Amazon is seeing some employees quit instead of moving to a new state as part of relocation mandate
Amazon workers hold signs during a walkout event at the company’s headquarters on May 31, 2023 in Seattle, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images News | Getty Images
As part of Amazon’s aggressive effort to get employees back to the office, the company is going a step further and demanding that some staffers move to a central hub to be with their team. Those who are unwilling or unable to comply are being forced to find work elsewhere, and some are choosing to quit, CNBC has learned.
Several employees spoke to CNBC about the new relocation requirement. An employee in Texas, who was hired in a remote role, said managers assured his team in March that nothing would change despite the return-to-office (RTO) mandate issued the prior month. But in July, the team was informed by management that they’d have to choose between working out of Seattle, New York, Austin, Texas, or Arlington, Virginia, according to internal correspondence.
Under the guidelines, remote workers are expected to have completed their move to a main hub by the first half of 2024, the document states. The employee, who doesn’t live near any of the designated cities, chose to leave Amazon after securing another position, in part due to uncertainty about future job security and the potential of higher living costs associated with the relocation with no guarantee of an increase in salary.
The person asked not to be named to avoid retaliation. CNBC spoke with three other employees in similar situations who all asked to remain anonymous.
Amazon spokesperson Rob Munoz confirmed the relocation policy, and said it affects a small percentage of the company’s workforce. The e-commerce giant said hub locations vary by team, and each team determines which locations are their hub. The company does provide relocation benefits to employees asked to move.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, so we decided that the best thing to do was to communicate directly with teams and individuals who are affected to ensure they’re getting accurate information that’s relevant to them,” Munoz said in a statement. “If an individual feels like they don’t have the information they need, we encourage them to talk with their HR business partner or their manager.”
The relocation requirement is escalating tensions between Amazon and some of its roughly 350,000 corporate employees over RTO plans after many employees moved away from their in-person office location during the Covid pandemic.
In May, Amazon began requiring that staffers work out of physical offices at least three days a week, shifting from a policy that left it up to individual managers to decide how often team members should be in the office. CEO Andy Jassy has extolled the benefits of in-person work, saying it leads to a stronger company culture and collaboration between employees.
Following the mandate, a group of employees walked out in protest at the company’s Seattle headquarters. Staffers also criticized how Amazon handled the decision to lay off 27,000 people as part of job cuts that began last year.
The company is slashing costs elsewhere as well. Amazon said it will end a perk next year that allows staffers to get one free drink at in-office coffee shops. The company also reduced the amount it reimburses for parking, and stopped providing free Uber rides to and from work, employees said.
Amazon said it still reimburses employees’ public transportation costs in all major metro areas, and provides free commuter shuttles and campus shuttles.
Some employees reprimanded
The return-to-office mandate has been a particularly thorny subject, and enforcement has been a challenge. Amazon sent out a notification earlier this month to some staffers informing them that they weren’t “meeting our expectation of joining your colleagues in the office at least three days a week,” according to a copy of the memo viewed by CNBC. “We expect you to start coming into the office three or more days a week now.”
Some staffers who received that notice had been in compliance with the mandate, while others had taken vacation or sick leave that was approved by their manager, one staffer said. Employees expressed their frustration over the notice in comments on an internal support ticket, said the person, who asked to remain anonymous because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the matter.
Amazon responded to the ticket, explaining internally the notice was sent to employees who it determined had badged in fewer than three days a week for at least five of the past eight weeks or at least three of the past four weeks.
“If you believe that you received this email in error, please reach out to your manager to discuss your situation and ensure it is accurately reflected in the system,” the company said on the support site.
Amazon confirmed the authenticity of the internal correspondence. The company stressed it had called employees back to the office three days a week because it felt it would be beneficial for company culture.
“We knew that there would be some adjustment period, so we’ve worked to support people as they’ve figured out their routines,” Munoz said in a statement. “With three months under our belt, and a lot more people back in the office, we’re reiterating our expectation that people join their teammates at least three days in the office.”
Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.Com Inc., during the GeekWire Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images
For employees affected by the relocation policy, Amazon is asking that they move to a designated hub, which could be Seattle, Arlington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco or another main office. Some employees see it as a stark reversal from the company’s approach during the pandemic, when Amazon ramped up its recruiting outside of Seattle and Silicon Valley, and pledged to expand its presence in markets like Phoenix, Dallas and San Diego.
The employees who spoke to CNBC said they view the relocation requirement as onerous and significantly disruptive to their personal lives. In some cases, staffers are being asked to move out of state, which would require them to break their housing lease, or transition their children to new schools.
