Amazon employee quits refusing to return to office, loses stocks worth Rs 1.7 crore

The former Amazon employee had worked with the tech giant since April 2020.

An Amazon employee who had worked with the tech giant for about four years in a remote role decided to quit after being asked to return to the office in the US. In doing so, he had to forego company stocks worth $200,000 (about Rs 1.7 crore), but John Schonhoff (name changed) has zero regrets about it.

Speaking to Business Insider, Schonhoff said the company's return-to-office mandate would have required him to move cities across the country from New York to Seattle, giving up on the dream life that he had been living.

"I enjoyed my work at Amazon," Schonhoff told the publication. "For more than three-and-a-half years as a software development manager, I was excited about the work we were doing and the team I was building. If it wasn't for their crackdown on their return-to-office policy, I would still be there with bells on and a smile on my face."

Schonhoff said that he had been working with the tech giant since April 2020 when the Covid pandemic prompted the company's initial work-from-home policy and had been in the office only a handful of times. "I live in New York. My wife and I just bought our dream property. There was zero chance whatsoever I was ever going to move (to Seattle)," he told Business Insider.

He also tried negotiating with the company and sought an extension. The software development manager shared with his boss that he would have had to spend $150,000 (about Rs 1.2 crore) to relocate to Seattle with his family and livestock, and enquired if there was a relocation package.  "I didn't get an answer," he said.

As the pressure from the company increased, there were also talks of employees being less efficient when working from home without any data to support the claims. "And then we were being told, 'We don't have the data, we just know it's true' -- a phrase so patently un-Amazonian that it became hard to sit there and preach leadership principles... It didn't make any sense. It still doesn't," said Schonhoff.

He added that the return-to-office policy was the sole reason he decided to leave Amazon. "I wish I could have stayed, but it frankly felt intentional the way they were pushing people out."

Schonhoff is currently working with a former Amazon colleague at a startup in a remote role. He is excited about his new job but does not fail to add that should he be asked to work from the office, he would not hesitate to look for another job.

Read more: Amazon CEO tells remote employees ‘it’s probably not going to work out for you’