Jeff Bezos steps down as Amazon CEO, Carmel author suggests company needs “more empathy”
CARMEL, Calif. (KION/ CBS News) On Monday, Jeff Bezos officially handed off his title as CEO of Amazon to Andy Jassy, who's led the company's cloud business, Amazon Web Services since 2003. Despite stepping down, Bezos will still hold an executive role in the company as executive chair. Amazon made the announcement back in February as part of its fourth-quarter earnings report.
"If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal," Bezos said in the news release. "Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition.”
In an interview with Carmel author, Brad Stone who wrote "Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire," Stone shares his insight on the company's choice for this transition.
"Sure, Amazon employs 1.3 million people and, you know," said Stone, who is also a senior executive editor of Global Technology for Bloomberg News. "Folks who pay attention to the news recognize that the depiction of Amazon's relationship with its employees hasn't always been that flattering, particularly the workers in the warehouses."
Amazon has two noteworthy principles in its leadership values: "Strive to be Earth's Best Employer" and "Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility."
According to Stone, the company is basically saying it needs to treat employees with more empathy and consider social responsibility and what it does.
"It is kind of remarkable because, for 27 years, Bezos ran the company with one thing in mind: customers and growth," Stone said. "And I think this is an indication that maybe that transactional relationship with employees is going to have to change."
Bezos founded Amazon in 1995 from his garage in Seattle. Since its creation, Amazon has had a major impact on consumer habits from the way we shop, read, and interact with technology.
"The company has changed how we shop, how we read, how we talk to computers with Alexa and its competitors and imitators, and how companies and universities and governments access computing resources, which is a little arcane, but this is Amazon's cloud division, Amazon Web Services," Stone said. "So Bezos is one of those unique CEOs who's been transformational not just in one category, but in a number of industries."
As far as what Stone thinks of Jassy taking over as CEO, he said he'll probably be a bit of a more empathetic leader.
"He was being groomed 20 years ago," said Stone. " he was the first so-called shadow or technical adviser whose job was basically to be Bezos' chief of staff to follow her around, taking notes in meetings. And then he went ran an Amazon Web Services. And today that's a 50 billion dollar a year annual revenue business, which is startling when you kind of consider it."
One example Stone mentions is the Amazon Web Services conference last year, which was virtual. Lassy started his keynote speech speaking about Black Lives Matter, which Stone said it's something Bezos has never done as CEO of Amazon.
