A former Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineer has revealed three common tricks used by Amazon employees to bypass the return to office mandate.
Amazon recently scrapped its hybrid work policy, ordering all employees to work from office five days a week starting January 2025. In an email to staff, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy highlighted the benefits of working from office, saying collaboration and brainstorming is more effective when everyone is present together in one place.
The return to office mandate disappointed thousands of staffers who have since begged the management to reconsider its decision. Some have apparently gone a step further and started resorting to trickery.
According to a Business Insider article, a former Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineer revealed three common tricks used by Amazon employees to bypass the return to office mandate.
In his since-deleted post, John McBride revealed some clever hacks used by Amazon employees to avoid returning to office. McBride, who left AWS in 2023, said that engineers went to “wild lengths” to avoid returning to the office. Here is what they did:
Coffee badging
McBride first highlighted the ploy used not just by Amazon workers but many hybrid workers – showing up in office for a very short period of time, typically to grab a coffee and then leave.
“The classic: badging in during lunch, grabbing a free coffee or snack, and immediately leaving. This worked for a few weeks until they started tracking time actually “in” the office,” wrote McBride in his now-deleted post.
Renaming home Wi-Fi
Another trick used by Amazon workers to dupe in-office rules: renaming their home Wi-Fi connection. According to McBride, renaming home wifi network to the name of the network in office meant that when employees logged in for the day, they were marked “in office” by the reporting software.
“This worked for awhile but eventually IT made the reporting software more robust and didn’t just check network names,” McBride revealed.
Leave badge at office
Finally, some workers even developed a method where they would leave their badge in office with a co-worker, who would then check in and check out on their behalf.
“Some people made deals where they’d leave their badge at an office and they’d have other people badge in and out for them. Risky, but knew someone who did this for months,” McBride said.
