Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s work-from-office mandate aims to help new recruits learn company work culture

Amazon Inc Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy's decision to bring back employees to the office full-time shows the executive's concern that new recruits don't understand the company culture, reported the news agency Bloomberg on Monday, October 7.

Last month, Jassy surprised the employees with a memo instructing them to start coming to the office five days a week from January. Amazon currently lets many employees work from home two days a week, as per the report.

The order stunned many of Amazon's more than 350,000 employees and restarted a heated debate in the tech industry about employee perks and the value of in-person work. They wonder if this was Jassy’s way of further thinning the ranks following a series of layoffs in recent years. The CEO expressed his intention to reduce management layers in efforts to reduce bureaucracy, which, according to him, was slowing down Amazon, as per the agency report.

The senior leadership made the part change, as they believed the next generation of workers was being left behind rather than taught the Amazon way, according to three people aware of the development cited by the agency.

Jassy mentioned the word “culture” a dozen times in his memo. “Keeping your culture strong is not a birthright,” he wrote. “You have to work at it all the time,” according to the report.

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser refused to comment beyond the CEO's memo, as per the report.

Tolerance for frank and heated debate

Amazon, which sees itself as operating like a startup, has long acknowledged that its culture may seem peculiar to outsiders. Employees pitching new ideas are expected to write detailed memos and avoid deck slides. According to the report, there’s a strong preference for analysis of data and trends and plenty of tolerance for frank and heated debate.

Amazon is also famous for its tough environment and aggressive deadlines, as employees are expected to work long, hard and smart, according to founder Jeff Bezos who put it to the company's first recruits.

According to the CEO's colleagues, Jassy who started at Amazon out of business school in 1997, is a product of and advocate for those approaches. After succeeding Bezos three years ago, he’s been a one-man ambassador for the Amazon culture, speaking frequently to employee groups and even cutting videos in which he explains each of Amazon’s leadership principles, said the report.

Amazon doubled its headcount and reduced the requirement for recruits be physically located in a major hub with their team. Company executives have been openly saying that fresh grads, new to the workforce, are missing elements of the company's culture which cannot be effectively conveyed through videoconferences or chat windows.

“Culture is a very important part of how we go and do the work, and how we have maintained the innovation and pace of what we do for the last 25 years,” said Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, at a press event last week. “And that’s really hard to communicate, really hard to teach to new employees and really hard to maintain when you’re over a video call,” according to the agency report. 

Keeping in mind the new schedule would be controversial, senior leadership spent weeks weighing the pros and cons, according to two of the people aware of the development. The company denied the policy was designed to push employees out, according to the report.

Workers expressed dissatisfaction and pressed the company to reconsider, in internal surveys. Some of the employees have already resigned and others are seeking work in other places. The last time the company ordered its employees to come back to the office for work, employees walked out at the company's Seattle headquarters, as per the report. It is unclear whether the employees will make a similar attempt again.