Here are three important things you need to know about the new leader of the e-commerce giant.
He first worked in a marketing role and then placed in a “SWAT team” project exploring other potential product categories for Amazon outside of books. Jassy entered the music industry as part of the project.
In the early 2000s, Jassy also spent time in a position then known as Bezos’ ‘shadow’, a role similar to a corporate chief of staff, which, according to Ann Hiatt, a former CEO, was designed to promise young to train officers. business partner for Bezos during Amazon’s early days (where she sat at one of Bezos ‘now legendary “doorboards”). Hiatt, now a technical leadership consultant, said she worked closely with Jassy during his time as Bezos’ ‘shadow’.
“If you had asked me yesterday what I think would be the timeline of Jeff as CEO, I would not have guessed now. But if you had said, ‘Okay, he’s retiring, who will he choose?’ the first, immediate name out of my mouth would be Andy Jassy, ’Hiatt said.
“I saw him grow up in this beautiful complimentary CEO for Jeff, where he learned to answer the questions Jeff would ask, the things he would hate, the things he would like, his leadership style, “Hiatt said. “While Andy obviously has his own fantastic version of executive power, he is trained with the instincts, to do the things that Jeff would prefer and to take Jeff in the same way when he’s not in the room. It’s clear that he has taken it to great heights in his role as CEO of AWS. ‘
Jassy was there when Amazon decided to launch and operate AWS as a separate company serving Amazon.com in the same way as any other customer.
“From the beginning of AWS, we decided that if we wanted to be able to serve many of Amazon’s competitors from Amazon … that we should create AWS’s separate business with a different leadership team and where Amazon’s consumer businesses should be. “was a major customer, but just one of many important external customers,” Jassy told CNN in an interview for a 2019 CNN documentary on Amazon’s history. “We treat Amazon’s consumer business as an external customer. ”
At the time, many were skeptical about the decision, as the computer business was far from the core business of Amazon’s retail business. But Jassy has since overseen the growth of AWS to the backbone of much of the Internet – something he has managed to do, despite not having many technological backgrounds.
“He brings quite a bit of humility; people until recently did not quite realize who he was,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale School of Management. “He is certainly very humble, he is not a self-promoter, which is unusual to be at this level in the technological space.”
How much does he earn?
In 2019, his total remuneration was $ 348,809. But a year earlier, his salary was more than $ 19.7 million, thanks to a share allocation of nearly $ 19.5 million awarded that year. In contrast, Jeff Bezos’ base salary was $ 81,840, and total compensation in 2019 was nearly $ 1.7 million, although Bezos owns a larger share of the company’s share (almost 15% of the total, as of the 2020 Proxy statement) .
It is unclear whether Jassy’s remuneration will change after he becomes CEO.
The succession plan
At the time, Jassy said he would not expect Bezos to leaving his post in the near future.
“I feel very happy that Jeff is not going anywhere soon, and none of us want him to. He’s just such an unusual leader and is such a part of the culture that I think he’s going to be here for a very long time.”
While telling his plans, Harlow said: “It’s hard to imagine life without Jeff running the company,” analysts say Bezos has been planning the transition for years.
Yale’s Sonnenfeld, who wrote a book about the CEO’s transition called ‘The Hero’s Farewell’, recalls a conversation with Bezos at a technology conference about seven years ago, during which the Amazon chief said that he studied the transition process of Bill Gates-Steve Ballmer.
“That was his plan,” Sonnenfeld said of Bezos. “He wanted to pass this thing on as a healthy business, and this is the perfect time to do it.”