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FACT BRIEF

Was Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos flipping burgers at McDonald's at 23 years old?

By Christiana Dillard
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NO

At 23, Jeff Bezos was a Princeton University graduate who turned down various job offers to work for a start-up telecommunications company.

A social media post meant to inspire featured images of author J.K. Rowling, Bezos, former President Barack Obama and entrepreneur Walt Disney with a brief description of how at the age of 23 each was far from their eventual success.

In the case of billionaire Bezos, however, the post got it wrong by saying he was flipping burgers at 23.

Wired published a profile of Bezos in 1999 that mentioned Bezos' work as a McDonald's cook -- at age 16. There, Bezos studied the company's workflow technology and brainstormed improvements.

Bezos graduated from Princeton in 1986, the year he turned 22. During his senior year at the university, he already had job offers from companies including Intel. He decided to join Fitel, a telecommunications startup.

See a full discussion of this at Lead Stories
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Wired The Inner Jeff Bezos
Princeton Alumni Weekly Alumni News #20: Jeff Bezos ’86
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Lead Stories
Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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About fact briefs published on Gigafact
Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact —a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all fact briefs here.