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Amazon will require employees to work from the office five days a week, starting in January, the tech giant announced Monday.

It’s a shift from the current three-day-a-week return to office mandate, which Amazon has had in place since May 2023. In a note to employees Monday, CEO Andy Jassy wrote that the company is going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID.”

“When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” he continued.

“We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another.”

The expectation now “is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances,” like house emergencies or child care, Jassy continued.

The return to office mandate has been met with opposition from some workers since the company first announced the policy in February 2023, but Amazon says it has continued to see benefits from in-person collaboration over the last 15 months.

In Monday’s announcement, Jassy said Amazon was also going to reduce the number of managers in the company by early next year.

As Amazon has grown over the last several years, it added “a lot” of managers, Jassy continued, creating layers of bureaucracy that made it difficult for employees to move quickly and feel ownership of their product. It also filled up calendars with pre-meetings for pre-meetings and created a long line of people who had to sign off on decisions before they moved forward.

Amazon has now asked each organization to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025.

“With a company of our size and complexity, the work won’t be trivial and it will test our collective ability to invent and simplify when it comes to how we organize and go after the meaningful opportunities we have across all our businesses,” Jassy wrote.

The decision comes after months of rolling layoffs, starting as far back as November 2022 and totaling more than 27,000 cuts companywide.

To further reduce unnecessary steps in workflow, Jassy said he had created a “Bureaucracy Mailbox” for employees to send in examples of processes that could be slimmed down.

As part of the new return-to-office mandate, Amazon also plans to bring back assigned desk arrangements, Jassy told employees.

The new mandate takes effect on January 2. Amazon’s Global Real Estate and Facilities team is still working on a plan to accommodate desks.

In his note to employees Monday, Jassy billed the changes as a way to strengthen Amazon’s culture, something he and other senior leaders have often invoked when discussing their reasons for mandating a return to office.

Over the last several months, Amazon’s executives had questioned if the company had the right structure in place to meet its ambitions around speed, innovation and connection to customers, Jassy continued.

“We think we can be better,” he said.

“Our culture is unique, and has been one of the most critical parts of our success in our first 29 years,” Jassy wrote. “But, keeping your culture strong is not a birthright. You have to work at it all the time.”

©2024 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

An orca has been born to the southern residents: L128, calf of a first-time, 31-year-old mom, L90.

The baby is tiny, with clear fetal folds, making it probably about 3 days old. It was seen for the first time on Sunday, said Michael Weiss, research director for the Center for Whale Research, which confirmed the birth on Monday.

Mom and baby appear to be doing fine, Weiss said. The baby is nursing and moving normally, and mom looks physically robust. The pair was seen traveling up and down the west side of San Juan Island all day Monday.

"Any birth is good news," said Weiss, who helps track the J, K, and L pods that make up the southern residents, a distinct population of fish-eating orcas that frequent the Salish Sea. The orcas, listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, have struggled to rebuild their numbers after years of losses.

Everyone is hoping for a female, but the gender of the baby is not yet known. The July 1 census was 73 whales, which does not count the new baby.

Also seen recently was L25, confirming she is still leading the pods as the oldest southern resident — perhaps the oldest orca ever known. Possibly born in 1928, L25 carries the vast generational knowledge of countless miles, traveling and finding fish for her family. The older matriarchs lead the pods, particularly in times when fish are scarce.

New calves face tough odds, with about half of newborns not surviving their first year. One of the challenges is toxins in their mother's milk, especially for an older, first-time mom like L90. Pollutants are carried to the calf in the fat of the mother's milk.

The southern residents are battling extinction. They are facing a lack of adequate, regularly available food because of the decline of Chinook salmon throughout their range. Orcas preferentially target Chinook, the biggest, fattiest salmon. They also will eat chum and coho.

Orcas form lifelong family bonds, with the young never leaving their mothers. They are highly social, deeply intelligent top predators. They share language, greeting ceremonies and care of their young. Matriarchs such as L25 also share most of what they catch.

J pod is the pod most likely seen year-round in the waters of the San Juan Islands, British Columbia and even the urban waters of Seattle. According to the Center for Whale Research, J pod has 25 members. K pod has the fewest members, with 15 members. L pod is the largest of the three, with 33 members, not counting the newest baby.

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(c)2024 The Seattle Times. Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A family out hiking near the Wynoochee River several miles south of the dam located a man’s corpse on Saturday.

Kenneth Mandel, an Army officer stationed nearby, said they were out for a hike when he spotted what he initially thought was a barrel or other debris in the river.

“We just hiked out there. It’s a cool spot,” Mandel said in a phone interview. “I saw the object to my left and my brain just processed it as a barrel. We were upstream from it, about 40-50 feet.”

The body was mid-river, Mandel said, caught on an obstruction.

“It snagged up on something,” Mandel said. “It didn’t move while we were there.”

After identifying it as a body, Mandel said he attempted to contact emergency services, first by going back up the bluff in the mountainous region, before driving for about 30 minutes to get back into cell phone range in the remote region before guiding deputies back in.

An operation mounted by the Thurston County Special Operations Rescue team and the Montesano Fire Department Monday was successful, said Undersheriff Kevin Schrader in an interview. Strong currents and steep cliffside made it difficult to safely recover the body, but about 20 firefighters succeeded in recovering the corpse by Monday afternoon.

“It’s going to take quite a technical rescue to get down to where the body is, and then some swiftwater expertise,” Schrader said in an interview before it was recovered. “Once we get to the body, we’ll look for signs of trauma.”

He was identified by law enforcement Monday afternoon, but the name will not be released until the Grays Harbor County Coroner’s Office notifies the next of kin. Schrader said the death appears accidental at this time.

“We get missing hikers and mushroom pickers,” Schrader said. “Sometimes it doesn’t turn out like we want it to.”

While that area is not a good one for water activities, anyone looking to hike, kayak, or any other form of recreation should let someone know where they’re going and when they expect to be back, Schrader said — a float plan or hike plan can save critical time if someone is injured or lost.

An Olympia man is facing seven felonies including identity theft and money laundering for allegedly stealing thousands of dollars from a Kelso man in fraudulent bank transactions.

Chea Bradford Knowles, 31, of Olympia is facing charges of two counts of identity theft, two counts of money laundering, two counts of theft, and one count of criminal impersonation.

Court records show he left Cowlitz County Jail on a $2,500 bond on Sept. 5. A public defender has been appointed to represent Knowles and he is scheduled to appear Wednesday in Cowlitz County Superior Court.

According to a police report, security footage captured Knowles as he made two separate withdrawals totaling $14,500 on Aug. 7 from a Twin Star Credit Union in Olympia.

A teller told police Knowles said a friend was helping him pay his bills, so he preferred the large amount of funds in cash.

The victim, who lives in Kelso, told the police he received a phone call earlier that day from a phone number that matched his Twin Star Credit Union, but the caller didn’t specify which branch they were from.

The caller told the victim his account had fraudulent purchases from Best Buy in Cleveland, Ohio, so he needed the victim’s username and helped him change his password.

Soon after, the victim received a notification from his credit union saying a substantial amount of money was deducted from his account.

In addition to the two withdraws, there was also a third attempted transfer for $725, but the account was frozen because it was suspected of fraudulent activity, the police report states.