Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is reportedly shaking up the company’s organisational structure by ‘flattening the hierarchy’ and giving more power to individual workers. In a recent interview, Jassy expressed his concerns about the growing layers of middle management within Amazon.
“You add a lot of people and you end up with a lot of middle managers. And those middle managers, all well-intended, want to put their fingerprint on everything,” Jassey said in an interview with Bloomberg
Jassy believes this has led to excessive meetings and a lack of ownership in decision-making.
“So you end up with these people being in the pre-meeting, for the pre-meeting, for the decision meeting, and not always making recommendations and owning things the way we want that type of ownership,” he added.
To address this, he is streamlining the hierarchy and empowering individual employees to take more responsibility and drive projects forward.
Amazon looking for fewer bosses in future
Jassy stated that this shift will improve mobility and efficiency within the company.
“It’s going to allow us, for the people that are doing the work, they’re gonna have more ownership and they’re going to be able to move more quickly,” he said.
Last September he said that he wants to “increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025.”
This comes amidst a controversial push for a strict five-day return-to-office (RTO) mandate at Amazon. Despite employee dissatisfaction and pushback against the RTO mandate, Amazon remains firm in its decision.
AWS CEO Matt Garman emphasised the importance of in-person collaboration for innovation during an all-hands meeting last November.
