From $10-an-Hour Lab Dishwasher to CEO of $30 Billion Dexcom

Jake Leach washed beakers at an insulin pump company for $10 an hour as a teenager. Today, at 48, he runs Dexcom, a roughly $30 billion maker of non-invasive glucose-monitoring systems, on a $1.15 million base salary.

His route to the corner office ran through a community college in California, not the Ivy League. In the 1990s, Leach was saving money to pay his own way through school when his high school sweetheart — fresh off a summer internship at MiniMed — handed him her job before returning to classes. Cleaning lab equipment wasn't glamorous, but it planted him in diabetes management, the field he has never left in nearly three decades.

Asked by Fortune how he climbed, Leach kept it blunt: "It's all about hard work," he said. "There's no shortcut."

Where the work ethic came from

Leach grew up in California's San Fernando Valley. His father worked in groundskeeping at a Catholic school; his mother later became a teacher's aide. Money was tight, and he learned early that anything he wanted, he'd have to fund himself.

The defining episode: a $350 bike. In elementary school, Leach wanted it badly — an expensive purchase for his family at the time. He discovered layaway, then spent a summer washing cars at $2 apiece until he'd saved enough.

"With the income of my family, I had no business having that kind of a bike, but I just wanted it so bad," Leach said.

The lesson stuck. "Hard work gets you what you want, and you know you may not always succeed, but you can control it—you can control that outcome," he said.

His maternal grandfather supplied the technical spark. A handyman who handled everything from plumbing to electrical work, he brought Leach along on household projects. By age 10, Leach was wiring light switches and learning how electrical panels worked — then graduating to dismantling old VCRs and building homemade rockets.

Diabetes also became personal. After his grandfather's gallbladder abruptly ruptured, the family learned the emergency was tied to his diabetes; he took insulin for the rest of his life. That connection would later define Leach's career.

He took classes at Glendale Community College, transferred to UCLA, studied electrical and biomedical engineering, and became the first person in his family to earn a four-year degree.

The MiniMed years and the Dexcom bet

The $10-an-hour dishwashing job at MiniMed turned into a full-time position. Leach stayed seven years, through the company's 2001 acquisition by Medtronic.

In 2004, a 30-person startup called Dexcom came calling with a chance to challenge the established diabetes-technology industry. The offer carried two attractions: building a company from the ground up, and a salary jump from $45,000 to $95,000.

It paid off. Dexcom went public in 2005. By 2025, the company reported $4.6 billion in annual revenue, roughly 3.5 million users globally and about 11,000 full-time employees worldwide. The business has also ridden a shifting treatment landscape — the growing popularity of GLP-1 drugs for type 2 diabetes has pulled more attention toward glucose monitoring.

Leach became chief technology officer in 2018, chief operating officer in 2022, and president and CEO this January.

What does his career advice amount to?

Here's the twist: in 22 years at Dexcom, Leach says he never once asked for a promotion. He didn't map out positions. He just did the job in front of him.

"It's always been: keep doing a really good job, keep solving big problems, keep fostering leaders, teaching people, [and] learning from other people," he said.

His second habit: volunteering for the assignments nobody else wanted. That meant regularly stepping past his own responsibilities.

"A lot of times we tend to focus on our own work and what we're trying to get done, and it's really helpful sometimes to take a step back and say what's right for the company, not necessarily what's right for me or what's right for the function I'm leading," Leach said.

For young workers, that's the edge he says Gen Z should seize early in their careers.

"It's like getting outside your swim lane," Leach said. "Everyone kind of has their functional swim lane. You got to get out of that, and I think that's when you become a more valuable leader for an organization."

For a CEO who doubled his pay to $95,000 on a startup gamble in 2004 and now leads a company with 3.5 million users, the so-what is simple: the raises followed the volunteering, not the other way around.