Amazon CEO tells staff to return to office five days a week from January 2, 2025

A message from CEO Andy Jassy was shared with Amazon employees today, which states in part: “I wanted to send a note on a couple changes we’re making to further strengthen our culture and teams… Two areas that the s-team and I have been thinking about the last several months are: 1/ do we have the right org structure to drive the level of ownership and speed we desire? 2/ are we set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other (and our culture) to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business that we can? We think we can be better on both… On the first topic, we’ve always sought to hire very smart, high judgment, inventive, delivery-focused, and missionary teammates. And, we have always wanted the people doing the actual detailed work to have high ownership… So, we’re asking each s-team organization to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025. Having fewer managers will remove layers and flatten organizations more than they are today… To address the second issue of being better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business, we’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID… Before the pandemic, not everybody was in the office five days a week, every week… But, before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward-our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances (like the ones mentioned above) or if you already have a Remote Work Exception approved through your s-team leader… We understand that some of our teammates may have set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments. To help ensure a smooth transition, we’re going to make this new expectation active on January 2, 2025… I want to thank our leaders and support teams in advance for the work they will do to improve their org structures over the coming months. With a company of our size and complexity, the work won’t be trivial and it will test our collective ability to invent and simplify when it comes to how we organize and go after the meaningful opportunities we have across all of our businesses. Having the right culture at Amazon is something I don’t take for granted… I’m optimistic that these changes will better help us accomplish these goals while strengthening our culture and the effectiveness of our teams.”