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This is episode 671 of the AWS podcast, released on June 10, 2024.

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Welcome everyone to the AWS podcast.

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I'm your host for today, Jillian

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Ford. And this one I'm so

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excited for because I get

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to interview Simon. And

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I'm just sure that a lot of

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you are probably have always wondered, hey,

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how do you grow your career in

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the cloud career advice? I mean, Simon

0:28

is an OG at Amazon. And so

0:30

I'm sure just his wisdom in all

0:33

things, not only AWS, but also just in

0:35

the tech industry in general can really help

0:37

you wherever you're at in your career. Oh,

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hopefully. I mean, I mean, I

0:42

know I'm very discombobulated cause you

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know, I didn't get

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to launch the episode or anything. I'm a

0:49

passenger here, but I will preface with our

0:51

conversation today that I don't know anything, everything

0:54

is just my opinion. And I don't promise

0:56

to be the authority on anything. All I

0:58

can do is share my own experience.

1:01

And I'll also preface it with the fact that

1:03

if you know me, I hate talking about myself,

1:05

but I will take a pass for the

1:07

duration of this episode and talk about stuff, so

1:10

please don't think I'm vain. I don't try not

1:12

to be. I think you're

1:14

too humble. I think a lot of people

1:16

are just going to learn so much from

1:18

hearing your experience and just any nuggets of

1:20

wisdom that you've got to really help them

1:22

as they're really figuring out their journey. So

1:24

maybe we should start with your

1:26

journey, really into maybe we can

1:29

start with into the tech industry and then specifically

1:31

how you got into AWS. Sure.

1:33

I was always going to get into the

1:35

technology industry. I think I got a, an

1:38

Apple two computer when I was 13 years

1:40

old. And so I was one of those nerdy kids. This

1:42

is back in the eighties. So it

1:44

wasn't a, wasn't a point. I think 83,

1:47

I got my first real computer. And

1:49

so I used to write code for myself and all that

1:51

sort of stuff. And then eventually I bought a printer. That

1:53

was a revolution. I could print things out of the computer.

1:55

And then a little later I got a 300 board

1:58

modem so I could. dial out

2:00

to bulletin boards. This is well before the

2:02

internet age, as you can imagine. So I

2:04

was always into the technology thing and it was

2:07

interesting because back in those days, it was

2:09

not really still a very

2:11

established career path per site. Became

2:13

one over the years. And so,

2:15

yeah, I went to university and

2:17

studied an honors degree. So I

2:19

did three years of normal undergraduate,

2:21

then I did an honors year

2:23

around geographic information systems. And

2:26

then went out into the big bad world to start

2:28

working in, probably been sort of

2:30

mid nineties by the time I'd taken my

2:32

gap year, et cetera. And then the way

2:34

it went and my actual first job was

2:37

in mainframes. Just as the internet boom was

2:39

forming up, there was me cutting COBOL, Kix,

2:43

JCL, all the modern stuff. So it

2:45

was fun, but that's

2:47

how I got into it. Wow. I

2:50

think what's so interesting about

2:52

your story is that

2:54

you've really just seen technology

2:57

evolve as every single part of it.

2:59

And so one question that kind of

3:01

really comes to mind is like you started learning

3:04

programming yourself, COBOL, like how

3:06

have you kept up

3:09

with learning new technologies? It's

3:11

an interesting, I would say it was a conscious thing.

3:13

It's become a conscious thing probably in the last few

3:16

years, but I always just

3:18

liked using new things and trying things

3:20

out and, and it, I

3:22

sort of wasn't sort of religiously tied to, well, it's

3:24

got to be COBOL. It's got to be Java. This

3:26

is the way I was pretty happy to be flexible

3:28

on what it was. I sort

3:30

of unconsciously came to the realization that a software

3:34

developer is a software developer.

