Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin demanded employees return to their offices five days a week, telling staffers the space exploration firm is “a work-from-work company,” in line with a leaked internal memo.
“As you realize, Blue is a work-from-work company. We’re stronger as a team once we are collaborating with our co-workers in person and shut to our projects and hardware,” the email 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 email, 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 start out reporting to the office daily of the week because “desk occupancy rates need to enhance.”
“As increasingly employees come back to the office, the thrill 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.”
![According to a leaked company memo, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin shocked staffers by telling them they must report to an office five days per week.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/NYPICHPDPICT000011568280.jpg?w=1024)
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 yr, in line with one other leaked memo obtained by the outlet.
“Blue is not implementing a defined 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 a week.
Google also requires employees to point out up at an office at the very least thrice a 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. This is lower than we ask of factory employees.”
“If there are particularly exceptional contributors for whom this is not possible, 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.”
![Blue Origin's headquarters in Kent, Wash.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/NYPICHPDPICT000018160723.jpg?w=1024)
On Wednesday, former Latest 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.