Amazon's CEO told employees to get on board with AI. Career coaches and tech leaders agree: It's the only way forward.

Business Insider

6 hours ago

Amazon's CEO told employees to get with the AI program on Tuesday, echoing advice from career experts and other tech leaders about the need to skill up, fast.
"As we go through this transformation together, be curious about AI, educate yourself, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI whenever you can," Andy Jassy wrote. "Participate in your team's brainstorms to figure out how to invent for our customers more quickly and expansively, and how to get more done with scrappier teams."
When reached by Business Insider, an Amazon spokesperson declined to comment further on Jassy's remarks.
Business Insider asked career coaches what they made of Jassy's advice — and what it means for workers navigating the AI revolution.
Amazon CEO's advice is 'realistic'
Career coaches said Jassy's advice isn't just an aspiration — it's realistic.
"It's neither doom nor utopia," said Ryan Leak, an executive coach and the author of "How to Work With Complicated People."
"The sooner people accept that reality, the sooner they can start adding even more value to their teams and organizations," he added.
Leak also likened AI not to a passing wave, but a "tide that's shifting the entire shoreline of work."
He said the most valuable workers going forward will not be the ones with the most experience but those who stay curious and learn quickly.
"You can either be someone helping your company prepare for the future or someone hoping you still fit into it," he said. "Both paths take effort. Only one gives you agency."
Marlo Lyons, a certified executive coach, agrees with Jassy "100%" and recommends that employees talk with their managers about how AI could be applied to their roles.
"You have to learn AI at this point, because your job is changing," Lyons told BI.
But there are still limits to what AI can do. Kathryn Landis, an executive coach and professor at NYU, said that "judgment, nuance, and institutional context" remain areas where AI often makes mistakes.
"Make sure that you're studying something that you really gain those critical thinking skills, because that's what's not being replaced," she said.
What tech leaders are saying
Jassy isn't the only tech boss calling on employees to step up their AI game.
LinkedIn's cofounder, Reid Hoffman, said AI should be baked into every team's day-to-day work, whether at a five-person startup or a giant company.
To ensure AI integration happens, Hoffman recommended holding weekly or monthly meetings for everyone to share something new they've learned about using AI, he said on an episode of the podcast "Possible" in April.
Shopify's CEO, Tobi Lütke, said in an internal memo in the same month that AI usage is "now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify."
"Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI," Lütke wrote in the memo, which he posted on X. "What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects."
OpenAI's chief product officer, Kevin Weil, said on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" published in April that the company's chief people officer "vibe coded" an internal tool.
The executive used AI to rebuild a system she missed from a previous job. "If our chief people officer is doing it, we have no excuse," Weil said.
Hilary Gridley, the head of core product at the wearables company Whoop, created "30 Days of GPT" to help her team form the habit of using AI, she said on a podcast published on Sunday.
"I don't know anyone who has gone through this and not come out the other side feeling a hundred times more confident in their skills," she said on a podcast published on Sunday.