Amazon CEO Andy Jassy just addressed a major concern his employees have about a new office policy that will go into effect in January next year.
After announcing in a memo in September that Amazon (AMZN) will be making a full return to working in the office five days a week, starting on Jan. 2, speculation that the decision is a quiet layoff in disguise began to erupt on social media.
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Thousands of corporate Amazon employees have already adjusted their lives around working a hybrid schedule that requires them to only work in the office three days a week, which is a policy that was enforced last year.
During an internal meeting on Nov. 5, Jassy allegedly told concerned employees that there was no malice behind the decision, and even acknowledged that the company’s new return-to-office policy will be a major “adjustment, ”according to a new report from Business Insider.
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“This was not a cost play for us,” said Jassy during the meeting. “This is very much about our culture and strengthening our culture.”
Jassy also stated that increased competition and technological advancements surrounding artificial intelligence highlight the importance of employees working in the office five days a week.
“We have a chance to build the most remarkable company in the history of business,” said Jassy. “But I also would say that I’m not sure that there’s been a more important time in the history of this company with the way technology is changing, especially with AI, for us to be well set up to innovate together and to collaborate together and to be connected to one another and to understand the culture, and that’s what we’re optimizing for.”
Andrew Ross Sorkin speaks with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy during the New York Times DealBook Summit in the Appel Room at the Jazz At Lincoln Center on November 30, 2022 in New York City.Â
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Jassy’s comments come after a recent survey from the anonymous job review site Blind revealed that 73% of the 2,585 Amazon employees it polled said that they are considering searching for a new job due to the new policy.
Amazon was also previously accused of quietly pushing its employees to resign through its current return-to-office mandate.
In January, a senior developer at Amazon Web Services revealed in a blog post that the company was allegedly making its employees “miserable” by overworking them and mandating that they work in the office three days a week in an effort to avoid negative press and high severance costs.
Amazon claimed that those accusations were “inaccurate” in an emailed statement to TheStreet in January.
Jassy doubles down on decision to have fewer managers at Amazon
During the internal meeting, Jassy also addressed the reasoning behind the company’s recent decision to reduce the number of managers it has by 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
He claimed that the company hired too many employees during the Covid pandemic, which created a “bureaucracy” at the company.
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“The reality is that the S team (senior leadership team) and I hate bureaucracy,” said Jassy. “One of the reasons I’m still at this company is because it’s not a political or bureaucratic place.”
When Jassy first announced the change in his memo in September, he stated that he hopes that having fewer managers at the company will speed up decision-making processes at the company.
“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,” said Jassy.
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