Andy Jassy has enjoyed a long-running and successful career in the technology industry, being a part of the Amazon family for many years – including serving as CEO of AWS for nearly 20 years – before taking over from Jeff Bezos in 2021. In business and life, he believes, there are no shortcuts to success.
“There is no compression algorithm for experience. You can’t learn certain lessons without going through the curve.”
Getting hands-on
Jassy coined this turn of phrase when describing AWS in 2017, speaking with CNBC. The company was one of the fastest-growing hyperscalers at a time when the public cloud was becoming a critical part of the technology ecosystem.
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Speaking to the success of AWS, Jassy said newer competitors on the market may be able to replicate the technology that the organization offers, but that the years of operational experience accrued made it dominant.
In that vein, Jassy suggested that AWS had been through experiences in dealing with customers that all hyperscalers would have to overcome – and there was no way to answer those questions without going through those same tribulations.
Putting in the hard yards
Compression algorithms are incredibly useful, especially in the age of big data and especially data-hungry large language models (LLMs).
Compression algorithms were the revolutionary tech at the heart of the 2013 HBO show Silicon Valley, and since then many companies have sought to ease the burden, including Google with its TurboQuant algorithm.
As Jassy suggested, however, experience in life and business doesn’t work in the same way as data. The quote is perhaps more relevant today than it was then, in light of organizations around the world shedding entry-level jobs.
With businesses cutting the talent pipelines that could have led to years-long careers – much like Jassy’s several decades at AWS – it may worsen not just the skills crisis but also create large experience gaps in the business world in the decades to come.
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