GoKawiilToday marks four years since I joined AWS. My last day will be Friday.
I have to say being fired from AWS is actually a relief. There have been a lot of changes to the company since I joined in 2022, and the company I wanted to work for is no longer the same company.
This past year, while I was doing my best to make AWS play nice in open source communities, there were two main drivers making me unhappy with my job: organizational change and the acceleration of the focus on Generative AI.
The organizational change came in the form of the man who hired me, David Nalley. I was skeptical about joining AWS, especially since I work in open source, but David convinced me that his team, OSSM (Open Source Strategy and Marketing), was dedicated to making AWS a better citizen in open source communities.
Amazon has a really odd viewpoint when it comes to the people who work there. They view almost all employees as “fungible”.
Now the first time I had ever heard the term “fungible” was in reference to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), but it basically means “replaceable”. Amazon built a huge retail business on processes that could take someone who was relatively healthy and relatively intelligent, and turn them in to a productive fulfillment center employee in a couple of weeks. While that may work for a shipping business, it doesn’t translate all that well to information technology, since so much of being successful in that business relies on institutional knowledge that must be earned over time.
It also assumes that there is a limitless supply of people with the required skills, and a willingness to work for Amazon.
In any case, during the interview process David called me “non-fungible” (which still sounds dirty in my mind but did make me proud) and I got the job.
While my official role was to act as a liaison between AWS and customers who were commercial open source companies, I simplified that to mean bring a human face to a huge, faceless corporation.
David was a very good manager. In fact, he is in the running to be the best manager I’ve ever had, although that title still belongs to a man named Jay Clapsadle (who is long since retired). He has an innate understanding of how AWS works, and he would always nudge me into those situations where my unique but limited talents would be put to good use.
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