Amazon CEO Andy Jassy denies that 5-day office mandate is a ‘backdoor layoff’
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during the New York Times DealBook Summit in the Appel Room at the Jazz At Lincoln Center on November 30, 2022 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy denied speculation that the company’s five-day in-office mandate was made to further reduce head count or appease city officials.
“A number of people I’ve seen theorize that the reason we were doing this is a backdoor layoff or we made some sort of deal with the city, or cities, and that’s why we were having people come back and be together more often,” Jassy said at an all-hands meeting Tuesday, according to remarks obtained by CNBC. “I can tell you both of those are not true.”
Amazon announced the new mandate in September. The company’s previous return-to-work stance required corporate workers to be in the office at least three days a week. Employees have until Jan. 2 to adhere to the new policy.
The mandate 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 the office. Others have said the mandate is in line with Jassy’s continued cost-cutting efforts, suggesting that it’s a means of forced attrition. Amazon has laid off more than 27,000 employees since the beginning of 2022.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. Jassy’s comments were earlier reported by Reuters.
“This was not a cost play for us,” Jassy said at the meeting, which coincided with Election Day. “This is very much about our culture and strengthening our culture.”
At the time he announced the mandate, Jassy said that a return to the office full time would allow Amazon to be “better set up to invent, collaborate and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business.”
Amazon’s cloud boss Matt Garman also defended the decision last month, saying staffers who don’t agree with the company’s new policy can leave, CNBC previously reported. Garman also said he’s been speaking with staffers about the mandate and “nine out of 10 people are actually quite excited by this change.”
Garman’s comments further rankled Amazon employees.
Roughly 500 staffers who work for Amazon’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, penned a letter to Garman last week criticizing his remarks and questioning the merits of a five-day in-office mandate, according to a copy of the letter viewed by CNBC.
“We urge you to reconsider your comments and position on the proposed 5-day in-office mandate,” the letter said. “Remote and flexible work is an opportunity for Amazon to take the lead, not a threat. We want to work for a company and for leaders that recognize and seize this moment to challenge us to reinvent how we work.”
The letter included anecdotes from AWS staffers who detailed how the five-day in-office mandate will impact their “life and work.” One staffer said they were denied a disability accommodation and were being told to return to the office, and another employee said they were recently told to use paid time off to take care of a sick family member instead of being allowed to work from home. Another staffer said the RTO mandate would require them to be in an office “over 200 miles from my home.”
At least 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, CNBC previously reported. Staffers previously pushed back on the 3-day in-office mandate, with some staging a walkout at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters to express their dissatisfaction.
Jassy acknowledged Tuesday that the five-day in-office mandate will be an adjustment for employees.
“I understand that for a lot of people and we’re gonna be working through that adjustment together,” he said.
WATCH: AWS CEO says employees unhappy with 5-day office mandate can leave
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google
Anindito Mukherjee | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google has been moderating and removing employees’ internal election-related conversations, CNBC has learned.
Ahead of Tuesday’s U.S. elections, Google executives warned employees to keep political opinions and statements away from a popular internal discussion forum called Memegen, according to correspondence viewed by CNBC. Despite the warnings, employees continued posting memes related to the election and criticizing the company’s policies on Tuesday.
The most recent leadership guidance shows the company is taking expanded action to temper internal political discussions. Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday sent a memo reminding employees that people turn to the company’s services for “high-quality and reliable information.” That includes through the company’s Google Search, Google News and YouTube services.
“Whomever the voters entrust, let’s remember the role we play at work, through the products we build and as a business: to be a trusted source of information to people of every background and belief,” Pichai wrote. “We will and must maintain that.”
As one of the most important tech leaders in the U.S., Pichai himself has been pulled into the broader political discussions of late. Republican nominee Donald Trump claimed to have multiple phone calls with Pichai in recent weeks.
Google has been cracking down on internal conversations since 2019 when the company introduced a policy barring employees from making statements that “insult, demean, or humiliate” their colleagues. The rules also discouraged employees from engaging in a “raging debate over politics or the latest news story.”
That policy signaled a significant culture shift for the company. Some employees pushed back against the restrictions, saying they were too broad, and in 2020, the company said it was expanding its internal content moderation practices, requiring employees to more actively moderate internal discussions, CNBC found at the time.
Since 2021, Google has dealt with internal dissent regarding Project Nimbus, which is a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud computing and AI services. Google briefly shut down an internal message board this March after employees posted comments about the company’s Nimbus contract.
In a 2019 settlement, the U.S. National Labor Board ordered Google to post a list of employee rights at its headquarters that included the right to discuss workplace conditions. That came after a former Google employee filed a complaint alleging that the company restricted free speech and fired him for expressing conservative views, which Google refuted.
