She led fight against Amazon’s return to office, then had to leave a job she loved

An Amazon employee who helped lead the fight against the company’s return-to-office mandate had to leave a job that she loved. Pamela Hayter (above) spent more than eight years at Amazon, and considered the tech giant her “forever company.” But after three years working from home, the prospect of going back to in-person wasn’t feasible.

• Hayter started the “Remote Advocacy” Slack channel that attracted 33,000 members, and she helped organize an employee walkout.

• "There was no data,” Hayter said of the return-to-office reasoning. “I kept trying to find the reason. That’s what we do at Amazon, we find the why. There was no why that I could find. And I think that really got to me.”

• Facing the cost of commuting again, and feeling as if her work environment was deteriorating, Hayter left Amazon this summer. Read the story.

Shake near Seattle: A magnitude 4.3 earthquake hit 35 miles northwest of Seattle on Sunday evening. ShakeAlert, an earthquake warning notification system, did not activate because the quake was not big enough to meet the alert threshold. Read more. 

Meet the latest Techstars Seattle cohort: The 24 startups in the accelerator program feature industry vets from diverse fields like healthcare and robotics, and founders who hail from large tech companies such as Meta, Microsoft, and Nordstrom. Read more.

Seattle startup NoxuData landed a $250,000 pre-seed investment after winning a competition hosted by Madrona Venture Labs over the weekend. Read more. 

Early bird pricing to the upcoming GeekWire Summit ends this Thursday, so grab your tickets today. We’ve got a great agenda on tap — and a surprise geeky movie screening, topped off with world-famous popcorn at the former Cinerama Theater. 

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