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Amazon CEO orders entitled workers back to the office for 5 day work week

September 17, 2024 | | Print Article

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced to the company’s coddled staff on Monday that nearly five years after the pandemic their jobs will revert to being actual jobs that require showing up to work.

Of course, he did it as softly as humanly possible in a long meandering statement about the importance of “strengthening our culture.”

After announcing a reduction in the number of managers that could be interpreted as throwing the staff a bone, Jassy broke the news.

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

“I’ve previously explained these benefits, but in summary, 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. If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits,” Jassy continued.

As for the entitled employees, when it rains it pours because the company is also reclaiming the right to tell staff where to sit.

“We are also going to bring back assigned desk arrangements in locations that were previously organized that way, including the U.S. headquarters locations (Puget Sound and Arlington),” Jassy told employees. “For locations that had agile desk arrangements before the pandemic, including much of Europe, we will continue to operate that way.”

Not that Amazon is going to get crazy and expect these changes to go into effect anytime soon.

“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,” Jassy added.

On the reduction of managers, Jassy referenced a 15% reduction.

“Most decisions we make are two-way doors, and as such, we want more of our teammates feeling like they can move fast without unnecessary processes, meetings, mechanisms, and layers that create overhead and waste valuable time,” he explained. “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.”

The online reaction to the developments was interesting, to say the least, with many claiming it was a de facto layoff that allowed Amazon to avoid paying severance packages.

Here’s a quick sampling of the responses, as seen on X:

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