years. Amazon is currently using AI in its warehouses to improve delivery speed and has given its customer service chatbot AI capabilities.
Related: Amazon Cloud CEO Predicts a Future Where Most Software Engineers Don't Code — and AI Does It Instead
Amazon is spending heavily on AI, and plans to keep investing in the technology. In a quarterly earnings call in February, the company disclosed that it plans to spend about $105 billion in capital expenditure this year, with most spending going towards AI.
Earlier this year, Amazon began requiring employees to work in the office five days a week, leading some to look for other jobs with remote work options. Amazon has laid off more than 27,000 employees since 2022 to cut costs.
