Amazon Tells Employees to Return to Office Five Days a Week

Amazon told its corporate employees on Monday that they had to return to working in the company’s offices five days a week starting in January.

The new rule — up from a three-day-a-week mandate set in 2023 — appears to be the most stringent return-to-office decision among big tech companies and could be a harbinger of more to come.

That Amazon, which has always operated with tighter rules for its corporate work force than its peers, is leading the way back to the office is not a surprise. Amazon has over the years shunned plush corporate campuses and lavish employee perks common among tech companies, while giving managers attrition targets for how many people should leave their teams.

“If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits,” Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief executive, wrote in a memo. Mr. Jassy said in-person collaboration allowed Amazon to move fast and retain its culture, which he said had become particularly hard to maintain as the company grew quickly during the pandemic.

“We want to operate like the world’s largest startup,” he wrote. The change will affect more than 350,000 corporate employees. Amazon also has more than a million employees working in warehouses and operations.

An internal site for Amazon employees, viewed by The New York Times, said that attendance would be monitored by swipes of corporate badges, and that employees must return to the office even if there were not many members of their team in their location. It said the company was working to make conference rooms more available and was adding about 3,500 so-called phone booths in offices to accommodate the additional employees.