Andy Jassy : Brilliant CEO, Empathetic Human

Written By Promeet Mansata

Most people will not recognize the guy in the red jersey in the above photo. He is the CEO of a company that employs almost two million people (thats the size of New Mexico). The company also has one of the largest market caps in the world. Yet there seems to be so little written about him. 


The company is AMAZON and that’s Andy Jassy, the current CEO. 

I came across the name Andy Jassy a decade ago. At Business School, I read an HBS case study about Amazon Web Services that spoke primarily about how Jassy was the brainchild behind AWS. 


Despite being on my radar, I never imagined back then that Jassy would become the next CEO of Amazon. Yet on February 2nd 2021, overshadowed by the announcement that Jeff Bezos would be walking away from Amazon, it was announced that Andy Jassy would be taking over the fifth-largest company in the world and sure, he is in the news a bit these days but who is the real Andy Jassy? And more importantly, what does that mean for Amazon? 
To me this is insane! Bezos is larger than life and Jassy seems to be content not being a public personality. In this post, I attempt to piece together Jassy’s journey and how his ideas were shaped by his experiences: 

Early Jassy Hat 

The Wikipedia page on Jassy is sparse. Basics about Jassy growing up in Scarsdale, him playing varsity soccer and tennis, his Jewish roots, and his Hungarian ancestry. Then it goes on to describe that before Amazon he was a .. Project Manager for a collectibles company, MBI. Imagine that! No tech background and Jassy is the brains behind the largest company that serves developers! Jassy also had some early experiences as an entrepreneur with MBI colleagues at a company that subsequently folded. 

Jassy graduated from Harvard Business School in 1997. He was 29, with a failed company and an MBA from a top school behind him. There is not much written or said about the offers that he got upon graduation. He joined Amazon when there were 265 employees. He never intended to stay in Seattle and wanted to move back. 27 years later he’s still there. Amazon will most likely be his third and last job.

In an episode of the HBS podcast, The Disruptive Voice, Jassy details his start at Amazon. He says that “I took my last final exam at HBS on the first Friday of May in 1997 and I started at Amazon the next Monday” and “I didn't know what my job was going to be, or what my title was going to be” Jassy goes on to discuss his time in “the Shadow Role”—Jeff Bezos’ chief of staff — and how that led to the genesis of Amazon Web Services.

This is one of the earliest signs of how Jassy thinks. Let's step back to HBS in 1997 and imagine either of us in Jassy’s shoes. I would have chosen a more stable investment banking or consulting job over Amazon, which was unprofitable in 1997. Jassy was a risk-taker and that plays a huge part in his success at Amazon. In 2003, working with Bezos he came up with the idea of AWS, which at the time was a moonshot akin to Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the moon within a decade. Crazy.

How crazy? Let me lay out the scenario: A struggling, scratch that, growing e-commerce company run by a man with a crazy laugh agrees to fund a new internal division; a new division that would be run by a failed startup founder with no technology experience: Jassy. Most of us would shy away from that kind of responsibility and risk, especially without a technology background. Rick Dalzell, the company's chief information officer at the time, told Fortune that Jassy had a competitive streak and a photographic memory that set him apart, despite his lack of engineering chops. 

Jassy and Bezos have a special relationship. Jassy served as the first "shadow" advisor to Bezos. Bezos’ shadow advisor is not a role for which you can submit your resume online. It’s a special role that gives the holder direct, almost unlimited access to Bezos for two years, joins him in all the S-Team (Senior Leadership Team) meetings, and advises him at the end of most workdays. Jassy initially was not excited about the role and carved out what the role would look like for himself. The relationship has been symbiotic with Bezos learning as much from Jassy as Jassy did from Bezos. 


"I was flattered by the offer to work closely with Jeff but wasn't initially excited about it, because I'd seen the way it had gone down before, I asked Jeff what success would look like. He said success would be if I got to know him and he got to know me, and we built trust in each other."

We build trust in each other! And what a deep-seated trust it turned out to be.

Jassy is an Amazon lifer. Despite being rumored to be in consideration for the CEO roles at Microsoft and Uber in the past, Jassy has remained loyal to Amazon.

The Boss Hat 

Jassy is known as a down-to-Earth yet exacting leader, described as authentic, genuine, and empathetic by his employees. He is also known for being quieter and less intense than Bezos! The Wall Street Journal reported he's the type to speak last rather than first and is famous for his one-word emails that say only, "Nice!" Jassy is demanding and organized but not as ruthless as Bezos could be. 

