Gen Z has a long list of requirements for starting their careers: solid pay, work-life balance, and a trajectory that won’t be erased by AI. But, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, the dream of getting a great job right out of college is the first thing that needs to be put aside — because it almost never works that way.
“If you’re not willing to start at the bottom and take the steps, it’s unlikely you’ll ever be successful,” Jassy said earlier this year on Capital Group’s Power of Advice podcast. “You have to be willing to start at the bottom. You have to do what people ask, within reason.”
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Building a reputation as someone who is trustworthy, attentive to detail and tirelessly dedicated to their work is what creates the foundation for everything that comes after, said the 58-year-old executive.
This willingness to take on the hard work, Jassy argued, is what separates people who advance in their careers from those who stagnate.
Over the course of almost 29 years at Amazon — a period in which the company grew from a few hundred employees to more than 1.5 million worldwide — he noticed a characteristic that constantly differentiates outstanding professionals from the rest: obsession with learning instead of simply repeating what has already been done.
“You simply have to be a learning machine,” Jassy said.
Fortune reached out to Amazon for comment.
CEO tried other careers before Amazon
Young Jassy never had a goal of reaching the top of the corporate ladder — he pursued a career in sports broadcasting and worked as a coach before arriving at Amazon
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Jassy’s own trajectory shows that the path to growth rarely follows a straight line.
Despite his long tenure at Amazon, he didn’t start out with a clear destiny in technology or e-commerce.
Growing up in New York as a passionate Giants fan, he dreamed of becoming a professional athlete; He even played football at Harvard before accepting that competing at a high level was not in his path.
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After graduating, he tried working in sports broadcasting, sports production and coaching. Later came experiences as a legal assistant, explorations in the area of investment banking and an attempt to become an entrepreneur.
Only after completing his MBA at Harvard Business School in 1997 did he arrive at Amazon. But this long period of trials and discoveries was far from wasted.
“It’s great to have an idea,” Jassy said. “But it’s really helpful to try a lot of different things to figure out what you don’t like and what you do like. You never know what you’re going to like. Throughout my life, I didn’t foresee the things I would end up falling in love with.”
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Jassy admits it’s easier said than done
Jassy also acknowledged that his exploratory thinking style is easier in theory than in practice for today’s young workers.
The job market is constantly being reshaped by mass layoffs (including at Amazon), AI-driven automation and a scenario in which a university degree no longer guarantees a clear entry into the market.
The pressure to choose the right path early and stay on it has never felt greater. According to Jassy, her own 22-year-old son’s friends already feel enormous pressure to know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives.
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Escaping that mindset, he said, can accelerate your career.
“If you can let go of the idea that every time you come into contact with someone new you are being subjected to a pass or fail test of your competence, you will be better off,” Jassy said. “It puts unnecessary pressure on people and that’s just not how the real world works.”
The same goes for setbacks. Instead of treating failure as a verdict, Jassy said it needs to be accepted as part of the process — something that happens to anyone who is really trying.
“There will be many times when things don’t go as you expected,” he said. “You’re going to face adversity, you’re going to fail and things aren’t going to work out, and you need to understand that that’s okay. It happens to everyone. You wake up the next day and start over.”
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