Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s annual salary cut by 99 per cent, here is how much he earns now

By Divyanshi SharmaAmazon CEO Andy Jassy might no longer be considered one of the most overpaid CEOs in 2023, according to a manager from shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. Jassy made it to As You Sow’s ‘100 Most Overpaid CEOs’ list in 2022, and bagged 9th spot because of his lucrative salary of USD 212 million in 2021. This award was 6,474 times higher than the median pay of Amazon employees, which was USD 32,855. However, the Amazon CEO got a massive pay cut of 99 per cent in 2022 which is why his name from the list might be dropped.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s salary decreased by 99 per cent

Amazon Jassy’s total salary decreased from USD 212 million in 2021 to USD 1.3 million (around Rs 10 crore) in 2022, Amazon’s recently filed proxy statement revealed. However, Jassy’s base pay increased by 80 percent from USD 175,000 to USD 317,500.

The decrease in compensation can be attributed to not receiving a stock grant last year. Furthermore, part of his shares awarded the previous year will only vest this year, while the rest will vest between 2026 and the end of 2031.

Andy Jassy had replaced Jef Bezoz as Amazon’s CEO in 2021.

Talking about salaries of other tech giants’ CEOs, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella got USD 55 million last year while Apple CEO Tim Cook was paid around USD 99.4 million. In 2020, Google disclosed its CEO, Sundar Pichai’s annual salary to be USD 2 million.

Andy Jassy’s letter to shareholders

Andy Jassy recently wrote a letter to Amazon shareholders outlining his vision for the company. In the letter, Jassy also talked about the various cost-cutting measures taken by the company and the ‘difficult decision’ of eliminating 27,000 positions. He said that the decision of layoffs was taken due to the need to ‘reprioritise where the company spent its resources’.

“Over the last several months, we took a deep look across the company, business by business, invention by invention, and asked ourselves whether we had conviction about each initiative’s long-term potential to drive enough revenue, operating income, free cash flow, and return on invested capital. In some cases, it led to us shuttering certain businesses. For instance, we stopped pursuing physical store concepts like our Bookstores and 4 Star stores, closed our Amazon Fabric and Amazon Care efforts, and moved on from some newer devices where we didn’t see a path to meaningful returns.

“In other cases, we looked at some programs that weren’t producing the returns we’d hoped (e.g. free shipping for all online grocery orders over USD 35) and amended them. We also reprioritized where to spend our resources, which ultimately led to the hard decision to eliminate 27,000 corporate roles. There are a number of other changes that we’ve made over the last several months to streamline our overall costs, and like most leadership teams, we’ll continue to evaluate what we’re seeing in our business and proceed adaptively,” the letter read.

He also mentioned the importance of working from offices and announced how Amazon has asked its employees to start coming to the office at least three times a week from May.