Career choice

Information technology know-how and skills are valuable assets in landing lucrative jobs today. In fact, the richest employers like Tesla’s Elon Musk, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — themselves tech-savvy visionaries — offer multimillion-dollar salaries to the best IT hires.

For example, Zuckerberg reportedly pirated artificial intelligence (AI) engineer Ruoming Pang from Apple by offering him a $200-million compensation package that included a base salary, signing bonus, and stock options.

He also lured AI startup Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang into Meta’s fold by investing $14 billion in his company, according to Financial Express. Wang now heads the Meta Superintelligence Labs, where Pang is also assigned.

Ironically, Bezos suggested a non-tech job for young people starting their professional careers or entrepreneurial ventures.

The electrical engineering and computer science graduate of Princeton University had a career portfolio filled with tech-related work — from programmer and analyst to web designer of his then-startup Amazon in 1994.

However, in an interview with Fortune magazine, Bezos advised young people to gain early work experience in fast-paced, customer-facing environments. “I always advise young people: Go work at McDonald’s,” CNN quoted Bezos as telling Fortune.

He emphasized that such entry-level roles at the burger chain are essential for learning how to show up, deal with people, and hustle, CNN reported.

Bezos added that working at McDonald’s instills discipline, resilience, and the ability to handle pressure.