Amazon ends working from home for office staff

In his message on Monday, Mr Jassy said he was worried that Amazon – which has long prided itself on preserving the intensity of a start-up while growing to become a tech giant – was seeing its corporate culture diluted by flexible work and too many bureaucratic layers.

He said he had created a “bureaucracy mailbox” for staff to make complaints about unnecessary rules and the company was asking managers to reorganise so that managers are overseeing more people.

Amazon said those changes could lead to job cuts, which would be communicated at the team level.

In addition to returning to the office five days a week, the company said it would bring back “assigned desk arrangements in locations that were previously organized that way” including its US headquarters.

The company said staff could still work from home in unusual circumstances, such as a sick child or house emergency, as was the case before the pandemic. But Mr Jassy said: “our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances”.