Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced a significant shift in the company’s approach to promotions during a recent internal town hall meeting, emphasizing that building large teams will no longer be the path to advancement at the e-commerce giant.
According to a recording of last week’s all hands meeting obtained by Business Insider, Jassy told employees that Amazon is “actively changing how it thinks about promotions,” stressing that the best leaders are those who “get the most done with the least amount of resources required to do the job.”
Smaller teams at Amazon have had bigger impact, says Amazon CEO
“The way to get ahead at Amazon is not to go accumulate a giant team and fiefdom,” Jassy declared. “There’s no award for having a big team. We want to be scrappy about us to do a lot more things.”
The CEO’s comments align with Amazon’s recently completed initiative to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by 15% across its organizations, part of a broader effort to reduce bureaucracy and management layers.
Jassy reminded employees that some of Amazon Web Services‘ most successful products initially launched with teams of around a dozen people, noting that “every new project shouldn’t take 50 or more people to do it.”
Amazon CEO once again criticizes bureaucracy, “What matters is what we actually get done”
The Amazon chief emphasized meritocracy over bureaucracy, saying, “It’s not how charismatic you are. It’s not whether you’re really good at managing up or managing sideways. What matters is what we actually get done for customers. That is what we reward.”
Jassy also urged employees to “move fast and act like owners,” acknowledging the intense competition Amazon faces from “the most technically able, most hungry” companies, including startups “working seven days a week, 15 hours a day.”
“What would I do if this was my company? And by the way, it is your company. This is all of our company,” Jassy told staff, encouraging them to maintain awareness of both internal goals and external innovations.
