Thread by @julian_wood

Can't believe a year ago today I joined AWS! Time flies when you're having fun. 😀 Some random thoughts based on my experience in a little part of the big 'ol place (your experience may vary!). Excuse the huge indulgence.

I feel incredible lucky to still have a (great) job in 2020, If I hadn't joined Amazon, I could very easily have been forced to end my previous contract at the end of March due to dumb new regulation. That would have been BAD timing!

Straight up, and honestly, those who know me know I don't drink too too quickly from the Koolaid...Amazon, and AWS, is an amazing place to work, and I feel privileged to work here.

From very much working in the past in my previous role, I feel I'm working in the present for many of the world's innovators and in the future for others who are still working out how to cloud and then how to serverless.

Amazon runs differently to any other company I've worked with. First, the Leadership Principles are actually living breathing things that are used every single day for decision making. This is important & super helpful, rather than some mission statement on the wall.

Autonomy seems to drive a lot of things. You are mostly in charge of what you work on, what you produce, and when. You get to define a lot of what you do and that's liberating. I'm not finding a lot of grunt work for others.

Your manager, team, and others are there to give feedback, not tell you what to do, or be the permission gate. You come up with an idea, proposal, product, whatever, write it down (I'll come back to that) and then solicit feedback.

The bigger the thing you're proposing, the higher and broader the feedback goes. Now back to the writing, this forms the basis of everything, called the "writing culture", and its awesome.

It takes more time to write down your idea in a "doc", which means you need to think long and hard about it, and flesh out your idea. You need to back it up with data, as much data as you can find, which means you need to do your research.

This also helps non-native English speakers or people not confident in presenting, as you can take your time to get your thoughts down.

People read, and can then comment on your doc, so you get feedback from various people, its very "democratic", as anyone you've solicited feedback can comment.

This is always done respectfully. Can be very honest, people will tell you when they think you're wrong, but remember, its feedback, not permission, or a command.

It's then up to you to take in the feedback, evolve & change what you think needs amending, ignore some stuff, and perhaps further justify other things. It's then up to you to run with it, its feedback, not permission.

All the comments are then in the doc, so there's a document history, others can see everyone else's comments and new versions.

Having a doc also works super well when you come into a project/plan later. A lot of stuff is written down so its easier to get up to speed, and read the original plan/motivations/data.

I've found people super helpful (and SUPER smart), going more out of their way to help than I expected. People WANT to help & share. That also includes telling you when they think you're wrong, or they can't help, or don't have time. Honestly and respectfully.

And the tech is incredible, I now realise the power of AWS is not just in the products they (we) build but more so how they are operated. This is where the excellence really shines, can you image what it takes to globally run S3/Lambda/DynamoDB/etc.

Imagine how sorted the software deployment/management is to keep every EC2 host/RDS DB/etc. running, patched, etc. pretty much without fail. Massive scale!

It's not all roses, I know its hard to coordinate all these people and teams doing their things and sometimes that bites customers the wrong way or causes internal issues.

Coming out with stuff thick and fast is hard to keep up with and stuff isn't always fully baked, it can be a relentless job for customers and also us (deservedly).

Some people just don't gel in various roles/teams, or Amazon is not just for them, I can see why and understand. 2020 has meant doing things differently than I expected, some good, some a shame.

And lastly, thanks to my team @benjamin_l_s, @edjgeek, @jbesw, @rts_rob, @virgilvox who teach me so much & help me grow, you're awesome! I look back a year and see how much I've learned, and look forward to seeing how much there is still to learn....and that's what's brilliant!

Thanks @chrismunns and @ajaynairthinks for spotting some random re:Invent blogger and inviting me to you party! Here's to the next year!