Amazon is demanding its employees return to the office five days a week.
That’s a seismic change from Amazon’s post-pandemic policy, which allowed employees to work from home two days per week; during the pandemic, like virtually all tech companies, the online giant had embraced full-time remote work. Amazon is positioning its latest move as an attempt to boost collaboration and innovation.
“When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo posted online. “I’ve previously explained these benefits (February 2023 post), 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.”
Like Meta and other tech giants, Amazon is also focusing on cutting out layers of bureaucracy and excessive management. We’re asking [teams] to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15 percent by the end of Q1 2025,” Jassy added. “Having fewer managers will remove layers and flatten organizations more than they are today. If we do this work well, it will increase our teammates’ ability to move fast, clarify and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers (and the business), decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organizations’ ability to make customers’ lives better and easier every day.”
By eliminating hybrid and remote work except in special circumstances, Amazon is making a very big bet. In survey after survey, including Dice’s regular Sentiment Reports, tech professionals have indicated a strong preference for hybrid and remote work. Younger tech pros, for example, see hybrid work as a great way to collaborate face-to-face with colleagues and mentors while also maintaining the benefits (such as scheduling flexibility and no commute) of remote work.
Over the past few years, many of these tech pros have indicated they’ll jump jobs if they don’t get the hybrid- and remote-work setup they desire. However, the tech industry has endured several rounds of layoffs since late 2022, and the tech unemployment rate has ticked upward slightly (based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data recently analyzed by CompTIA). Will that compel tech pros—and not just those at Amazon—to stay in place, even if benefits such as remote and hybrid work are taken away? How this plays out could have huge consequences for those companies in need of tech talent, especially in highly specialized arenas such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI).
