'Silent sacking': What is it and why is Amazon allegedly using it to cut its workforce

Several current and former employees of Amazon have claimed that the company's strict return-to-office order from January 2, 2025, has more to do with encouraging workers to quit than to help innovate and collaborate, as was claimed by CEO Andy Jassy. (Image credit: AFP)

Amazon has been accused of using "silent slacking" to shrink its workforce without having to layoff employees and thus dodge negative press. By announcing a mandatory return-to-office policy, the tech giant has been accused by at least two former employees of encouraging them to quit rather than firing them with severance packages.

“Silently sacking” is another phrase for “quiet firing” in which the management creates a work environment with deteriorating conditions such as overwork, stalled promotions, little support from management etc. to push employees to resign rather than firing them. The move could cut costs for a company as they would no longer be obligated to provide employees with severance packages when they resign.

Layoffs can be a large expense for companies as employees are often required to be offered severance packages when fired. Microsoft, for example, took a $1.2 billion hit due to layoffs and other restructuring efforts in its second-quarter earnings in 2023, The Street reported.

Last January, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a blog that all laid-off employees have full support during these transitions from the firm. "US-benefit-eligible employees will receive a variety of benefits, including above-market severance pay, continuing healthcare coverage for six months, continued vesting of stock awards for six months, career transition services, and 60 days’ notice prior to termination, regardless of whether such notice is legally required. Benefits for employees outside the US will align with the employment laws in each country," he wrote.

Amazon, which has been going through rolling layoffs since 2022, offered its employees a severance package that included a separation payment, transitional health benefits, and job placement.

According to a report in CNBC, the company offered its employees in the US full pay and benefits over a 60-day period, when they were kept on the payroll but were not expected to keep working. After that period, Amazon offered the laid-off employees several weeks of severance depending on their length of time with the company, a separation payment, transitional health benefits, and job placement.

By "silently sacking" employees, the tech giant will not have to go through the entire process, saving time and resources.

This is what former Amazon employees based in Denver and Los Angeles, John McBride and Justin Garrison, pointed out.

'Ultimately, it comes down to taxes and economics'

In a recent post on X, McBride, who had worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a year until June 2023, wrote that CEO Andy Jassy's announcement should not have surprised anyone paying attention to how the company has been functioning for years. "Ultimately, it comes down to taxes and economics," he said.

Breaking down Amazon's supposed plan into five phases, McBride said the first phase was laying off 30,000 employees; the second was starting the return-to-office mandate when employees were required to work from an office near their residence two to three days a week to an office near you. "I went into the Denver office near me, a 20-minute commute," he said.

Phase 3 was “return to team” where employees had to work from offices where their team was physically located. In McBride's case, it meant moving to a different city, Seattle. "Many, many people left during this phase. This is when I personally left in 2023 because I wouldn’t relocate to Seattle," he said.

Then followed “silent sacking”. Explaining what he described as phase 4, McBride said, "If you managed to somehow stick around this long, your work life would be made incredibly unsatisfying and cumbersome: you'd be left out of in-person meetings, you'd be stiff-armed by management, you wouldn't be given interesting or meaningful work, etc. And finally, Phase 5: death of remote. Everyone must sit at a desk in a physical office where your team is located."

Hired as a remote employee, then ordered to work from office or 'voluntarily resign'

Robert Lacis, who worked with Amazon for close to five years, shared on LinkedIn that he was hired as a "virtual employee" but when Jassy announced the company's return-to-office plans, Lacis was ordered to either move cities to work from the company's Seattle office or resign.

"February 17, 2023, was the defining moment when things began to change," he wrote. "This was the day that Andy Jassy announced Amazon's return-to-office (RTO) plans. Being hired as a virtual employee, I thought I was exempt. Things went south in the summer of 2023. Sure, I didn't have to RTO, but I was told I had to move to Seattle or 'voluntarily resign.' Having made important life decisions to move to Lake Oswego, Oregon, for the benefit of my family, moving to Seattle did not align at all."

Lacis left the company in February this year.

'We still have a job, just not a role'

Garrison, on the other hand, was a senior developer advocate with AWS for about four years until January 2024 when he quit after not having worked for almost three months. Amazon did not fire him; he had a job but was not given any work.

"On September 1st, 2023 I was told by my skip level manager and VP that my team and an adjacent team were being eliminated. They claimed we all did such good work that they wanted us to remain at Amazon. 'We still have a job, just not a role'," he wrote in his blog.

When Garrison asked his manager if severance was an option, he was repeatedly told it would be once the company had exhausted other options. "They told us our number one priority was to find another job. Every role we found had significant downsides. Lower pay, lower title, RTO, or various other things," he wrote. "It was clear they wanted us to take a different role we could quit later. My management wanted to retain the headcount, but couldn’t do layoffs."

For the next two and a half months, every time Garrison asked for an update on his employment and severance package, he was either ghosted or given a "variety of excuses". "On January 10, I officially quit Amazon. My manager called me asking about what work I would be doing like none of this ever happened. I knew he would try to put me on a PIP (performance improvement plan) and I wasn’t going to stick around for that," he said.