Amazon Workers Battle Bureaucracy, Says CEO Andy Jassy

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is taking aim at internal bureaucracy after receiving nearly 1,000 complaints from employees frustrated by red tape, Beatrice Nolan reported for Fortune Tech.

Jassy said Amazon has already implemented over 375 changes in response to employee feedback. I Photo: Amazon

“Builders hate bureaucracy. It slows them down, frustrates them, and keeps them from doing what they came here to do,” Jassy wrote in his annual letter to shareholders. “As leaders, we don’t always see the red tape buried deep in our organizations—but we can sure as heck eliminate it when we do.”

He said Amazon has already implemented over 375 changes in response to employee feedback. Jassy also encouraged teams to operate with a startup mindset, emphasizing the need to distinguish between necessary processes and unproductive bureaucracy.

“As companies grow and add more managers, unneeded processes often get layered on—adding little value,” he wrote.

Jassy’s call for flatter, faster-moving operations mirrors broader industry trends. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has championed a leaner structure for the past two years, while Google and Shopify have also cut layers of middle management to streamline decision-making and empower individual contributors.