When several hundred Seattle Amazon.com Inc. employees staged a walkout on May 31, it was in part over the company’s stricter return-to-office policy that went into effect at the beginning of May. Its requirement that employees work in the office three days a week meant Amazon’s 65,000-employee local corporate and tech workforce have had to resume — or in many cases begin — commuting to downtown Seattle and Bellevue.
On June 1, Meta Platforms Inc. became the latest tech giant to revise its remote work policy, telling employees that many would be expected back in the office soon.
Now all five of the Puget Sound area’s largest tech employers — Amazon, Microsoft Corp., Meta, Google LLC and T-Mobile US Inc. — have announced or enacted hybrid work policies that require workers to come regularly to the office.
Downtown businesses that cater to those employees — such as restaurants, retailers and dog day care providers — stand to benefit, while building owners and managers hope such policies will encourage tenants to slow their rush to unload underused office space.
Of the area’s five largest tech employers, four have make recent moves to shrink their office footprint. Amazon paused development in Bellevue and exited at least one lease in downtown Seattle. Microsoft is retreating from Bellevue, back to its Redmond headquarters. Meta is shopping an established office in Seattle and a future lease in Bellevue’s Spring District. And Google has backed out of turning a Kirkland car dealership into another office campus.
But is it over-optimistic to think new return-of-office requirements will be enough to bring back 2019?
At least one broker thinks so.
“It’s going to take more than a mandate to make offices function the way they used to,” said Aaron Kraft, a vice president at commercial real estate firm Kidder Mathews. “It’s going to take active management to realign employees geographically if that’s what they want to do.”
Office worker foot traffic has noticeably ticked up, especially in downtown Seattle with the return of Amazon workers. But raw numbers still lag significantly behind pre-pandemic volumes. And despite Meta’s recent shift in policy, the company told the Business Journal that it doesn’t plan yet on reversing its recent real estate consolidation.
“Frankly, not all that sure about how it will happen but companies will need to move offices closer to employees’ homes to reduce commute and parking times or take the risk of being less lenient with exemptions for their policy,” Kraft said.
Amazon has said its policy won’t allow many exceptions, while Microsoft and Meta have factored fully in remote roles. Here’s a breakdown of each company’s policy and how it’s playing out:
Amazon
65,000 local employees
Employees were initially expected back in the office three days per week starting May 1. However, in the weeks leading up to that date, Amazon disclosed to employees that most of its buildings would not be ready yet. So May 2 became the effective first day back for most of Amazon’s Seattle-based employees, though some buildings weren’t expected to be ready until later.
Microsoft
57,000 local employees
Microsoft shifted to a hybrid work policy in mid-2022, though enforcement has at times been relaxed. The policy separates employees into three categories, with some expected to work up to 50% of the time from home, some working up to 100% of the time from home and others working on-site only.
T-Mobile
8,200 local employees
Starting May 3 last year, executives at the director level and above were asked to be in the office at least four days per week. All other office-based employees were asked to be in at least three days per week.
Meta
8,000 local employees
Employees will be expected back in the office starting Sept. 5, though not all of them. Meta said employees who are currently designated as remote workers will get to keep that status.
7,200 local employees
Google set the tone early and called its employees back in April 2022. But recently an old problem resurfaced: overcrowding. In February, cloud employees in Google’s biggest hubs, which include Seattle, were asked to come in on alternating days and share desks due to space constraints.