And it’s all thanks to a random phone call he received in 2013.
“When Amazon called to build Alexa, I had no idea what that was going to be, and if I hadn’t picked up the call, then I may not have gotten that opportunity,” Prasad exclusively told Fortune at the VivaTech in Paris.
“They reached out and they said, ‘There’s a project that (former CEO) Jeff Bezos’ driving,’ and I said, ‘really, Amazon wants to get into AI?’ I was just intrigued, it was a very green field opportunity.”
Of course, Prasad took the job—and today, over 12 years later, he’s still not entirely sure how Amazon’s hiring team got a hold of his number.
But he knows what inspired the call: “I learned later that someone had come across a research paper of mine on far-field speech recognition,” he added. “They were particularly interested in my background leading cutting-edge R&D projects in the DARPA space, which aligned well with Amazon’s ambitions.”
It’s why he there’s some amount of luck to career success. His advice to Gen Z? Control the controlables, sharpen your skills and when opportunity rings, say yes.
“I don’t think I’m smarter than anyone else. I think the smartest person in the room recognizes that he or she has something to learn. So I will always say, be curious all the time, be true to your passion and of course, I picked up the call.”
While Prasad’s career advice is more metaphorical, Gen Z really could be missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime if they don’t learn to pick up their phones.
Opportunity doesn’t always arrive with a calendar invite. Sometimes, it just rings.