The company declined to comment.
Banning political discussions
Google announced more updates to its Memegen guidelines in September that included broadening the forum’s restrictions against political discussions, according to internal documents viewed by CNBC. The company also said it would ban employees from the platform if they violate policies three times, and Google said that it would also also use artificial intelligence technology to better detect violative content.
“Memegen will no longer allow posting of personal political opinions, including national policy/events, geopolitical content (eg, international relations, military conflicts, economic actions, territorial disputes, and other international affairs unrelated to Google), or sharing related news with or without commentary,” one document said.
Political debates have driven the “vast majority” of content removals, one document of the expanded policies said.
“Memegen isn’t a place for personal political opinions or statements,” reads a yellow banner that Google recently added at the top of Memegen, according to images viewed by CNBC.
One employee wrote that Google’s internal community management team, or ICMT, took down their meme, which they didn’t feel was violative. Many memes viewed by CNBC included messages such as “sending support” and “encouragement” to fellow employees. Others poked fun at the company’s expanded policy and the ICMT.
“This meme is a political statement please report to ICMT immediately,” one meme said. Another read: “Make Election Day a holiday to give ICMT a break.” Another meme just said “aaaaaaaa” overlaid on a black void.
Read Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s full memo to employees below
Hi Googlers,
Tomorrow is election day here and many in the U.S. will be heading to the polls to vote for everything from school board to judges to the Congress and President.
Teams across Google and YouTube have been working hard to make sure our platforms provide voters with high-quality and reliable information, just as we’ve done for so many other elections around the world — in fact, dozens of countries have held major, hotly contested elections this year, from France to India to the UK to Mexico and many more, with well over a billion people casting votes in 2024.
We should be proud of our work, and also of our teams’ efforts to keep campaigns secure, to deliver accurate information on where and how to vote, and to provide digital advertising solutions to campaigns. Thanks to everyone working around the clock on these efforts throughout the campaign season and as votes are tallied.
As with other elections, the outcome will be a major topic of conversation in living rooms and other places around the world. And of course, the outcome will have important consequences. Whomever the voters entrust, let’s remember the role we play at work, through the products we build and as a business: to be a trusted source of information to people of every background and belief. We will and must maintain that. In that spirit, it’s important that everyone continue to follow our Community Guidelines and Personal Political Activity Policy.
Beyond election day, our work to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful will continue. Al has given us a profound opportunity to make progress on that mission, build great products and partnerships, drive innovation, and make significant contributions to national and local economies. Our company is at its best when we’re focused on that.
Thanks,
Sundar
WATCH: Google: More than a quarter of new code is now AI-generated
Perplexity AI logo is seen in this illustration taken January 4, 2024.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Perplexity AI, the artificial-intelligence search engine startup, is in the final stages of raising $500 million in funding at a $9 billion valuation, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC.
The startup competes against the likes of Google and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. Perplexity most recent valuation was $3 billion in June. Institutional Venture Partners, a Bay Area-based firm, is leading the new round, according to the source, who requested anonymity since the funding is not yet public.
Perplexity started the year with a roughly $500 million valuation. Since then, the company has continued to attract investor interest amid the generative AI boom, raising four funding rounds so far this year.
Last week, OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positioned it to better compete with Perplexity, as well as leading search engines like Google and Microsoft‘s Bing. OpenAI’s search feature offers up-to-the-minute sports scores, stock quotes, news, weather and more, powered by real-time web search and partnerships with news and data providers, according to the company.
Despite the AI boom, Perplexity has been embroiled in controversy due to accusations of plagiarizing content from media outlets. The New York Times last month sent Perplexity a “cease and desist” notice, claiming that the startup scrapes the news outlet’s content to generate answers. Perplexity has denied the allegations.
In July, Perplexity debuted a revenue-sharing model for publishers. Any time a user asks a question and Perplexity generates ad revenue from citing an article in its answer, Perplexity will share a percentage of that revenue with the publisher, the company said.
Media outlets and content platforms including Fortune, Time, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, Der Spiegel and WordPress were among the first to join the company’s “Publishers Program.” Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer, told CNBC in a July interview that if three articles from one publisher were used in one answer, the partner would receive “triple the revenue share.” Perplexity worked on its revenue-sharing model since January, and the company’s goal is to have 30 publishers enrolled by the end of the year, Shevelenko said.
Perplexity’s app has been downloaded more than 2 million times, and it answers more than 230 million queries a month, the company said in August. U.S. queries have increased eightfold in the past year, according to a pitch deck for potential advertisers that was viewed by CNBC.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the new funding round.
WATCH: Perplexity unveils AI election hub: Here’s what you need to know
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