Amazon CEO Andy Jassy tells Gen Z that if they want to be successful, they have to ‘pay their dues’ first
Generation Z has a long checklist for their first career: Solid pay, work-life balanceand a Trajectory that will not be erased by artificial intelligence. But according to Amazon CEO Andy JassyThe dream of landing a great job right out of college is the first thing that needs to go because it almost never works out that way.
“If you’re not willing to start from the bottom and pay your dues, you’re unlikely to be successful,” Jassy said in a Capital Group interview earlier this year. The Power of Recommendation podcast. “You have to be willing to start from the bottom. You have to do everything people ask you to do within reason.”
The 58-year-old said being known as reliable, detail-oriented and relentlessly hard-working laid the foundation for everything that came next.
Jassy argued that this willingness to grind is what separates people who keep moving forward from those who fall behind. During his tenure of approximately 29 years Amazon– a process in which the company grew from a few hundred employees worldwide to more than 1.5 million – he noticed one characteristic that consistently distinguished standout performers from the rest: obsession with learning defaulting to things that have already been done.
“You just have to be a learning machine,” Jassy said.
Luck He has reached out to Amazon for further comment.
Young Jassy never had his sights set on senior management; He had tried sportscaster and coaching before going to Amazon.
Jassy’s own career is proof that the upward path rarely follows a straight line.
Despite his long tenure at Amazon, he has not established a clear goal in technology or e-commerce. He grew up a devoted Giants fan in New York and dreamed of becoming a professional athlete; He even played football at Harvard before accepting that elite athletics were off the table.
After graduation, he dabbled in sports broadcasting, sports production and coaching. Later came roles as a paralegal, discoveries were made in investment banking, and dabbled in entrepreneurship.
Until you earn your right MBA from Harvard Business School It landed on Amazon in 1997. But the long process of trial and error was far from wasted.
“It’s great to have an idea,” Jassy said. “But it’s very helpful to try lots of different things to figure out what you don’t like and what you like.
“You never know what things you’ll like. I’ve never guessed the things I like in my life.”
Jassy admits following her advice is easier said than done
Jassy also realized that his exploratory way of thinking was easier said than done for today’s young workers. The workforce is constantly being reshaped through mass layoffs (included on amazon), AI-driven automation and a job market A college degree no longer guarantees a clear rise.
The pressure to choose the right lane early and stick with it has never been higher. Jassy’s 22-year-old son’s friends already feel a lot of pressure to know exactly what they want to do with the rest of their lives, she said.
Escaping that mindset can be a career accelerator, he said.
“If you can get rid of the idea that every time you meet someone new, it’s a pass-fail referendum on your competence, you’ll be better off,” Jassy said. “This just puts undue pressure on people, and that’s not how the real world works.”
The same goes for setbacks. Rather than treating failure as a judgment, Jassy said, it should be accepted as simply part of the process, something that happens to everyone who really tries.
“There will be many times when things don’t go the way you hoped,” he said. “You’re going to face challenges and you’re going to fail and things aren’t going to work out and you have to realize that’s okay. It happens to everyone. You wake up the next day and start over.”
This story first appeared on: Fortune.com
