Why Skills-First Leadership Is Replacing the Ivy League Playbook in the C-Suite
05/23/2025
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The old prestige pyramid—where Ivy League degrees and blue-chip consulting backgrounds paved the way to the CEO seat—is cracking.
November 17, 2022: -On Tuesday, Amazon started laying off employees in its corporate and technological crew as CEO Andy Jassy is footing up efforts to rein costs.
According to a LinkedIn posting from Amazon employees who say they are impacted, the company notified workers in many divisions, which include Alexa and the Luna cloud gaming crew, that they were being let go.
Amazon aims to eliminate 10,000 jobs, mostly in retail, devices and human resources, The New York Times reported on Monday. According to the Times, the number remains fluid because individual teams are implementing the cuts.
By Tuesday, Amazon had not sent out any companywide communication regarding the planned layoffs, which sparks frustration among employees, according to a spokesperson with the matter who asked not to be named as of confidentiality.
In recent weeks, according to people with of the cuts, Amazon also began laying off a few contracted employees who worked in recruiting roles to advertise, internal operations, and Fire TV divisions.
One employee, asking to remain nameless, Amazon informed her that it wouldn’t renew her contract. She was in talks the previous month to pursue a role in Amazon’s consumer division. Still, she was told that her interview stood abruptly cancelled due to ongoing restructuring.
Jassy has aggressively curtailed expenses all over the company recently as it stares down that economy and slowing growth in its retail business. It has halted a few practical projects and opted to close, delay or cancel recent warehouse locations. Previously, the company added that it would pause hiring among its corporate workforce.
Until now, it had tended to avoid mass layoffs which offered employees affected by project closures the opportunity to change to other divisions within the firm.
The job cutting represents a stark reversal for Amazon. Less than a year ago, it could not find enough employees to keep its warehouses staffed in a hot labour market and was amid a pandemic-fueled hiring spree. It almost doubled its workforce by the end of 2019 and 2021, from 798,000 employees worldwide to 1.6 million.
Since then, it has been moving to slow headcount increase as consumers have produced to physical stores, and its retail trade is growing slower than it has in recent years. Last month, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company sees signs that consumers are feeling the sting of inflation.
“We are training for what could be a slower blossoming period,” Olsavsky said on a call with reporters which follows the company’s third-quarter earnings results, which included weaker-than-anticipated guidance for the current period.
The old prestige pyramid—where Ivy League degrees and blue-chip consulting backgrounds paved the way to the CEO seat—is cracking.
Loud leaders once ruled the boardroom. Charisma was currency. Big talk drove big valuations.
But the CEOs who make history in downturns aren’t the ones with the deepest cuts
Companies invest millions in leadership development, yet many of their best executives leave within a few years. Why?
The most successful business leaders don’t just identify gaps in the market; they anticipate future needs before anyone else.
With technological advancements, shifting consumer expectations, and global interconnectedness, the role of business leaders
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