Jeff Bezos has a firm stance on work-life balance

Amazon doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to work-life balance.

Whether it’s blue-collar workers in the company’s warehouses and delivery vans, or white-collar workers crammed into its head offices, Amazon typically falls short of its competitors in terms of employee satisfaction.

According to Glassdoor, the average IT company rating is between 3.7 and 3.9 stars. Amazon Sports has a rating of 3.6.

“I don’t like the word balance because it implies a trade-off,” Bezos said midway through the hour-long interview.

“People have often asked me, ‘How do you approach work-life balance?’ And I will say that I like work-life harmony, because if you are happy at home, you will do better at work.”

His comments in Italy were a bit softer than those in Italy 2019When he described work-life balance as a “weary phrase” because of the trade-off he draws from it.

“These things go together. It’s not strictly a trade-off,” Bezos said last week.

Bezos remains Amazon’s chairman, despite stepping down as CEO in 2021, and his views on work life are reflected in Amazon’s return-to-office policy.

Amazon has one of the strictest RTO policies in the tech industry, requiring its white-collar employees to report to the office five days a week, while also forcing remote workers who moved during the Covid lockdown to move to “central” offices.

• March 12, 2020: Amazon issued a global recommendation that all company employees work from home.

• October 20, 2020: Amazon extends the policy through June 30, 2021.

• October 11, 2021: Amazon issued a new policy that gives team managers the authority to decide how many days employees must be in the office.

• February 2023: Amazon begins an RTO policy, mandating a minimum of three working days per week.

• January 2, 2025: Amazon returns to a full-time in-office policy.

CEO Andy Jassy announced the new policy in January. It replaces the hybrid model that has been in place since 2023 and allowed workers to work from home up to two days a week.

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While early reports indicated that the company welcomed any worker attrition that occurred due to the policy, a recently leaked document highlights the setback the company received due to its RTO mandate.

Head office strategy is one of the “most controversial topics” for Amazon recruiters, according to a BI report. The issue limits their ability to hire “high-demand talent, such as those with GenAI skills.”

One recruiter told the news organization flatly that the policy hinders recruiting efforts.

It even affects talent retention.

Bloomberg recently reported that Oracle was able to hire more than 600 employees at Amazon over the past two years due to its RTO policy.

when Jeff Bezos First conceived by Amazon, and originally called Cadabra, it was an online bookstore. It is now an online bookstore and much more.

From groceries to package delivery to self-driving vehicles to clothing to cloud computing and even books, Amazon is the online retailer for just about everything.

While building his company into the juggernaut it is today, Bezos says he’s been fortunate to have some of the brightest minds on the payroll. Their ideas helped save the company from disaster.

“As a founder, I had the great luxury of always being able to hire my own teachers,” Bezos said recently. “I would hire these experienced executives… and I would listen to them and they would teach me.”

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This story was originally reported by The Street On October 12, 2025, he first appeared in Jobs, employment and business news to divide. Add TheStreet as Favorite source by clicking here.