Amazon has informed the employees individually about the change, but the company hasn’t put out any official communication to the broader workforce. In late July, managers began informing employees that they’d soon be expected to work from a main hub location, and they could choose between relocating, finding another job internally or resigning. Some were told they had 30 to 60 days to make a decision, the staffers said.
Three employees based in different locations — Colorado, Utah and California — were each asked to relocate to Seattle. They told CNBC they’ve chosen to leave Amazon because moving would burden them financially or put too much strain on their family.
The employees said the relocation requirement made little sense to them, noting they already live within walking or commuting distance of an Amazon office where they’ve been working the mandated three days a week.
The prospect of transferring to a new role within the company isn’t seen as much of an option. Amazon paused corporate hiring last November as part of wider cost-cutting efforts, which translates into fewer job openings than normal. The staffers told CNBC they weren’t able to find much, if anything, in their current office that’s relevant to their expertise.
Still, it’s a difficult decision to quit, as companies, particularly in the tech industry, have been reducing headcount over the past year to reckon with rising inflation and economic uncertainty.
The crackdown at Amazon is leading to some bending of the rules. In a story last week about some of the RTO changes, Insider reported that some employees have considered using a family member’s address near an Amazon office, or agreed to relocate and then used the time they were given to move to look for another job.
The Colorado-based employee who was asked to move said that, adding it all up, the relocation requirement and Amazon’s broader effort to get people into the office make it feel as if leadership is “trying to make it less enjoyable to work there.”
WATCH: Amazon’s operating margins were three times better than expected
Toronto , Canada – 20 June 2024; Andrew Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems, speaks at the Collision conference in Toronto on June 20, 2024.
Ramsey Cardy | Sportsfile | Collision | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence chip developer Cerebras said Monday that it has obtained clearance from a U.S. committee to sell shares to Group 42, a Microsoft-backed AI company based in the United Arab Emirates.
That clearance came from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, and it’s a key step for Cerebras in its effort to go public. Cerebras competes with Nvidia, whose graphics processing units are the industry’s choice for training and running AI models, but most of its revenue comes from a customer called Group 42.
Cerebras filed to go public in September but has not provided details on timing or size for the initial public offering. The regulatory overhang was tied to the company’s relationship with Group 42, which was the source of 87% of Cerebras’ revenue in the first half of 2024, made the IPO look uncertain.
“We thank @POTUS for making America the best place in the world to invest in cutting-edge #AI technology,” Andrew Feldman, Cerebras’ co-founder and CEO, wrote in a Monday LinkedIn post. “We thank G42’s leadership and the UAE’s leadership for their ongoing partnership and commitment to supporting U.S headquartered AI companies.”
Lawmakers have previously worried about Group 42’s connections to China. Last year Mike Gallagher, then a Republican member of Congress from Wisconsin, said in a statement that he was “glad to see G42 reduce its investment exposure to Chinese companies.” Microsoft later announced a $1.5 billion investment in Group 42.
Both Cerebras and Group 42 had given voluntary notice to CFIUS about the sale of voting shares, according to the Sunnyvale, California-based company’s IPO prospectus. Group 42 had agreed to buy $335 million worth of Cerebras shares by April 15, according to the prospectus. The two companies later changed the agreement to say Group 42 would be buying non-voting shares, prompting them to withdraw their notice, because they said they did not believe CFIUS had jurisdiction over sales of non-voting securities.
CFIUS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Just a handful of technology companies have gone public since 2021, as higher interest rates made unprofitable companies less desirable. But in recent months, Cerebras and a few technology-related companies have taken steps toward IPOs, and last week, AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave went public.
CoreWeave shares fell 7% on Monday, its second day of trading.
WATCH: Cerebras Systems likely to postpone IPO after facing delays with CFIUS Review, reports say
White House Senior Advisor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends a cabinet meeting held by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on March 24, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Win McNamee | Getty Images
Tesla’s stock just wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022 and suffered its third-steepest drop in the company’s 15 years on the public market.
Shares of the electric vehicle maker plunged 36% in the first three months of the year.
The last time Tesla had a worse stretch was at the end of 2022, when the stock cratered 54%. That quarter included CEO Elon Musk’s sale of more than $22 billion worth of Tesla shares to finance his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, later renamed X. On Friday, Musk said his artificial intelligence startup xAI has acquired X in a deal valuing the social media company at $33 billion.
Tesla’s first-quarter drop wiped out over $460 billion in market cap. The majority of the quarter overlaps with Musk’s time in the second Trump administration, leading an effort to slash government spending and regulations, and terminating tens of thousands of federal employees.
Musk is leading what’s known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. As of Monday, the DOGE website claimed that, through March 24, the program had notched $140 billion in federal spending reductions, a number equal to less than one-third of Tesla’s valuation loss in the first quarter.
