Reflecting on 3 years with AWS

As I reflect on my third anniversary with Amazon Web Services (AWS) , it is hard to put into words the ways in which this company has changed my life. No, this company isn’t my identity, it isn’t my family and it isn’t going to be the place I work forever. But it has changed the trajectory of my life in ways I couldn’t imagine as a nomadic, energetic, hopeful and wistful 25-year-old. I never knew what I wanted to do with my life, and the truth is, I still don’t. But I can still be grateful for the experiences I have had and where I am now, because of AWS. When I graduated from the 美国华盛顿大学 with a degree in International Studies, I took a temporary job at a law firm in Norway, doing translation work. Growing up in Seattle with a Norwegian mom and an American dad, I had two identities, was bilingual, and had an intense love for both countries. I had a desire to live an international life somehow, but I just didn’t know how to get there.

After my contract with the law firm ended, I went home to Seattle for the holidays, and my brother’s friend, Jacob Tavares , told me about this recruiting company he worked for that had an inspiring culture and was a great place for new graduates to start their career. I had no knowledge of or interest in recruiting, but he invited me to a social happy hour, where I met Trey Gundrum , Brindy Patterson Pickett and Jessica Strzepek and my heart told me that these were people I wanted to know and learn from. I got a formal interview and was offered the job. I said “I will think about it and get back to you”, trying to be cool and walked towards the door, then quickly turned around and said, “Actually, you know what, I accept.” I spent 10 years at Insight Global and was the first Account Manager to support AWS at the company.

At the time, AWS was this mysterious start-up within the Amazon sphere, and their only services were EC2 and S3 (that I knew of). When I got promoted from being a Recruiter to Account Manager, I knew I wanted to support Amazon, because of the amazing customers I had met via my mentor who supported Amazon at the time, Alicia Kassebaum . Being on the Amazon campus during the explosion of growth and optimism around 2013 was like being in adult Disneyland. People full of energy, ideas and making the impossible happen, right in my hometown. I was assigned to supporting AWS, and as they say, the rest is history.

During the pandemic in 2020, I was feeling burnt out, and my mom and brother had since moved to Norway. I was lonely and confused and wanting something different. I worked remotely in Norway for a few months during the height of the pandemic, thanks to Insight Global being flexible and accommodating. During a month of vacation, my mom Kirsten Gracey and I traveled the length of Norway – driving from Trondheim all the way to the Lofoten Islands in the North and down Helgelandskysten to the West Coast. We followed my “bucket list” of places that I wanted to see in Norway. We saw mountains jetting straight from the sea and witnessed the miraculous midnight sun. We made hotdogs in a bathroom during a rainstorm and slept in a popup tent on top of the car. We hiked Trolltunga and Preikestolen in the south, then sunned and bathed our way through the charming seaside towns of Kristiansand and Arendal, then back to Oslo. The whole way along with Mira, her trusty Jack Russell terrier, nestled in my lap. We bonded after 17 years apart. We went from scheduled and inconvenient Facetime check-ins to sleeping in hammocks near the ocean, having a morning swim and a coffee to start our days.

I felt the color coming back to my face and I knew I had to move to Norway to be closer to my family and live in the country that at times makes my skin tingle and my heart soar. I looked at https://www.amazon.jobs on a whim, and amazingly enough, after years of arbitrarily checking, AWS was actually hiring for a Territory Manager role in Oslo! It felt like fate was knocking on my door. I immediately applied and was connected with Sven Sunde , who is also half Norwegian like me, from Seattle, too – what are the odds? The wind started blowing in a different direction.

I interviewed for the role, just like I had helped thousands of candidates do at Insight Global, and got the offer to relocate to Oslo. I took the leap and left at the height of my career at Insight Global (in the middle of a global pandemic) to work for AWS in a different country. Though familiar with the idea of “the cloud”, I had no technical knowledge, no real idea of how it all actually worked (what is the Internet?? asking for a friend). My first day at AWS was at a quarantine hotel isolated at the Oslo airport. My whole family had showed up with flowers and Norwegian flags, my mom in tears with anticipation, her life-long dream of both kids living in Norway coming true. Instead, I was surreptitiously whisked off by anonymous people in hazmat suits to be isolated for days, only to be let out a few hours a day to walk outside. All meals served to my doormat, with arrows showing which ways you could walk without security reminding you where your room was. Looking back, what a bizarre time we have experienced!

After my release, I spent months wringing my hands, wondering if I was the stupidest person on Earth, leaving behind everything I had built. I had so much uncertainty and regret and spent months feeling like an idiot, full of self-loathing. I didn’t meet my colleagues in person until months after I started, and I kept myself sane by going for long runs, waiting for society to open up again so that I could get a sense of whether I was in the right place, if this had all been worth it, starting my life over again at 34.

Amazon has a reputation for being a demanding workplace, and rightly so. As a former Amazonian said, somewhat unflatteringly, “Amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves.” Everyone I met was smarter and more accomplished than I was. I went from being at the top of my game, to being a total novice, crawling and scratching my way back into some semblance of comfort and normalcy, let alone achievement. But over time, things started to change. I became more comfortable with the discomfort and realized that they hired me for a reason.

It wasn’t because of my technical skills or my ability to understand perfectly the intricacies and the transformative capabilities of “the Cloud”, it was because I aligned with Amazon's Leadership Principles (LPs) like Customer Obsession, Bias for Action and Earn Trust that I was selected. And these are the LPs that made me fall in love with Amazon. It is the relentless obsession over our customers, not our competitors. It is taking the long road: working backwards from the customer’s objectives, and not the detour: making a quick and easy sell to easily meet a quota. These LPs align with my character and make me experience a higher purpose in my day-to-day worklife. Our jobs are not our lives, but if you don’t feel good about how you spend most of your time, then it is hard to feel good about your life. That is the cold, hard truth.

Along the way, I have met some of the most gritty, inspiring, fun, intelligent and hard-working people: Anna Nulpponen , Sven Sunde , Anthony Blake Avalos Joachim Jacobsen Jonas T. and so many more. We have created memories for a lifetime– including early morning ice-bathing sessions outside of our office at Aker Brygge, nights out in Madrid listening to Spanish guitar and seeing the sunrise in Stockholm.

I have been able to be apart of my niece Sonja’s 2nd birthday party in Trondheim, standing next to my brother Erik Olav Gracey at his home right next to the cross-country ski trails in the woods, as a bunch of wild toddlers jumped on the trampoline in the sunshine, marveling: How did we two Americans end up here, after all of these years apart? Last weekend, my mom and I rode our bikes into Oslomarka, the forest around the capital reserved for recreation, to go to a sauna in the middle of the wilderness, equipped with a cold plunge (of course!), only 30 minutes from the downtown of our capital city.

I thank AWS for not only making my career, first as a customer, and now as an employee, but for bridging the gap between my two lives, in Seattle and in Norway, something I only used to dream of. Not to mention our wonderful customers, who I look forward to working with more closely going forward, and hopefully taking many trips to our Seattle headquarters to our Executive Briefing Center, so I can show them my beloved hometown along with Amazon's unique Day 1 culture.

I wrote a blog post because a LinkedIn post just won’t do. I also want to thank Insight Global and Bert Bean for giving me the best foundation one can ask for in a career in sales, along with cherished memories of my youth and becoming an adult and professional under your careful watch. We had a lot of fun along the way too. And now to AWS, for letting me continue my journey. I am so grateful. The world is an uncertain place today, so hold your friends, colleagues and families close. Now let’s “Work hard, have fun and make history”. – Jeff Bezos

“Remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for” – Epicurus

Xo,

Linn

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