Jeff Bezos is a wealthy man, like $76 billion rich. He owns Amazon but still, someone earns more than he does in the company he owns.
Andrew Jassy is the top executive in terms of salary, according to the disclosure made by Amazon. Jassy heads the Amazon Web Services, the most profitable division for the year 2016. Jassy's salary was $179,000 . But the sweet icing on the Amazon cake? $35.4 million in stocks.
The Head Of AWS
According to a report, the chief of AWS became the top earner after his division brought in a record $12.2 billion in profits. Jassy has run AWS since its establishment in 2006. He was promoted to CEO role in 2016, and his leadership of the division led it to its most profitable stage thus far. He is one of the six top-paid executives of Amazon.
Amazon Web Services currently offers a cloud computing service, which gives it a commanding market share of 45 percent. Companies buy the service for their storage power and computing needs via the cloud. Among AWS's notable clients are video streaming company Netflix Inc., and Capital One Corp. AWS, under the leadership of Jassy, also introduced services like speech-to-text service (called Polly), image-recognition program (Rekognition), and tools for conversational apps.
"Inside AWS, we're excited to lower the costs and barriers to machine learning and AI so organizations of all sizes can take advantage of these advanced techniques,'' Bezos wrote in a letter to shareholders.
Earning His Stocks
Jassy's earnings came from his stock shares in the company. Amazon pays its employees with biennial grants of restricted stock shares that vest for several years regardless of company performance. The same pay model is used by Facebook and Google; the idea behind it is unlike other payment models that connect payouts to goals like yearly stock return or profit, employees can focus on long-term performances.
For Amazon, linking compensation with performance goals "could cause employees to focus solely on short-term returns at the expense of long-term growth and innovation,'' a scenario that the company avoids.
For its other executives, last year Amazon made Jeffrey Wilke the CEO of the worldwide consumer business. His rewards include a $33 million in compensation package, including restricted shares. Senior VP Jeffrey Blackburn (Business Development) took home $22.2 million, while Senior VP Diego Piacentini (International Consumer Business) got $23.7 million; bulk of earnings came from biennial shares.
Jeff Bezos for his part, could comfortably live with his $81,840 salary and $1.6 million in security. After all, his net worth is $76 billion (as of April 14) and his company, high-earning Amazon, is here to stay.