3:36

You're not a.net developer or a

3:38

COBOL developer or what have you. And

3:41

each and every language and domain

3:43

has strengths and weaknesses. And

3:45

so the more you can learn about the different

3:47

approaches, the better. Cause then you know what to

3:49

use in certain situations. So, you know, sometimes C

3:52

might be a really great approach. Sometimes a higher

3:54

level languages is a better thing. You know, you

3:56

know, there was a long time I was using

3:58

4GLs. which is popular at the time.

4:01

And so it was graphics and

4:03

generated code and other stuff. And these

4:05

things come and go and you can't

4:07

tie yourselves to particular

4:09

things. So having an open mind, but

4:11

knowing the concepts is really powerful. So,

4:14

I think it's really nice to be

4:16

able to say, well, I don't know Rust, for example,

4:18

but I could pick up Rust pretty quickly because I'm

4:20

guessing it has if structures and loops

4:22

and some form of package management and all the

4:24

other stuff. And then there's all these nuances that

4:26

will make it really cool. And it's why people

4:28

like to use it for particular use cases. So

4:30

you just got to not hold on to things

4:32

so tightly. You can't let go of them. I

4:34

mean, I loved coding and COBOL. I'm not fashionable.

4:37

I really enjoyed it. It was really good.

4:40

It did the job really, really well. It

4:42

had lots of downsides as well, but there's

4:44

nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with it and robust

4:46

as anything. And so I could have spent

4:49

my life probably doing that if I wanted

4:51

to, but things move on and different things come and go.

4:53

I mean, I'm old enough now

4:55

that I've seen the different fashion. So I've

4:57

gone through a client server was the big

4:59

thing. That was probably the first transition. I

5:01

said, oh my God, client servers, no

5:04

dumb clients. It's all fat client. That's what we're going

5:06

to do. And so everyone moved to that. And then

5:08

suddenly it was like, oh, there's this internet thing. So

5:10

now it's all rendering web-based thin client.

5:13

And then it became single

5:15

page applications. And then it's the

5:17

phones. It's just going

5:19

to change. And so I think you need to almost

5:21

as a technology person just go, it's going to

5:23

change. I don't have to buy into everything,

5:25

but I need to be open to new things. And

5:27

I should enjoy the new things. It's

5:29

fun. If it's not fun, maybe find something else

5:31

to do. Yeah, I love

5:34

that approach that you've had to really learning

5:36

new technologies, but still having that

5:38

base that you've learned

5:41

over time that can help you to be able to

5:44

understand, okay, how does this really work? And

5:47

really what is this new technology and how

5:49

does this really improve the old way of

5:51

being able to do things? Oh,

5:53

does it even? I mean, there's a lot of technologies that I

5:55

didn't buy into, because in my opinion, again, it's just my opinion,

5:57

you get to have your own opinion. They weren't...

