Here are three key things about the new leader of the e-commerce giant.
He first worked in a marketing role and then was part of a “SWAT team” project that explored other categories of potential products for Amazon beyond books. Jassy introduced herself to the music business as part of the project.
Jassy also spent time in the early 2000s in a position known at the time as Bezos’ “shadow,” a role similar to that of a corporate chief of staff, who was designed to train promising young executives, according to Ann Hiatt, former Bezos business partner executive during the early days of Amazon (where she sat on one of Bezos ’now legendary“ desks ”). Now a technology-leading consultant, Hiatt said she worked closely with Jassy during her time as Bezos’ “shadow.”
“If you had asked me yesterday what you would think it would be Jeff’s timeline to leave the CEO position, now you wouldn’t have guessed. But if you had said, ‘Okay, resign, who will choose?’ “the first immediate name out of my mouth would be Andy Jassy,” Hiatt said.
“I saw him flourish in this handsome executive courtesy of Jeff, where he learned to anticipate the questions Jeff would ask him, the things he would hate, the things he would love, his leadership style,” Hiatt said. . “While Andy, of course, has his fantastic executive version, he was trained with those instincts to prioritize things that Jeff would do and make decisions in the same way as Jeff when he wasn’t in the room. Obviously, he has taken it to great heights in his role as AWS CEO. ”
Jassy was there when Amazon decided to launch AWS and operate it as an independent company serving Amazon.com in the same way it would with any other customer.
“From the beginning of AWS, we made a decision that if we wanted to be able to serve many of Amazon’s consumer competitors … we had to turn AWS into its own separable business with a different leadership team and in the which Amazon consumer companies were a major customer, but only one of many important external customers, ”Jassy told CNN about the decision in an interview for a 2019 CNN documentary about 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 a long way from Amazon’s core retail activities. But since then, Jassy has overseen the growth of AWS to become the backbone of much of the Internet, which he managed despite not having much technology experience.
“It brings a certain degree of humility; people didn’t realize who he was until recently,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management. “He’s definitely very humble, he’s not a self-promoter, which is an unusual thing to be at that level in the technology space.”
How much do you earn?
In 2019, his total compensation was $ 348,809. But a year earlier, his payoff was more than $ 19.7 million, thanks to a nearly $ 19.5 million share award he earned that year. By 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 shares (nearly 15% of the total, according to the 2020 representative’s statement).
It is unclear whether Jassy’s compensation will change after he became CEO.
The succession plan
At the time, Jassy said she didn’t expect Bezos to do it leave his position in the near future.
“I feel very lucky that Jeff isn’t going anywhere soon, and none of us want to. He’s such an unusual leader and part of the culture that I think he’ll be here a long time.”
While he was upset about his plans – telling Harlow, “It’s hard to imagine life without Jeff running the business,” analysts say Bezos has been planning the transition for years.
Yale’s Sonnenfeld, who wrote a book about the CEO’s transitions called “The Hero’s Farewell,” recalled a conversation with Bezos at a technical conference about seven years ago, during which the head of Amazon said that had studied the Bill Gates-Steve Ballmer transition process.
“That has been his plan,” Sonnenfeld said of Bezos. “I wanted to convey this as a healthy business and this is the perfect time to do it.”