Instagram’s CEO has express his desire to put 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 2 February 2026, 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.
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