Amazon CEO Tells Employees They’ll Need to Be in the Office Five Days a Week: ‘We Want to Operate Like the World’s Largest Startup’
variety.comTodd Spangler NY Digital Editor Amazon is going fully back to the office. Andy Jassy, the technology giant’s CEO, informed employees that starting next year, they will be expected to report to the office five days per week — as they generally did before the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020.
That’s so that Amazon will be “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,” he wrote Monday in a companywide memo, which Amazon shared publicly.
Amazon’s senior management team (the “s-team” in company jargon) has “decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” Jassy said. “We want to operate like the world’s largest startup,” Jassy wrote, and among other things that entails “deeply connected collaboration” in which employees “need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems.” Previously, as part of its return-to-work policies after the pandemic subsided, starting in May 2023 Amazon required employees to be in the office at least three days a week.
According to Jassy, “we’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another.” Amazon employees will be expected in the office five days a week starting Jan.
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