WTF Summit Recap: Jessica Lessin’s Fireside Chat With Amazon’s Beth Galetti

When Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people, experience and technology, joined the company in 2013, it employed around 100,000 people—a number that has since exploded to 1.5 million.

The responsibility of overseeing one of the world’s largest workforces requires Amazon to balance two crucial outcomes: maintaining its marketplace edge by optimizing productivity, while also meeting the needs of its employees. The company’s much-discussed September announcement, calling for workers to return to the office five days a week in 2025, put a global spotlight on the seeming tension between these two priorities. But according to Galetti, the move will create more opportunities for collaboration, while still giving workers the flexibility they crave.

“We know that we’re better when we’re collaborating,” Galetti said during a fireside chat with Jessica Lessin, founder and CEO of The Information. “We have better ideas, and we have better opportunities for innovation. We’re thinking every day about how we can serve our customers best. We have a lot of really smart people that are doing that, and we want to bring them together.”

During the chat, held during The Information’s Women in Tech, Media and Finance Summit, Galetti discussed Amazon’s reasoning for the return-to-office policy, highlighted the company’s workforce development programs and shared insights on how artificial intelligence is shaping the future of work.

‘Doubling Down’

Lessin wasted no time addressing the news of the day. “First, I have to ask: five days a week?” she said, to laughter from the crowd.

Galetti framed the policy not as a new development, but rather as a return to a work style that served both Amazon and its employees well prior to the pandemic. “People are calling it ‘five days,’ but those of us in tech, when we look back pre-pandemic, we were in the office,” she said. “You might have called it five days a week, but we had a lot of flexibility. We had the opportunity to do the things we needed to do with our families, with our parents, our pets, our lives, our houses... We’re trying to get back to that.”

Galetti also said that younger workers at Amazon are specifically asking for opportunities for in-person mentoring. “When you do bring people together, that’s your best chance to grow,” she said.

The Upskilling Imperative

While such informal mentoring plays an important role in employee development, Galetti noted that Amazon has also made significant investments in more structured upskilling programs. Four years ago, the company committed to its Upskilling Pledge, dedicating $1.2 billion to provide 300,000 employees with access to education and skills training programs through 2025. Also, since 2012, Amazon’s Career Choice program has paid for college tuition and skills development for hourly employees.

Nearly 50,000 employees have transferred to other jobs internally this year alone, Galetti said. She told the story of one woman who immigrated to California from the Philippines, worked for several years in a fulfillment center, and then became an environmental health leader at Amazon after earning a degree in environmental studies.

“If there’s anybody who knows about working full time [in person], it’s our fulfillment center workers,” Galetti said. “And she had the flexibility to do this, and it was life changing. If we encourage people to follow their dreams, I find it’s a win-win.”

The Workforce of the Future

Lessin pointed out that Amazon is at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, noting that the topic can be unsettling for workers, who often worry that AI might make their jobs obsolete. However, Galetti stressed that Amazon is looking for ways to use AI to help employees be more productive—not replace them.

“Where I get really excited is when I look at the opportunity for what our employees can do with generative AI,” she said. “[The technology] can help them come up with ideas that much faster.”

Already, Amazon is using AI to coach employees, drawing on the company’s vast trove of hiring and evaluation data to offer situation-specific suggestions. Galetti said workers can even ask the tool for advice about how to best present a contradictory opinion to their managers.

Galetti said these are merely tools to help companies and workers more effectively pursue their underlying goals. “The durable truths are [that employees] come to Amazon because they want to do meaningful work. They also come to Amazon because they want to work with really smart people,” she said. “They want to have opportunities for growth, and they want to be compensated fairly and well.”

Galetti added: “We, again, are looking for ways to double down on those things that aren’t changing.”