Former Amazon engineer’s post on ‘wild tricks’ Amazon employees used to not work from office goes viral: Read what it says

A former Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineer has exposed creative methods employees allegedly used to circumvent the company's return-to-office mandate, sparking widespread attention online.
John McBride, who worked at AWS until June 2023, shared a viral post on X (formerly Twitter) detailing three "wild" tactics he claims engineers employed to avoid physically returning to the office. The post has garnered over a million views since being shared.
"When I worked at AWS, engineers went to wild lengths to avoid returning to the office," McBride wrote, describing the methods as "true ingenuity and innovation" - though not focused on customer-oriented objectives.

The most common trick, according to McBride, involved employees briefly entering the office during lunch hours. Workers would badge in, grab free refreshments, and immediately leave. This approach reportedly succeeded for several weeks until Amazon began tracking actual time spent in the office.
A more sophisticated method entailed renaming home Wi-Fi networks to match office network names. This fooled reporting software into marking employees as present in the office when logging in remotely. McBride noted this tactic worked temporarily until IT teams enhanced their tracking capabilities.
The riskiest strategy involved covert arrangements where employees left their badges at the office for colleagues to scan in and out on their behalf. Despite the potential consequences, McBride claimed to know someone who maintained this deception for months.
McBride's revelations come amid ongoing debates about remote work policies in the tech industry. Amazon recently announced plans to require employees to work from the office five days a week starting January 2, 2025, ending its previous hybrid work model.
The former engineer's post has reignited discussions about the necessity of in-office presence for tech workers, especially given advancements in remote collaboration tools. It also highlights the lengths some employees may go to preserve work flexibility gained during the pandemic.
McBride describes these tactics as part of a larger "silent sacking" strategy, which he claims is a five-phase plan by Amazon to reduce its workforce. This includes making work life unsatisfying for remote employees by excluding them from meetings and meaningful work.