Ready for some classic old man advice? Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told Gen Z that “if you aren’t willing to start at the bottom and pay your dues, it’s unlikely that you’re going to ever be successful,” saying on Capital Group’s Power of Advice podcast that expecting a great job straight out of college is the wrong mindset and that building a reputation for reliability and hard work from the ground up is what separates people who move up from those who stall out. Jassy, who spent years bouncing between sportscasting, coaching, paralegal work, and investment banking before landing at Amazon after his Harvard MBA, said his own winding path taught him that trying many different things to discover what you love is a career advantage, not a liability. He also acknowledged that his advice is easier said than done in today’s job market, where AI-driven automation and mass layoffs have raised the stakes for young workers who feel enormous pressure to pick the right lane early and stick with it.
