The return-to-office mandate was the real layoff mechanism. Everyone knows it.

Amazon's RTO mandate wasn't about collaboration. It was a way to reduce headcount without conducting formal layoffs, without paying severance, without justifying individual decisions. Make people who moved cities, or have caring responsibilities, or have conditions incompatible with open-plan offices choose to leave. Then you don't have to pay them to go. I moved during the pandemic. I couldn't relocate back. My choice was quitting or spending four grand a month on temporary accommodation near the office and seeing my family at weekends. I quit. They call it "voluntary attrition." It wasn't voluntary. It was engineered. The people who could comply are now doing the jobs of three. That's the other half of the strategy.