I had a remote tech job at Amazon, but then RTO kicked in. I quit after they asked me to move to another city. (2024)

In July 2022, three months after graduating, I started a full-time software engineering job at Amazon after applying and interviewing for the role.

I was on the Route 53 team, which handles domain management, and I felt I was doing meaningful work.

I stayed at Amazon for nearly two years but chose to leave in May after they introduced a "return to hub" policy. This policy required me to move to a different city to be in the office with more teammates.

I think employees should be able to choose where they work from, and I didn't want a company to decide where I lived.

I enjoyed working remotely at Amazon

When I started working at Amazon, the job was fully remote. My teammates were mostly in Vancouver, but I was based in Toronto. I went into the Toronto office a couple of times, but it was super empty.

I visited the Vancouver office twice when the company flew me out for social events. My accommodation and flights were covered.

My time at Amazon was great. I had good mentors and felt like I was learning something new every day. I started as an entry-level software engineer and was promoted after the first year.

One downside was that every eight weeks or so, I had to be on-call for a week. If a service went down and customers couldn't access it, I'd have to fix or mitigate the issue no matter the time.

I had to wake up at 3 a.m. a couple of times, but I understood this was part of the job.

I was initially concerned about Amazon's reputation for employees overworking, but on my team, there was respect for work-life balance.

Toronto and Vancouver are in different time zones, but I never worried that someone was going to ask me to do something after I'd finished for the day. If I logged on early, my teammates would tell me not to.

Amazon asked employees to RTO and, in some cases, relocate to a new city

I liked remote work and not having to waste time commuting.

When I started doing internships at college, COVID-19 had already hit. I didn't know what it was like to work in an office before joining Amazon.

Around August 2023, my manager told our team that the company was implementing a return-to-office policy. It wasn't strict at first, and I didn't go into the office regularly for the first two months.

Then, we were notified that the company would start monitoring how many times we came in and that we had to go in three times a week. I remember some leniency around not coming in if you were sick or on vacation that week, but my manager told me that consistently refusing to cooperate with the policy could lead to termination.

I went into the Toronto office, but all of my meetings were still virtual because my team was in Vancouver, so it wasn't really fulfilling the collaborative aspect of RTO.

Around December 2023, my manager informed us that the company was now implementing a "return to hub" policy, where employees would need to be in the same location as other members of their team. He mentioned that it would help embody the collaborative values that Amazon has.

There were rumors floating around that this might happen because they'd already done it in the US.

For me, the primary option was moving to Vancouver, but members of our backend team were also in Seattle, so that was another "hub" for our team.

If I moved to Seattle, I'd get a pay bump because I'd be paid in USD. The company would also sort out my visa, and there would be a pathway to getting a green card.

I decided that Seattle would be a better option than Vancouver. I told them I'd move, and they expected me to relocate before the end of 2024.

I decided to stay in Toronto and left my job

I knew that Seattle would provide me with opportunities, but my whole life was in Toronto. I wanted to keep my options in Toronto open, so in early 2024 I started applying for other jobs here.

I didn't want to have to downgrade my career to stay, so it took me a while to find a job that offered a comparable salary and perks.

In May, I was offered a software engineer II role at Pinterest, which I accepted, leaving Amazon that same month. The salary was higher than my Amazon salary, and I wouldn't have to go through a major shift by leaving Toronto.

I'm happy with my choice. Interviewing with other companies made me realize that US companies are quite open to Canadian candidates. I could choose to go to the US again if I wanted.

I'd rather go to the US on my own time than be forced to go there in a rush. I'd also want the autonomy to choose where I'd move. I didn't want Amazon to tell me the city or how often to be in the office.

I don't think the work I did at Amazon required me to come into the office or move. I was mainly coding features on my computer. Even if I had moved to Seattle, many of my team members would still have been in Vancouver.

I think in-person work is valuable if your whole team is in the office together, but it shouldn't be a requirement.

Employees should be able to choose where they work themselves, instead of companies deciding for us.