As Jassy has himself said, “You know, I think you have to,...in any complicated problem, you have to look at the details, and you have to dissect it and do some analysis.”

Bezos probably realized this years ago and always allowed Jassy to run his own show: 

"Jeff has allowed Andy to do his job without anybody looking over his shoulder," one former senior-level employee said. "It's 100% Andy's show. Jeff does not tell Andy what to do. ... They're almost side-by-side on the org chart."

The Amazon CEO Hat : Challenges of being the Amazon CEO

A lot of founding CEOs leave their companies and hand in the reins to professional managers. Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in the hands of Sundar Pichai. Bill Gates left Microsoft in the hands of Satya Nadella. Jeff Bezos left Amazon, in Jassy's hands. This 28-year-old company comes with many problems for Jassy to deal with. Jassy however is well suited to deal with these problems. 

The looming antitrust battle is what makes Amazon uniquely powerful and uniquely vulnerable at the same time. This will be a harder problem for Jassy as he's tasked with navigating the impending antitrust battles but with the right team, he will guide Amazon through their these battles, which, to be sure, are coming. 

Warehouse worker unrest is huge for Jassy primarily because of the kind of human he is. Recent focus has indeed shifted with Bezos making it clear that this is a focus for Amazon, even adding to its leadership principles that Amazon should "strive to be the Earth's best employer." The company has reached settlements in labor and employment disputes involving warehouse and corporate employees. Jassy will have to acknowledge unionization and find a way to keep workers happy - something he is well suited to do given his empathetic nature.

Amazon’s S-team’s (Senior Leadership Team) leadership team has had a shakeout after decades of being a stable group. Jeff Wilke (CEO of Amazon's worldwide consumer business) and Steve Kessel (SVP, Worldwide Digital Media) have left while Jeff Blackburn (SVP of a new Global Media & Entertainment) and  Adam Selipsky (CEO, Amazon Web Services, Jassy’s previous role) are back. Outside of the S-team, an unusually large number of high-ranking executives have also left the company. This could be due to changes in Amazon’s culture that departing executives do not want to contend with or sheer human jealousy. This is happening at all levels, more so today with burned out Amazon employees and the great resignation. Jassy will have to right attrition to maintain the Day 1 ethos. Remains to be seen how Jassy performs at this.

Business line expansion with entertainment especially after the completion of MGM’s acquisition last week. Amazon has aspirations to become a larger media powerhouse with some moves as successful and others not so (video games) What will Jassy’s strategy be for media and gaming? If he could crack AWS then this seems right up his alley.

Evolving Amazon.com which today is a great business with cracks slowly but surely showing from fake reviews, fake products, lawsuits, and antitrust issues. Jassy will probably be a bit out of his comfort zone here but given his competitive nature; he will be very well suited to this.

Holding the “king of cloud services” crown is not easy to do and Jassy will need to contend with how he should handle moving “up the stack” from infrastructure to productivity with companies such as Wickr and products like AWS Chime. Jassy will have to help AWS compete in a more competitive market while still trying to expand into new ones to reach that next trillion market cap. If anything, this is right up his alley!

Amazon’s commitment to becoming net-zero carbon by 2040. Bezos got to set the lofty goal; Jassy has to accomplish it. Last Summer before Jassy took over the reins, Amazon instituted two new leadership principles that seek to make the company more accountable to employees and “the world at large.” While Jassy may not have the “chops” on climate change overall, he definitely has the experience with the subject and can lead the charge on this

An Amazon stock split has long been on shareholders’ wish list, promising to make the company’s shares more affordable for individual investors. But it took Amazon more than two decades to get around to it, when its board approved a 20-for-1 stock split recently, subject to shareholder approval. Humanizing the stock price to make it more accessible is right up Jassy’s way of thinking.

Amazon Corporate Employee Retention. Work on this has already started with Amazon doubling their maximum base pay to $350,000 for corporate and tech employees, aiming to help recruit top talent and retain existing employees.

The company needs money to pay for all this and they’ve recently raised the price of an Amazon Prime membership from $119/year to $139/year. Jassy has further announced the closure of 68 retail stores, under the Amazon Books, 4-star and Pop Up chains, as part of a plan to focus on its core grocery and convenience stores and a new line of fashion outlets.

