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according to foreign media reports on september 17, amazon ceo andy jassy wrote in a memo on monday that company employees are required to work in the office five days a week.

the decision marks a significant shift from amazon's earlier return-to-work policy, which required company employees to work in the office at least three days a week. now, the company is giving employees until january 2 to begin complying with the new policy.

jassy said company employees will be required to work in the office five days a week unless there are specific circumstances or an exception is made by the leaders of their organization's s-team, referring to the tight-knit group of executives that report to amazon's ceo.

jassy said amazon also plans to simplify its corporate structure by reducing management to reduce layers and make the organization flatter.

he said that by the end of the first quarter of 2025, each s-team organization is expected to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15%. individual contributors are employees who do not typically manage other employees.

amazon said each team will review its structure during this process and may identify positions that are no longer needed, adding that any changes or adjustments will be announced at the team level.

amazon's total workforce in the second quarter was 1.53 million, up just 5% from the same period last year. in contrast, amazon's workforce grew 14% to 1.52 million in the second quarter of 2022.

in a lengthy letter to employees, jassy wrote that amazon was making changes to strengthen its corporate culture and ensure it remained flexible, a point he highlighted by saying the company had created a bureaucratic mailbox, or dedicated email alias, to root out any unnecessary processes or excessive rules within the company.

“we want to operate like the largest startups in the world,” jassy wrote. “that means a passion to continually invent for our customers, a strong sense of urgency (for most big opportunities, it’s a race!), a high level of accountability, fast decision making, hard work and frugality, close collaboration (you need to work closely with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems), and a shared commitment to each other.”

amazon shares were slightly down in afternoon trading.

here is the full memo from amazon ceo andy jassy:

hi everyone, i wanted to share with you a few changes we are making to further strengthen our culture and team.

first, looking at the long term, i'm pleased with the progress we're making together. stores, aws, and advertising continue to grow on a very large base, prime video continues to expand, and new investment areas like genai, kuiper, healthcare, and more are progressing nicely. as we grow and innovate, we also continue to make progress on our cost structure and operating margins, which is not easy. overall, i like the direction we're heading and appreciate the hard work and ingenuity of our global team.

looking back on my time at amazon, i never imagined i would be here for 27 years. my plan (agreed upon on a bar napkin with my wife in 1997) was to stay here for a few years and then move back to new york. i stayed in part because of the unprecedented growth (the year before i joined, we were doing $15 million in annual revenue—this year it should be well over $600 billion), the insatiable thirst for invention, the obsession with making our customers’ lives easier and better every day, and the associated opportunities that come with those priorities. but the biggest reason i’m still here is our culture. the customer-centricity is an inspiring part of it, but it’s also the people we work with, the way we collaborate and invent at our best, our long-term vision, the sense of ownership i’ve always felt at every level i’ve worked at (i started at level 5), the speed at which we make decisions and act, and the lack of bureaucracy and politics.

our culture is unique and has been one of the most critical factors in our success over the 29 years since we were founded. however, maintaining a strong culture is not a birthright. you have to work at it all the time. when you consider the breadth of our businesses, the associated growth rates, the innovation required in each business, and the number of people we have hired over the last 6-8 years to achieve these goals, this is quite extraordinary - and will stretch even the strongest cultures. strengthening our culture remains a top priority for the s team and me. and, i think about it all the time.

we want to operate like the largest startups in the world. this means a passion to continually invent for our customers, a strong sense of urgency (for most big opportunities, it’s a race!), a high level of accountability, fast decision making, hard work and frugality, close collaboration (you work closely with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems), and a shared commitment to each other.

over the past few months, the s team and i have been thinking about two questions: 1/ do we have the right organizational structure to drive the level of ownership and velocity we want? 2/ are we ready to innovate, collaborate, and stay connected enough to each other (and our culture) to best serve our customers and the business? we think we can do better on both counts.

regarding the first theme, we have always sought to hire teammates who are very smart, have strong judgment, are creative, delivery-oriented, and mission-driven. and, we have always wanted people who do the actual detail work to have a high sense of accountability. as our team has grown rapidly and substantially over the past few years, we have naturally added a lot of managers. in the process, we have also added more layers than before. it has created artifacts that we want to change (e.g., pre-meetings for decision-making meetings, longer lines of managers who feel they need to review a topic before moving forward, initiative owners who feel they shouldn't make suggestions because the decision will be made elsewhere, etc.). most of the decisions we make are two-way, so we want more teammates to feel that they can move quickly without unnecessary processes, meetings, mechanisms, and layers that create overhead and waste valuable time.

therefore, we require each s-team organization to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025. fewer managers will reduce layers and make the organization flatter than it is today.if we do this well, it will increase our team members’ ability to move quickly, clarify and inspire their sense of ownership, drive decisions closer to the front lines where they have the greatest impact on our customers (and the business), reduce bureaucracy, and increase our organization’s ability to make our customers’ lives better and easier. we will do this thoughtfully, and our pxt team will work closely with our leaders to evolve our organization to achieve these goals over the coming months.

[btw, i have created a "bureaucracy mailbox" to record any examples of bureaucracy or unnecessary processes you see that we can eradicate... to be clear, companies need processes to operate effectively, and processes do not equal bureaucracy, but unnecessary and excessive processes or rules should be eliminated. i read these emails and take action accordingly.]

to address the second problem—better invent, collaborate, and fully connect with each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best service to our clients and the business—we decided to return to our pre-covid ways of working. looking back over the past five years, we remain convinced that the benefits of working together in an office are enormous. i’ve explained these benefits before (february 2023 post), but in summary, we’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, emulate, practice, and reinforce our culture; it’s easier and more effective to collaborate, brainstorm, and invent; teaching and learning from each other is more seamless; and, teams tend to connect better. if anything, being back in the office at least three days a week for the past 15 months has reinforced our belief in these benefits.

we will also resume assigned desking in locations that previously had assigned desking arrangements, including our u.s. headquarters (puget sound and arlington). we will continue to use flexible desking in locations that had been using it before the pandemic, including much of europe.

we understand that some team members may have arranged their personal lives so that returning to the office five days a week will require some adjustments. to ensure a smooth transition, we will implement this new requirement on january 2, 2025. global real estate and facilities (gref) is developing plans to accommodate the above desk arrangements and will announce specific details once they are finalized.

i want to thank our leadership and support teams in advance for their efforts to improve our organization over the coming months. this work is never easy for a company of our size and complexity, and it will test our ability to innovate and simplify in how we organize and pursue meaningful opportunities across all of our businesses.

i don't take for granted that we have the right culture at amazon. i've always believed that we are here because we want to change our customers' lives, invent for them, and move quickly to solve their problems. i'm optimistic that these changes will better help us achieve those goals while strengthening our culture and the effectiveness of our teams.