5 reflections on my first year at AWS

A year ago today, I embarked on an exciting journey with AWS, and it's been quite a ride! I'm proud to be working with the AWS Streaming and Messaging teams that innovate each day on Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka, Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for Apache Flink, Amazon MQ, Amazon SNS, and Amazon SQS. I've been asked by many to share my experiences, so here are five key observations from my first year.

1. Amazon often describes its culture as 'peculiar,' but in my view, it's not that unusual. Many companies attempt to imitate Amazon's practices. There are those who have shifted from slide deck presentations to 6-page narratives, embraced blameless incident reviews, or established two-pizza teams. None of these concepts are new; Amazon pioneered them years ago and numerous books have been written attempting to decode them. I read?one such book before joining Amazon, and while I didn't find any of these ideas unique,?what is peculiar is seeing all these?Day 1?principles implemented as intended and in unison. Adapting one or two elements to suit your corporate style could work, although I haven't seen this done successfully elsewhere. Amazon's "Day 1" mentality is a culture and an operating model that puts customers at the center of everything Amazon does. Putting "Day 1" into practice relies on maintaining a long-term focus, obsessing over customers, and bold innovation. What I've observed is that companies often misunderstand key aspects of the culture, discard them, and in doing so, reduce the value.
2. Let's discuss the 6-page narratives. A narrative is a document that everyone at Amazon uses to set out team, organization, or individual planning, typically for the year ahead. It is limited to a maximum of six pages (but can have a reasonable number of appendices), and you can’t cheat that page count with non-existent margins or tiny fonts. A lot of work goes into writing a compelling 6-page narrative and the document is a reflection of a great deal of thought and analysis to fully understand a problem and define the solution. While the document itself is what you take into the meeting for a conversation,?the final document isn't the actual goal; the process is. The process requires teamwork, socialization of ideas, feedback, adjustments, and sometimes even tradeoffs. While, feedback in the document review meeting itself is a gift, its the process of creating the document that really is the goal. It's challenging to craft a narrative that takes a reader from zero understanding to a place where they can contribute to the discussion. The sentences are dense and packed with information. I joined AWS believing I was a competent reader with good comprehension skills, but soon found that an average 6-page narrative contains more detail than an entire crime novel. I chose to spend my free time on the initial weekends re-reading documents to ensure I grasped the details. My advice to any new joiner would be to read extensively until you discern the pattern for writing at Amazon. Once you find the pattern, you'll read faster and comprehend more. Despite this advice, nothing can prepare you for the sheer exhilaration that comes from an S-team (senior leadership team) member kicking off a conversation with “This is a good doc.”?
3. Before joining AWS, I had certain preconceptions about what life would be like behind the scenes. These beliefs were so strong that I spent most of the interview process seeking to disprove them. Frankly, I was concerned about the lack of senior women leaders, the absence of work-life balance, and whether my attention to detail would be appreciated. While there is still much work to be done, I was pleasantly surprised to find other women in leadership roles and?our commitment to continuing to grow our under-represented community has never been stronger.?Amazon Women in Engineering (AWE) is one of 13 official employee-led affinity groups. With 40 chapters worldwide, the mission is to make Amazon the best place to work for technical women and non-binary people. Two of Amazon’s newest Leadership Principles are “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer” and “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility.” Because of the scale of Amazon, we must begin each day striving to be better. We must create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and just more fun work environment. With customers around the world, its this diverse representation that is the voice of our customers and employees, and that inspires the next generation of gender diversity in tech.?
4. Work-life balance is achievable at Amazon, but my understanding of balance has evolved. Leadership means ownership, and ownership means solving customer problems at any hour. This shift in mindset clarified the meaning of balance for me. Balance is derived from ownership, and as an owner, you control your working hours, mental health, career progression, and job satisfaction. However, setting boundaries is essential, or you could work endlessly. There's a lifetime of fascinating work at AWS and the job will never be complete - that's the life of an owner!?
5. Lastly, my love for understanding things deeply has been rewarded at AWS. My first year has been full of learning. No longer am I "the leader who thinks they need to know the details." I'm in the trenches with my teams, helping keep the flywheel turning through my constant understanding of our business. At Amazon, we say "Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them." I see this Leadership Principle come to life in every meeting. I'm proud to say that at AWS,?understanding the details is expected.

While these are just five of the many learnings from my initial year, I am standing on the shoulders of giants as I go through this journey. Many thanks to Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec who’s “always on” coaching and feedback has guided the way. Kevin Miller allowed me a safe space to ask some of the dumbest questions and without judgement (at least not to my face) - thanks, Kevin. Deepak Singh you were the reason I even entertained a second conversation with recruiting. You put me on a journey to disconfirm my beliefs.??

I can't believe it's been a year since I joined. I'm blessed to be here and it is a privilege to work with amazing people and my talented teams every day. Time flies at AWS.....where its always Day 1!

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