Does this mean that Amazon will have fewer Two Pizza Teams under Jassy? No, but the Pizza Party won’t last as long as Amazon has allowed it to so far. 

This is a huge list of challenges for Amazon but taken together one thing is clear: This is a different Amazon from the one we know under Bezos. The S-Team is working on things that are important but also well aligned to Jassy’s worldview. Not profits over people. Not people over profits. People and Profits together. Most professional managers will run away from the troubles; NOT Jassy! 

In Think Like Amazon, John Rossman says “You have to be willing to challenge the things that you’ve held true, because those may be the things that hold you back from the future, and Amazon has a history of rethinking past positions” 

A “new” Amazon is on the horizon but they reflect Amazon’s long-standing ethos of challenging and questioning long-held positions and never being afraid. Remember Jassy was not afraid of starting AWS! 

The Human Hat 

Jassy is outspoken about social justice issues. On Twitter, he has condemned police killings of Black Americans and is also the executive sponsor of Amazon's Black Employee Network. His Twitter feed has his thoughts on issues related to immigration, LGBTQ discrimination, and affordable housing. Here is Jassy on the issue:

“We worry, by the way, about the civil liberties issues. If you know anything about what a lot of the senior leaders at Amazon do in their free time, they spend a lot of time on civil liberties. It’s something that’s very important to me and I think a lot of my peers. ” 

Furthermore Jassy also cares about technology helping humanity and is very clear on the goals for emerging technologies such as facial recognition. Jassy says: 

 “And so I think a lot of societal good is already being done with facial recognition technology. Already you’ve seen hundreds of missing kids reunited with their parents and hundreds of human trafficking victims saved and all kinds of security and identity and education uses. There’s a lot of good that’s been done with it. ” and “But I also understand that it could be misused, and it’s why we always say if there’s any kind of documented proof of people misusing the technology, we will suspend people’s ability not just to use the technology but to use AWS.” 

Jassy is just a human being like the rest of us. If I met him at a bar, I am sure we’d have a great conversation, and if I didn’t know who he was, he wouldn't tell me! I mean Jassy loves buffalo wings and beef jerky, used a Blackberry long after they went out of style, and loves Dave Matthews Band. Jassy is also a huge sports fan, running a football pool with Amazon employees and attending major sporting events like the Super Bowl. Jassy is still a fan of his hometown teams: In the basement of his Seattle home, Jassy built his own sports bar to watch New York Mets, Giants, and Rangers games. He took his love for sports to the next level when he became a minority owner of the NHL's Seattle Kraken. Ok fair enough. All of us can’t do THAT.

 Look at this Twitter! 



A human being first! The most surprising fact for me is that he has ONLY 130k Twitter followers. Consider for example Tim Cook (13M followers), Satya Nadella (2M followers), Sundar Pichai (4M followers), and of course Elon Musk with almost 80M followers. 

The thing about Jassy that I admire the most is his unwavering stance on his core beliefs and principles. Imagine working for a crazy, brash, known-to-be rude CEO and not letting that impact your morals and worldview. It is very tempting for new leaders to replicate their old leaders but Jassy has had 27 years of training on how NOT to. 

And Jeff told all of us, he said: “I would not go to bed at night fearing your competitors or fearing any external issues. I would go to bed at night fearing whether you’re doing right by your customers.” And that really is a credo that we live here; it’s what we spend most of our time thinking about. ” – Andy Jassy

Amazon will be a very different company in the next decade; way different than the Amazon we know now because Jassy is not just sharp as a knife but also because he has a ton of empathy. A quintessential human. Jassy will run Andy Jassy’s Amazon not Jeff Bezos’ Amazon. Bezos had three decades to get used to the idea and ultimately handed the reins to the best person for the job. To be sure, Jassy sure has his work cut out for him but is the right leader to run the new Amazon.

Thank you for reading. Stay safe, be well! If you enjoyed reading this please consider sharing with a friend or two (or sign up here if you came across this or were forwarded this)

Acknowledgements

I have the absolute pleasure of taking Write Of Passage with a bunch of amazing people. Thank you so much Leo Ariel, Kris, Rik van den Berge, Chris Wong, and Ben Weiss for feedback on early drafts and making this more understandable and relatable. You beautiful people!

References

Promeet Mansata
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