“My Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla has gone, went roughly in half,” Musk said on Sunday night at a rally he held in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to promote the right-wing judge he’s backing for Tuesday’s state supreme court election. “This is a very expensive job is what I’m saying.”
DOGE’s website contained numerous errors previously, causing the group to revise its own claims about its savings. And many of Musk’s allegations about waste, fraud and abuse in the federal budget have also been shown to be misleading or false.
Musk recently said on a Fox News interview with Bret Baier, that he and DOGE plan to slash $1 trillion from total federal spending levels by May.
Musk’s role in the White House is one factor weighing on Tesla’s stock, as it’s contributing to waves of protests, boycotts and violent attacks on Tesla stores and vehicles around the world. President Trump’s automotive tariffs are also a concern as they involve Tesla’s key suppliers, notably Mexico and China. Tariff fears sparked a broader selloff in tech stocks, with the Nasdaq closing the quarter down 10%, its biggest drop since 2022.
Tesla faces other headwinds, such as a steep decline in new vehicle sales, and pressure to deliver on Musk’s promises for robotaxis while rivals extend their lead in the market.
Musk has said Tesla will launch a driverless ride-hailing business in Austin, Texas in June, but some analysts are voicing skepticism about the company’s ability to meet that deadline.
For about a decade, Musk has promised that existing Tesla cars can be turned into robotaxi-ready vehicles with one more software upgrade. On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Musk said that a forthcoming version of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software will require a hardware upgrade as well.
While the first-quarter stock drop has been painful for shareholders, they’ve experienced similar volatility in the recent past. In the first quarter of 2024, the shares plunged 29% due to declining auto sales and increased competition. But the stock rallied the rest of the year to finish up 63%.
“Long term, I think Tesla stock is going to do fine,” Musk said at the Green Bay rally. “So, you know, maybe it’s a buying opportunity.”
Michael Intrator, founder and CEO of CoreWeave Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, attends his company’s IPO at the Nasdaq Market in New York City on March 28, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Wall Street banks waited a long time for a billion dollar IPO from a U.S. tech company. They’re not making much money from the one they got.
The underwriting discount and commissions paid by artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which hit the Nasdaq on Friday, amounted to just 2.8% of the total proceeds, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That means that of the $1.5 billion raised in the offering, $42 million went to underwriters.
That’s on the low side historically. Since Facebook’s record-setting IPO in 2012, there have been 25 venture-backed offerings for tech-related U.S. companies that have raised at least $1 billion, with an average underwriting fee of 4%, according to data from FactSet analyzed by CNBC. Facebook, in raising $16 billion, paid out the lowest percentage at 1.1%.
Morgan Stanley, which led the Facebook IPO, had the coveted lead left spot on CoreWeave, followed by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The three banks are typically the leaders when it comes to tech IPOs. They’ve been counting on a revival in the market under President Donald Trump after a lull dating back to the end of 2021, when soaring inflation and rising interest rates put a halt on new offerings.
But CoreWeave’s initial trading sessions aren’t providing much confidence in a rebound. After lowering its price to $40 from a range of $47 to $55, CoreWeave failed to notch any gains on Friday and fell 7% on Monday to $37.20.
Declines in the broader market have weighed on CoreWeave, but investors also have specific concerns about the company, including its reliance on Microsoft as a customer, its hefty level of debt and the sustainability of a business model built around reselling Nvidia’s technology.
CoreWeave is the first among venture-backed companies to raise $1 billion or more since Freshworks in September of 2021. Freshworks carried an underwriting fee of 5.3%, while UiPath, which hit the market a few months earlier, paid 5%. In April of that year, AppLovin carried a 2.6% fee, the last time a billion-dollar offering had a lower fee than CoreWeave’s.
Among the few more recent IPOs — which all raised less than $1 billion — the fees were much higher. For Instacart and Klaviyo in 2023 and Reddit, Astera Labs, Rubrik and ServiceTitan last year, payouts were all at least 5%.
As lead in the CoreWeave deal, Morgan Stanley was given the highest percentage allocation of shares for clients at 27%. JPMorgan received 25%, and Goldman Sachs got 15%.
Those percentage allocations typically correspond fairly closely to how much of the fees each bank receives, though with a slightly higher amount to the lead bank for the management fee piece.
David Golden, a partner at Revolution Ventures who previously led tech investment banking at JPMorgan, said “there’s a little ‘black box’ involved in the underwriting compensation” that’s not disclosed in the prospectus. Based on his experience with IPOs and the historical norm, Golden estimated that Morgan Stanley got at least $13 million for its work, amounting to just over 30% of the total payout, while the number for Goldman Sachs would be slightly above $6 million.
Representatives from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. A spokesperson for JPMorgan didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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