Technology

Amazon cloud boss says employees unhappy with 5-day office mandate can leave

Published

1 year ago

October 18, 2024

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Amazon Web Services CEO, Matt Garman speaks during CNBC Power Lunch on July 1, 2024.

CNBC

Amazon‘s cloud boss on Thursday gave employees a frank message about the company’s recently announced five-day in-office mandate.

Staffers who don’t agree with Amazon’s new policy can leave, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said during an all-hands meeting at the company’s second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

“If there are people who just don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to, that’s OK, there are other companies around,” Garman said, according to a transcript viewed by CNBC. “At Amazon, we want to be in an environment where we are working together, and we feel that collaborative environment is incredibly important for our innovation and for our culture.”

Amazon has observed that working in-office helps teams be more collaborative and effective, a company spokesperson told CNBC.

Garman’s comments were reported earlier by Reuters.

Amazon announced the new mandate last month. The company’s previous return-to-work stance required corporate workers to be in office at least three days a week. Employees have until Jan. 2 to adhere to the new policy.

The company is forgoing its pandemic-era remote work policies as it looks to keep up with rivals Microsoft, OpenAI and Google in the race to develop generative artificial intelligence. It’s one of the primary tasks in front of Garman, who took over AWS in June after his predecessor Adam Selipsky stepped down from the role.

The move has spurred backlash from some Amazon employees who say they’re just as productive working from home or in a hybrid work environment as they are in an office. Others say the mandate puts extra strain on families and caregivers.

Roughly 37,000 employees have joined an internal Slack channel created last year to advocate for remote work and share grievances about the return-to-work mandate, according to a person familiar with the matter.

At the all-hands meeting, Garman said he’s been speaking with employees and “nine out of 10 people are actually quite excited by this change.” He acknowledged there will be cases where employees have some flexibility.

“What we really mean by this is we want to have an office environment,” said Garman, noting an example scenario where an employee may want to work from home one day with their manager’s approval to focus on their work in a quiet environment.

“Those are fine,” he said.

Garman said the mandate is important for preserving Amazon’s culture and “leadership principles,” which are a list of more than a dozen business philosophies meant to guide employee decisions and goals. He pointed to Amazon’s principle of “disagree and commit,” which is the idea that employees should debate and push back on each others ideas respectfully. That practice can be particularly hard to carry out over Amazon’s videoconferencing software, called Chime, Garman said.

“I don’t know if you guys have tried to disagree via a Chime call — it’s very hard,” Garman said.

WATCH: Amazon ramps up AI chip race

Technology

More demand than supply gives companies an edge, Jim Cramer says

Published

6 hours ago

October 24, 2025

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More demand than supply gives companies an edge, Jim Cramer says

“Supply constrained,” are the two of the most important words CNBC’s Jim Cramer said he’s heard so far during earnings season and explained why this dynamic is favorable for companies.

“When you’re supplied constrained, you have the ability to raise prices, and that’s the holy grail in any industry,” he said.

Intel‘s strong earnings results were in part because of more demand than supply, Cramer suggested. He noted that the company’s CFO, David Zinsner, said the semiconductor maker is supply constrained for a number of products, and that “industry supply has tightened materially.”

Along with Intel, other tech names that are also supply constrained and performing well on the market include Micron, AMD and Nvidia, Cramer continued.

These companies don’t have enough product in part because the storage needs of artificial intelligence are incredible high, Cramer said. He added that he thinks demand has overwhelmed supply because semiconductor capital equipment companies didn’t manufacture enough of their own machines as they simply didn’t anticipate such a volume of orders.

Outside of tech, Cramer said he thinks airplane maker Boeing and energy company GE Vernova are also supply constrained, adding that he thinks the former will say it’s short on most of its planes when it reports earnings next week. GE Vernova is supply constrained with its power equipment, like turbines that burn natural gas, he continued, which is the primary energy source for the ever-growing crop of data centers.

GE Vernova and Boeing are also set to be winners because they make big-ticket items that other countries can buy from the U.S. to help close the trade deficit, Cramer added.

“In the end, we have more demand than supply in a host of industries and that’s the ticket for good stock performance,” he said. “I don’t see that changing any time soon.”

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Technology

3 takeaways from Intel earnings: Cash flow, foundry progress and hardware surprise

Published

11 hours ago

October 24, 2025

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3 takeaways from Intel earnings: Cash flow, foundry progress and hardware surprise

Wall Street remains skeptical on Intel despite its return to profitability

Intel snapped a losing streak of six straight quarterly losses and returned to profitability in the third quarter.

In its first earnings report since the Trump administration acquired a 10% stake in the company, the U.S. chipmaker posted strong revenue, noting robust demand for chips that it expects to continue into 2026.

Client computing revenue, which includes chips for PCs and laptops, grew 5% year over year, benefiting from PC market stabilization and artificial intelligence PC prospects.

CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a call with analysts Thursday that artificial intelligence “is a strong foundation for sustainable long-term growth as we execute.”

The chip strength and demand were bright spots, but there were areas of concern as well, with the company’s foundry business still needing a big break.

Here are three takeaways from the chipmaker’s Q3 report:

Cash flow

“We significantly improved our cash position and liquidity in Q3, a key focus for me since becoming CEO in March,” Tan said on a call with analysts Thursday.

Intel landed an $8.9 billion investment from the U.S. government in August, along with $2 billion from Softbank, but has not yet received the $5 billion tied to a deal with Nvidia. The company expects that deal to close by the end of Q4.

With all of those transactions completed, plus the Altera sale, Intel will have $35 billion in cash on hand, CFO David Zinser told CNBC.

The U.S. government is the company’s biggest shareholder, and Intel stock is up more than 50% since Aug. 22, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced the deal.

“Like any shareholder, we have to keep in touch with them,” Zinser said of the U.S. stake. “We don’t tell them how the numbers are going before the quarter. We generally talk to them like Fidelity,” another Intel shareholder.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

Intel 3-month stock chart.

Foundry

The firm’s foundry remains a work in progress.

Revenue fell 2% over the year before, and it has yet to land a major customer.

Intel now has two fabs running 18A nodes, which are designed for AI and high-performance computing applications.

“We are making steady progress on Intel 18A,” Tan said of its latest chip technology. “We are on track to bring Panther Lake to market this year.”

Zinser said the more advanced 14A nodes won’t be put in supply until the company has “real firm demand.”

Old stuff still selling

Zinser said the company’s older chipmaking processes, or nodes, have continued to do well, “and that was probably the part that was more unexpected.”

Zinser said the chipmaker met some of the central processing unit (CPU) demand with inventory on hand, but they will be behind in Q1, “probably Q2 and maybe in Q3.”

The supply crunch has been with older Intel 10 and 7 manufacturing technologies.

Many customers are opting for less advanced hardware to refresh their operating systems, demonstrating enterprises aren’t waiting for cutting-edge chips when proven technology gets the job done.