6:00

useful. They didn't, they didn't add anything. So I thought,

6:02

yeah, not I'm not paying attention to this, you know,

6:04

you can't pay attention to everything. So

6:06

for me, anyone who knows me well knows that blockchain

6:08

is the thing for me that I just can't, I

6:10

can't do it. I'm not interested. And

6:14

let me tell you, I was deeply unpopular with that opinion

6:16

for a long time. But I was okay with that, you

6:18

know, it's like, like I say, you get to have your

6:20

own opinion. And for me, just not a no decrying folks

6:22

for who they see value in it. That's great, you get

6:25

to make your own choices. But for me, it was like,

6:27

it was never something I was gonna buy into. But it

6:29

wasn't because I had to, you know, again, a religious hatred

6:32

of blockchain. It was I jumped

6:34

into it, I used it. And it didn't do much for

6:37

me. The only regret I have with blockchain, I'll share this

6:39

one with you is back in 2011, when I just

6:42

joined AWS, I had lots happening at the

6:44

time, as you can imagine the fire hose

6:46

at the time. And one

6:48

of the things I had on my list to do

6:50

was to use spot instances to mine this thing called

6:52

Bitcoin that was out there, because it looked like a

6:54

really interesting use case. This way, Bitcoin was not in

6:57

the public eye, it was worth, you know, point o

6:59

cents or whatever, no one cared about it. And

7:02

it was literally it was I remember it was on my to

7:04

do list. And it was one of those things I just deprioritize,

7:06

I didn't have time to do it. So I just never bothered

7:08

and then you know, later on, one's worth ridiculous amounts of my

7:10

love. Yeah, one of those classic what ifs, if I had mine

7:12

some Bitcoin, but I wouldn't, you know, I think the other thing

7:14

that I think is I wouldn't have kept it till it was

7:16

like, you know, $20,000. It's never gonna get to that

7:20

price, or to solve it at like, you know, five

7:22

cents or something that you can what if yourself to

7:24

death. So don't do that. So

7:27

true. Let's go back to how you really got

7:29

into AWS from like

7:32

cobalt as a your

7:35

early days. How

7:38

the hell did you get there? There was a

7:40

lot between the cobalt and the cloud bit. And

7:42

I won't, won't bore you with all that. But

7:44

I've done lots of different things I've done, as

7:46

I mentioned, lots of different project styles, very heavy

7:48

on architecture, large scale system design,

7:50

etc. I also step into business consulting for

7:52

a period of time. So kind of went

7:54

to the dark side, which is really good,

7:56

because I got to learn about how all

7:58

these projects get funded. In

10:00

fact, I had to take my laptop, I had to go to

10:02

the Mac store, buy a laptop, fly

10:04

to America, give it to the IT person in America.

10:06

They imaged the laptop so I could take it back

10:09

and actually use it on the network because we didn't

10:11

have any IT support in Australia. Okay, that was different.

10:13

But the thing I did on the plane flying over

10:15

to America, if you come from Australia, it's like, you're

10:17

talking a good 15, 16 hour flight

10:19

just to get to America, then the hop to Seattle, is

10:22

I read the entire S3 manual. The

10:25

API guide, the user guide, like the whole, I

10:27

was always a big fan. I've always been a

10:30

big fan of read the documentation. And

10:32

so that was mind of mind, little study things,

10:34

but that's kind of how I got into it.

10:36

And it's a decision, I'm not gonna say, oh,

10:38

I knew what the future was gonna hold. It

10:40

was always gonna be a great decision. But what

10:42

I did know is that this cloud computing thing

10:45

was fundamentally better than anything in

10:47

the way we'd done before. And

10:49

I wanted to be part of that. That's the thing I

10:51

knew. The rest was just what

10:53

was gonna happen. I can

10:55

totally relate, yeah. Same thing, I think, with

10:58

me and my journey. And I know there's

11:00

someone who's listening here who is not in

11:03

the cloud right now. And they see

11:05

like, this is the really is now and

11:08

it's gonna continue to be the future.

11:10

So for someone who is listening, who

11:12

doesn't have experience in the

11:14

cloud, what advice do you have for them

11:17

to get their first job in the cloud?

11:19

Yeah, so one of the things that's changed a lot

11:21

over the years, and like I said, I'm old now,

11:23

I've been in IT for well over 30 years now.

