Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Announces 'Pretty Shocking' Workplace Shift: 'Work-From-Work Company'

Blue Origin has implemented a shift in its workplace policy following a rocket engine explosion last month.

What Happened: The Jeff Bezos-founded company which rivals Elon Musk's SpaceX is now demanding that many of its employees be physically in the office, five days per week.

Executives cited the need to improve “desk occupancy rates” in remote offices across Denver, El Segundo, Woodland Hills, Phoenix, and Reston, Virginia, according to an internal email seen by Business Insider.

“As you know, Blue is a work-from-work company,” the email read. “We are stronger as a team when we are collaborating with our co-workers in person and close to our projects and hardware.”

An anonymous Blue Origin employee posted on Reddit about the surprise policy shift, citing the stark change from the company’s previous promise of flexibility.

The employee said that office administrators will be enforcing the policy by taking the attendance of employees in an Excel spreadsheet, and that it would affect performance evaluations.

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"This is a pretty shocking turn of events from literally one week ago," the post said, "and a lot of people are now screwed as they took advantage of the open hybrid policy to take on more responsibility at home, move to a slightly cheaper but farther place, or simply spend the time they were spending in traffic working."

The sudden shift in Blue’s remote work policy comes just weeks after one of its BE-4 rocket engines experienced a major malfunction. The engine exploded about 10 seconds into a test run at Blue Origin’s West Texas facility on June 30.

Despite the failure, Blue and United Launch Alliance (ULA) — the companies that will use the BE-4 to power their New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur rockets respectively — affirmed their confidence in the engine’s design.

Blue Origin also announced on July 25 that NASA awarded the company with a $35 million "Tipping Point" partnership to continue advancing its Blue Alchemist solution, which was unveiled earlier this year.

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