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Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, Says Young People Are Pressuring Themselves Too Much To Define Their Careers Too Early — And This Can Hinder The Future.
The beginning of adulthood often comes with pressure, doubts, and insecurities about the professional future. Many young people from Generation Z feel they need to quickly decide what their lifelong career will be.
But for Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, this path can — and perhaps should — be more uncertain and experimental than one might think.
Young People Don’t Need To Have Everything Figured Out
In an interview on the podcast How Leaders Lead, Andy Jassy stated that young people from Generation Z should relax about the need to know the direction of their career by the age of 20.
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Based on his own experience and observing his own children, he emphasized that this early pressure is unnecessary.
“I have a 21-year-old son and a 24-year-old daughter, and I see that they and their friends feel they need to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives at this age,” he said. “But I don’t believe that’s true.”
Jassy explained that the process of figuring out what one wants also involves understanding what one does not want to do. After graduating from Harvard, he experimented in various fields.
He tried being a sports broadcaster, worked in product management, started a business, worked in a golf shop, coached school football, and even ventured into investment banking.
This exploratory phase ended when he decided to pursue an MBA, and only then, just before turning 30, did he join Amazon — where he built the career that took him to the top.
Mistakes, Questions, And Curiosity Are Part Of The Journey
In addition to the importance of experimenting, Jassy emphasized that failure is also a teacher. Knowing how to question and being curious are, according to him, decisive traits for success.
In the most recent shareholder report, the CEO wrote about the concept of “WhyQ” — or “Why Quotient.” The practice of constantly asking why things are is, according to him, essential at Amazon.
“We ask why and why not all the time,” he explained. “It helps us understand problems, discover barriers, and open doors that seemed previously closed.”
In an interview with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, Jassy further highlighted that attitude has a huge impact at the start of a career.
“An embarrassing amount of how well you do in your 20s has to do with attitude,” he remarked.
Unlikely Paths Can Also Lead To The Top
The Amazon CEO is not the only one who followed an unconventional path to reach a leadership position. Other big names also started from very different routes than they occupy today.
Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, for example, spent a period in Africa teaching math at a school in Eswatini as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Only after that did he return to the United States, study computer science at Stanford, and co-found one of the most valuable entertainment companies in the world.
Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, started his career as a meteorologist for a local channel in Ithaca, New York. Over time, he became one of the most influential figures in the global media industry.
Even Jassy’s mentor, Jeff Bezos, had his first professional experience flipping burgers at McDonald’s during his teenage years. For him, any job can teach responsibility — as long as it’s taken seriously.
“You can learn responsibility in any job if you take it seriously,” Bezos told author Cody Teets in the book Golden Opportunity: Remarkable Careers That Began at McDonald’s.
Closing With A Message To Young People
The journey of Andy Jassy and other great executives shows that the early years of adulthood don’t have to be a snapshot of the future. Exploring, failing, questioning, adjusting the course — all of this is part of the process.
For those in their 20s who feel they haven’t yet found their place in the professional world, the message from Amazon’s CEO is clear: “You don’t need to know everything right now. Just don’t stop trying.”
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