Amazon workers must return to office full time, CEO says

Amazon is requiring its workers to return to the office full time.

In a note published Monday by the e-commerce giant, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who took over from founder Jeff Bezos in 2020, said the move to end the company’s hybrid model was designed toward ‘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.’

He noted that the company’s three-day-a-week policy, instituted in 2023, had only reinforced the view that a full return was necessary.

‘When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,’ Jassy said.

The change will take effect starting in January 2025. The company will still respect extenuating circumstances, like caring for a sick child, and pre-approved work-from-home or hybrid arrangements.

Amazon joins a growing list of major U.S. firms returning to a five-days-a-week office policy, including Boeing, JP Morgan Chase and UPS.

However, according to data from FlexIndex, a firm that tracks company office policies, a majority of U.S. firms still offer hybrid arrangements.

The data does show bigger companies leading the way in pushing for more in-office full-time policies.

But notably, Jassy said he wants Amazon to operate as if it were ‘the world’s largest startup’ — a sentiment Bezos, Amazon’s founder, often stressed.

“That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers,’ Jassy said, ‘strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it’s a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply-connected collaboration (you need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems), and a shared commitment to each other.”

Jassy also announced a move to reduce ‘bureaucracy’ within the firm, hinting at unintended consequences from Amazon’s aggressive hiring following pandemic reopenings — and possibly opening the door for layoffs. Jassy asked employee units to ‘increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers’ by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025.

‘As we have grown our teams as quickly and substantially as we have the last many years, we have understandably added a lot of managers,’ Jassy said. ‘In that process, we have also added more layers than we had before. It’s created artifacts that we’d like to change.’

An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up request for comment.