11:25

So it's been a while. In the

11:27

old days, if you wanted to get experience

11:30

or do something, you had to work for someone

11:32

who had access to the thing you needed to

11:34

get experience in. So for example, if you want

11:36

to learn mainframe, well, guess what? You're

11:38

working for a company that owns mainframes that can send

11:40

you on the IBM training and do like, that's how

11:42

you did it. That's not the world

11:45

we live in anymore. If you wanna get into the

11:47

cloud, you simply log into

11:49

your AWS and get a free account and

11:52

start doing some of the courses

11:54

there, start doing the exercises, dive in and actually

11:56

do things. I'm a big fan of learning by

11:58

doing, that's kind of my. my way of doing

12:00

things and getting things wrong and figuring

12:03

it out. But firstly, just starting to

12:05

poke around and do things becomes really fascinating. And

12:07

you'll get that moment. And I had this moment

12:09

where I was sitting at my kitchen table with

12:11

my laptop on my AWS account. And I went,

12:14

I have more access today on this

12:17

than I've had at any big major company

12:19

I'd ever worked for. And I'd worked for

12:21

banks and the government and I had more

12:23

compute power on my laptop into the cloud

12:25

than I'd had before. And that was a

12:27

big mind shift. So I think working on

12:29

things yourself and then getting involved in open

12:31

source projects or kicking off your own open

12:33

source project is super powerful, super powerful. Like

12:35

if you wanna get into something, do some

12:37

work, get into something, build something, scratch an

12:39

itch, build your own little project. It doesn't

12:41

have to be some highfalutin, everyone's gonna sign

12:43

up for this type thing. It'd just be,

12:45

I wanna do this thing. There's not

12:48

a thing that does it the way I wanna do it. I'm

12:50

gonna build my own thing. And I think for

12:52

me, learning has always been, I'm gonna do little

12:54

projects that scratch my own itch of problems I

12:56

have at the time. And that's

12:58

a good thing. And that's sort of how you learn. So

13:01

don't wait, don't ask for permission. It's all

13:03

out there, it's all free. It's just there,

13:05

it's like, it's unbelievable. So just go do

13:07

it. And if you do that,

13:09

the people who you want to hire you are gonna

13:12

see the passion. Cause like in my

13:14

role, I get to interview lots of people. I've done

13:17

hundreds of interviews and seen lots of

13:19

different candidates and done resume screens and

13:21

also other stuff. And the

13:23

thing that leaps out to me the most is

13:25

the approach people take to solving problems and how

13:28

they think about that. And

13:30

thinking about your career is its own problem.

13:33

How am I going to do my career?

13:35

Like what am I bringing to the table?

