It's a multitude of things. The LPs are the start of it, but the data oriented culture has been ignored by rto mandate and the head of HR's apathetic response to the remote advocates. Amazon is a very heavy document writing company and more often than not if you had to write a doc you faced someone saying "so what?" and then that person or their/your leaders requiring proving points and writing narratives leveraging facts through data to challenge biases. Amazon's leadership pissed the workers (formerly "leaders") off by instead explaining all mandates and changes are based upon their feelings and beliefs. There is no data (at least any they care to share) and it's heavily speculated to be a 4th wave of layoffs due to the only data publicly available was aws employee surveying demonstrating 80+% of workers wanted remote as a choice.
The other thing often referenced is something of a company culture thing known as "day 1." The tldr there is bezos coined the term day 1 culture to pretend Amazon was always imitating being at launch day status (day 1) and that day 2 is ruin. MThe rto mandate is a cookie cutter example of "day 2 behavior" listed by bezos and his high level leaders.
Finally, there is the hypocrisy. Executives have tons of exemptions, reasons to bend the mandates for themselves, and the power to choose how and where they work, or influence policies involved. Meanwhile, workers have faced a brick wall when it's come to things even medical accommodations for remote. Workers have posted demands from HR forcing employees to at length detail private and embarrassing medical conditions only to auto-decline accommodations after. Workers have no ability to transfer locations that would benefit both the and the company due to red tape from the RTO edicts. Some workers, having been hired full remote, or to a location not where their direct manager resides are being mandated to move across the country due to no exemption stance taken by Amazon leadership.
As an ex-amazonian myself I agree with the first part about data driven and writing culture and that much of the way this is presented is very non-amazonian, but I'm not getting how rto is a "cookie cutter" example of day 2 behavior. Given that many startups are pushing for in person recently (at least publically, I'm not weighing in either way), how is going in person clearly something that means amazon is past the day 1/early culture?
How leadership has handled rto is more what makes it the peak example. The bureaucracy, the company's stagnation, the crippling slow response to a modern market and digging their head into the sand. Rto is the peak example because it has exposed how when it matters the executives (L10+) abandon LPs, refuse factual discussion, and are choosing paths that aren't good for customers or employees. It's exposed all of their current efforts for employee connection is a farce and pointless. It contradicts Amazon's core company culture that employees are "leaders" and shows how delusional these people are as they have started calling employees who don't want to rto "selfish."
Eh, the bureaucracy was creeping in many years ago, RTO has nothing to do with that imho. Amazon has never really cared what's good for employees, and that's both a strength and a weakness, since it allows them to decide what's best for the company with no pretense of some human good like the infamous "don't be evil" motto of another giant, though I did hear that shorly after Andy took over there was an LP added that might make what I just said wrong. I think fully or mostly remote companies are doing to be slower then their competitors anyway, and you're seeing this sentiment shift across the startup ecosystem (and if amazon is going to dust themselves off, looking to more dynamic/earlier stage company cultures is probably the right way), for example: https://twitter.com/zebulgar/status/1660722639420137496?s=20
The other thing often referenced is something of a company culture thing known as "day 1." The tldr there is bezos coined the term day 1 culture to pretend Amazon was always imitating being at launch day status (day 1) and that day 2 is ruin. MThe rto mandate is a cookie cutter example of "day 2 behavior" listed by bezos and his high level leaders.
Finally, there is the hypocrisy. Executives have tons of exemptions, reasons to bend the mandates for themselves, and the power to choose how and where they work, or influence policies involved. Meanwhile, workers have faced a brick wall when it's come to things even medical accommodations for remote. Workers have posted demands from HR forcing employees to at length detail private and embarrassing medical conditions only to auto-decline accommodations after. Workers have no ability to transfer locations that would benefit both the and the company due to red tape from the RTO edicts. Some workers, having been hired full remote, or to a location not where their direct manager resides are being mandated to move across the country due to no exemption stance taken by Amazon leadership.