Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announces change in promotion policy during Town Hall

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced a change in the company's promotion policy during a recent town hall meeting. The top executive highlighted that creating large teams will no longer be the path to advancement.

He told employees that the e-commerce platform is "actively changing how it thinks about promotions," mentioning that the best leaders are those who "get the most done with the least amount of resources, according to a recording of all hands meeting accessed by Business Insider.

"Smaller teams at Amazon have had a bigger impact. The way to get ahead at Amazon is not to accumulate a giant team and fiefdom," he said.

"There's no award for having a big team. We want to be scrappy about us to do a lot more things," he added.

Jassy’s remarks reflect Amazon's recent decision to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by 15%.

He further mentioned that some of Amazon Web Services' most successful products initially launched with teams of around a dozen people, stating that "every new project shouldn't take 50 or more people to do it.

Additionally, the CEO highlighted 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."

He 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 the staff.