Jeff Bezos stepping down as the boss of Amazon is big news, and the business world cannot stop talking about it! However, another person is making the news too, and it is Andy Jassy, the new CEO of Amazon! The fifty-three-year-old is a close confidante of the former CEO and has been instrumental in ensuring its success in recent years. While everyone is surprised about the shift of power dynamics, we are more curious to know about the newbie. It turns out he is not a newbie after all. Here are five facts about the man in the spotlight.
He Has Been There in Amazon for Many Years
Hailing from Scarsdale, Jassy joined Amazon in 1997. This was just three years after the firm came into existence, and he has been with the organization since then! A Harvard Business school alumni, he jumped into his new job, not knowing what the future held for him.
Jassy started working as Bezos’s technical assistant and set up the firm’s cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which scripted major success stories. He was declared heir apparent to Bezos by the Washington Post way back in September 2020, when Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s consumer business head, retired.
He Is a Social Activist
Jassy is pretty voluble on topics close to his heart, social issues. From voicing his concern about a black woman, Breonna Taylor shot at her home, to supporting LGBTQ rights and the immigration issue, he has been the face of numerous social issues. He has also courted a fair bit of controversy in the bargain even went ahead and stood by Amazon’s facial recognition software, with him defending it vehemently.
He Turned Things Around for Amazon’s Cloud Team
Everyone knows about Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing platform of Amazon, and Jassy stood behind its enormous success. It now has a 30% share of the cloud market and provides data storage for McDonald’s and Netflix. It isn’t without competition, though, from giants such as Google’s owner Alphabet and Microsoft. Jassy’s business strategy has been greatly instrumental in helping Amazon reach the zenith of success.
He isn’t an all work and no play Jack!
He walked down the aisle with Elana Rochelle Caplan in 1997 and has two children from his happy marriage. While most people know him as a technology enthusiast, a lesser-known fact about Jassy is that, he is a music enthusiast. He was managing a band in Boston before joining Amazon and has a knack for discovering new artists.
When he isn’t attending concerts or running a business, he enjoys listening to bands like Rolling Stones, Traffic, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis Costello. In college, he followed Guns N’ Roses and pursued his music passion by following Black Crowes, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Shawn Mullins, and more. Besides that, he also holds a stake in a local hockey team Seattle Kraken.
His Net Worth Stands at $394 Million
Jassy’s work and perseverance at Amazon have paid off, and he sits on a net worth of $394m as of November 2020. We wonder how much his salary would as the new CEO of Amazon. It would be far more than what he earns now. We are curious about the number as Bezos had a salary of just $81,840 when he served as the CEO. And the rest of his wealth came from the Amazon shares he owned. So, will Jassy follow Bezos’s footsteps in terms of salary? Only time will tell!
What works in his favor is that he is known as Mr. Nice Guy among his colleagues as he is fun and easygoing. But he is tough as nails when the situation demands it. And we are sure with his passion, determination, and efforts, he would be a perfect replacement for Bezos. Well, he has tough shoes to fill up as Jeff Bezos was at the helm of the affair for 27 years with hardly putting a foot down.
Amazon has strode forward into every arena of commerce often leaving its competitors far behind. It will be difficult for Jassy to take Amazon to the next level and it will be a more difficult phase of the trajectory. Only time will tell whether he will be up for the task. Here’s wishing the man of the hour the best and hoping he finds as much success as his predecessor.
