Instagram’s CEO wants employees back in the office five days a week, but the last thing he wants is a return to business as usual.
Chief Adam Mosseri said, starting Feb. 2, U.S. employees will need to return to the office full-time, according to a companywide memo first reported by Business Insider and whose authenticity was confirmed by a spokesperson. However, Instagram’s New York City employees won’t be forced back five days a week until the company has “alleviated the space constraints,” and remote employees are exempt from the change.
In justifying the new policy, Mosseri cited the usual corporate talking point of increasing collaboration, and said creativity will be better in-person, too.
Yet he also noted that to create a “winning culture,” the Meta subsidiary needed a shake-up of routine. Unnecessary meetings and endless PowerPoints need to be replaced with clear objectives and more prototypes, he wrote. One-on-one meetings should also be biweekly by default, he added, and employees should feel free to decline meetings that fall within their “focus blocks.”
“Every six months, we’ll cancel all recurring meetings and only re-add the ones that are absolutely necessary,” he wrote.
Instead of slide decks, Mosseri also said employees should be presenting more prototypes—especially when it comes to product overviews. Prototypes, he said, help the company better establish a proof of concept and get a sense of “social dynamics.”
“If a deck is necessary, it should be as tight as possible,” he wrote.
Product review meetings should also have clear objectives and a clear goal, “I want most of your time focused on building great products, not preparing for meetings,” he wrote.
Big tech companies have been slowly doing away with the flexible work-from-home policies that defined the pandemic and the years following, yet few have called for five day returns thus far. Instagram parent Meta has required three days in office for employees as of 2023.
Earlier this year Amazon was one of the first to call for a full-time return to the office in 2026. Other tech giants such as Google and Microsoft have cut back on their flexible policies but have stopped short of enacting a five-day return. Google earlier this year tightened its policy on its “work from anywhere” perk that allows employees to work outside of their assigned office for four weeks per year. Microsoft, for its part, is enacting a three-day in-office policy in phases as of February 2026.
Mosseri said Instagram’s return to office as well as the changes to work processes will help the company streamline its operations as it heads into what he said would be a tough 2026.
