Jeff Bezos Says, 'People Have Very High Standards' For Their Work-Life Balance — If You 'Enjoy Half of It, That's a Home-Run'

As founder of one of the largest employers in the world, Amazon.com Inc. Founder Jeff Bezos has several thoughts on running a business, workers and work-life balance. 

Amazon, which has more than 1.5 million employees worldwide, has also been controversial over the years, with some employees complaining about not receiving bathroom breaks and being forced to use bottles while others report unsustainable wages for grueling work. But that would seem to come with the territory as the world's second-largest employer. 

According to Amazon, their average pay for customer fulfillment and operational roles is $20.50 per hour. Based on a 40-hour work week, those employees make an average of $42,640 per year. In 2023, the average salary in the U.S. was $59,384, meaning employees are paid well below market rate likely adding a degree of truth to some of the claims. 

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But with 1.5 million employees, Bezos has more control over people's lives than nearly any other corporate entity on the planet. Humans spend, on average, 90,000 hours working throughout their lives, or about 10 years of continuous work and 15% of their total life span. 

In an interview conducted in India, Bezos laid out some of his philosophy on work and life. In the interview, the panel asked Bezos, "Is there something you think is a sheer waste of time?" to which Bezos replied, "People have very high standards for how they want their work-life to be. If you can get your work-life to be where you enjoy half of it, that is a home run, that is amazing." 

In this context, Bezos explained that everything in life has "overhead" and things people aren't going to enjoy about their jobs. Whether it's meetings or committees, there's no such thing as a perfect job. 

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"You could be a Supreme Court justice, and there are still going to be pieces of your job you don't like," he said.

The issue is that most don't get anywhere close to enjoying even 50% of their work. If you can get to at least 50% enjoyment of your job, you're doing much better than everyone else, according to Bezos. This is true outside of work as well because there are plenty of aspects of life people don't enjoy, but "that's a part of it." 

As a senior executive, "you should have the least stress," Bezos said. Bezos highlighted that there is a false idea that executives like CEOs are under the most stress because they control the company, and the growth of the company falls on them. But Bezos said executives have one of the easiest jobs because they're one of the few people who can control nearly every aspect of their jobs. 

"You're in charge, why don't you delegate the stress?" Bezos asked. 

These ideas exemplify that there are plenty of things in life out of people's control that they don't like, and while you can minimize them, you can't get rid of them. 

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