Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin demanded employees return to their offices five days per week, telling staffers the space exploration firm is “a work-from-work company,” in response to a leaked internal memo.
“As you realize, Blue is a work-from-work company. We’re stronger as a team after we are collaborating with our co-workers in person and shut to our projects and hardware,” the e-mail memo obtained by Insider.
“Designing and constructing rockets, engines and space systems requires hands-on work from our engineers, functional support teams and more.”
It’s unclear who penned the e-mail, or when it was sent to Blue Origin’s workforce of three,500.
The high-flying company has offices coast to coast. Nonetheless, many have been barely occupied.
Employees in Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Reston, Va., were told to begin reporting to the office daily of the week because “desk occupancy rates need to enhance.”
“As an increasing number of employees come back to the office, the joy and energy for our mission and achieving our goals continues to grow.”
The memo noted that Blue Origin offices within the Seattle area, Florida, Texas and Huntsville, Ala., are “at capability” or “managing current space or parking constraints.”
Representatives for Blue Origin didn’t immediately reply to The Post’s request for comment.
The five-day return-to-office mandate got here as a surprise to employees, a current worker told Insider, especially after Blue Origin’s senior VP of operations Mike Eilola told managers that the corporate had no plans to roll out a one-size-fits all RTO policy last 12 months, in response to one other leaked memo obtained by the outlet.
“Blue just isn’t implementing an outlined hybrid work schedule for all employees because our business requirements, individual situations and work roles vary dramatically,” Eilola reportedly wrote.
Blue Origin’s crackdown on working from the office is more strict than at Bezos-founded Amazon, which requires staffers to work from an office three days per week.
Google also requires employees to point out up at an office no less than thrice per week.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based tech giant strictly enforced the mandate by tracking worker badge swipes — a move that angered employees, who feel that “they’re being treated like schoolchildren.”
Elon Musk has been one other champion for reporting to an office, ordering Tesla staffers back into the office full-time back in June 2022.
Musk tersely wrote to corporate staffers of the electrical vehicle company on the time: “Anyone who wishes to do distant work should be within the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. That is lower than we ask of factory employees.”
“If there are particularly exceptional contributors for whom that is unimaginable, I’ll review and approve those exceptions directly,” Musk added. Furthermore, the ‘office’ should be a essential Tesla office, not a distant branch office unrelated to the job duties.”
On Wednesday, former Recent York City Mayor MIchael Bloomberg weighed in on return-to-work mandates, blasting the Biden administration for “dragging their heels” on getting federal agencies’ staff back to the office.
“The pandemic is over,” Bloomberg wrote in a scathing op-ed for the Washington Post.
“Excuses for allowing offices to take a seat empty should end, too,” added the billionaire co-founder and CEO of the financial media company that bears his name.
