Jeff Bezos Will Step Down As CEO This Year
In Q3 of this year Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO of Amazon, a role he has held since the company’s inception and Andy Jassy the top cloud executive will take over as the new CEO. Bezos will still retain his role as chairman of the board for the company. Starting as an online book retailer, Jeff Bezos grew Amazon to a $1.6 trillion company in a span of little over 20 years.
Andy Jassy currently leads the AWS department, which accounts for the majority of Amazon’s income. Last year alone AWS grew 28% in the fourth quarter alone.
Why Is Jeff Bezos Stepping Down?
In a statement today Bezos said that he is stepping down so that he can focus on his philanthropic endeavors as well as his other projects such as Blue Origin, Amazon Day 1 Fund and more. Honestly it makes sense given that Amazon wasn’t the only endeavor Jeff Bezos had, and the amount of time and energy Amazon requires. Money is obviously not a motivator he is worth almost 1/5th of a trillion, time is more valuable to him.
My Personal Thoughts
In my personal opinion I think Jeff Bezos is tired. Amazon is a multi-billion dollar per year corporation that has had lots of social scrutiny the last few years. He has made history with Amazon he did what he sought out to do and more! I also think a part of it is true philanthropy. I know he is billionaire and a lot of people have a mindset that billionaires should not exist, however I belive in The Gospel Of Wealth.
Jeff Bezos stepping down to fulfill philanthropic endeavors is going to give him the chance to show us if he is a believer in The Gospel Of Wealth or not. Only time will tell but I like to be an optimist more times than not.
Possible Political Ambitions
Another reason I could see him stepping down as CEO of Amazon is that he is eyeing political office. This gives him time to focus on heavy political networking and not be distracted by running a successful company. We are definitely in the big money political era and Bezos could self fund any campaign he wished.
Bezos is a household name and name recognition is the number one metric for political campaigning. The majority of Americans use and rely on his company and would probably have an emotional attachment to his candidacy. Once again these are purely my thoughts and only time will tell what he will actually do once he steps down.