Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Aims to Reduce Middle Management to Boost Efficiency
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is making significant changes to the company’s organizational structure. The goal is to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and increase employee ownership. One of the key strategies involves reducing the number of middle management positions throughout the company.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Jassy explained his reasoning for this shift. He expressed concern about the increasing number of middle managers 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,” he said. Jassy believes this leads to unnecessary meetings and a lack of individual responsibility.
To counteract the issues caused by excessive middle management, Jassy aims to “flatten the hierarchy.” He wants to give more power and responsibility to individual contributors. “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.
Jassy hopes this change will increase mobility and improve efficiency within the company. He stated that this shift will empower individual employees to take more responsibility and move projects forward more quickly. The plan includes a goal to “increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025.”
This restructuring comes amidst Amazon’s controversial push for a five-day-a-week return-to-office (RTO) mandate. Despite some employee pushback against this mandate, the company has remained firm in its decision. AWS CEO Matt Garman emphasized the importance of in-person collaboration for fostering innovation at an all-hands meeting last November.