13:37

What skills do I represent the best? Where

13:39

are my strengths? How can I showcase those

13:42

strengths? So let's say really passionate about user

13:44

experience and front end and you wanna do

13:46

that as a job. Well,

13:48

you should probably be building a portfolio of those that

13:50

showcase what you can do and say, hey, look, I

13:52

built this thing and it uses, no

13:56

libraries to do that or it's super lightweight or look

13:58

how I can do this thing for people. people with

14:00

low vision that most people can't do. And

14:02

that's what gets attention of those

14:04

really cool jobs. There's a lot

14:07

of jobs that just like, hey, just come and do the code

14:09

thing. And that's, yeah, that's for some

14:11

people. I don't think it's for everyone. But if

14:13

you're passionate about something, build your

14:15

passion is probably what I'd say. Yeah,

14:18

oh, that is such good advice. There's

14:20

a couple of questions that we got

14:22

from our listeners on

14:24

this episode to ask you. So

14:26

we've got one from Cole and

14:29

Cole wanted to know, how do

14:31

you stay current with AWS technology,

14:33

besides of course, hosting

14:36

the AWS podcast? And I kind of

14:38

also related to that, even just in

14:40

general in tech now, how

14:42

do you tackle being able to just learn

14:44

new things that are just happening in

14:46

general in the tech industry? Yeah, it's not

14:49

getting any easier, is it? There's always more stuff. I read

14:51

a lot. I like to read. I love reading blogs. I

14:53

always have one of those apps I think Pocket is the

14:55

one I'm using at the moment that you can save for

14:57

later, reading for later. I find them really

14:59

useful because there's lots of these sort of weird down

15:01

times in your day or in your work that if

15:05

you just have your lineup of articles ready to go,

15:07

you can start reading them. So for example, like I

15:09

travel a lot for my work and I

15:11

get most of my reading done from the time

15:14

I sit down in the chair in the airplane

15:16

until it takes off. Now, if

15:18

you think about that, if you get it like I'm a nerd and I

15:20

like to get on early because I want to have space for my bag

15:22

and I want to get settled, et cetera, but also that's when I do

15:24

my reading. So I get on the

15:26

plane and then in the time they're loading the

15:28

plane up and they're making the announcement about where

15:30

the doors are and the safety thing that I

15:32

could probably do myself now. I've read five

15:34

or six articles minimum by that time, just about

15:37

different things. In the last flight I took, because

15:39

I was flying yesterday actually, I was reading about

15:41

data structures for large scale systems. It was a

15:43

really interesting paper. Then there was another one about,

15:46

I think it was how

15:48

to measure software productivity and the challenges

15:50

of that. I just like to

15:52

read. And again, you got to kind of get to the

15:54

point of saying, no matter

15:56

how much I read or I investigate, I'm

15:58

never going to know everything. visiting

20:00

them and spending time and learning their

20:02

business, another huge domain. Professional

20:04

services, going out and working on customer

20:06

projects long term, spending a

20:08

lot of time with a customer rather than paging

20:10

in and out is really interesting. Solution

20:13

architecture, obviously, is a really interesting career.

20:15

I think it's unique. And you

20:17

get to see so many things all the time. But

20:20

then just more generally in the cloud, there's

20:22

such a demand for people who are developers

20:24

who know how to use the cloud, security

20:26

specialists who know how to use the cloud,

20:28

data analysts who know how to use the

20:31

cloud, UX folks who know

20:33

how to use the cloud. Anything you need

20:35

to do, cloud brings something to the table

20:37

for you. And typically, it's an accelerant, the

20:39

ability to go faster. So it's not like

20:42

saying, I would never say, I'm a cloud

20:44

person. I know a lot about the

20:46

cloud. I do a lot of my work in the

20:48

cloud, obviously. But I'm not a cloud person. I'm a

20:51

software solutions person. I'm

20:53

a business solving person.

20:56

That's what I do. I happen to

20:58

use what's the best thing available to

21:00

me at the time. And at the moment, the best thing

21:02

is the cloud. So that's the thing I

21:04

use. And so there's lots of pathways

21:06

you can go. And it's been interesting watching,

21:08

like we have people who do mid-career changes

21:10

at Amazon. So they come from completely different

21:13

backgrounds that will come in. And what's been

21:15

interesting to me is, again, if you bring

21:17

an approach and an aptitude, the

21:19

training is actually not that hard to get to a

21:21

level of competence where you can add a lot of

21:23

value. So you could be a teacher and

21:25

become an architect. It translates across. You have

21:27

to be a math genius to do that.

21:30

There's no end to the pathways. But having

21:32

the skill sets is what becomes

21:34

really valuable. I think the certifications are

21:36

really useful in that. Certifications are not the be all

21:38

and end all. Let me be very clear on that.

21:40

I hold nine of them. So I

21:42

think I say, oh, I've got to certify all

21:44

the things. The certifications are useful. And it's a

21:46

way to demonstrate to someone, hey, I know some

21:48

stuff. So that's another pathway as well to just

21:50

build up that collection to showcase in the specialty

21:53

of working. Hey, this is what you want to

21:55

do. Yeah, I

21:57

love that you just explained it as really cloud being.

26:00

And I'm sure there's people listening here, guy, oh my goodness,

26:02

I'm in trouble. Yeah, absolutely.

26:05

I think that's why they're here. They want some advice from

26:07

you. And I think it's those

26:10

analogies that you use, well, examples

26:12

really of blockchain and Gen-IR, those

26:14

are really good examples of technologies

26:18

that became new. And so there was a

26:20

lot of people who were like, I don't

26:22

really know what this is. How do I

26:24

use it for my business or just for

26:26

my own personal life? And

26:28

those new technologies present new opportunities to

26:30

become a subject matter expert. I know

26:32

I've seen a bunch, I'm sure you

26:34

have, where people who were doing something

26:36

completely different, they just dove all in.

26:38

And then now there are experts on

26:41

it. They're specialists, for example, like on

26:43

blockchain, for example, on Gen-AI. Exactly.

26:45

Your ability around a topic is not based upon

26:47

the fact that just this body of knowledge. You

26:50

know how to learn. Gen-AI is the thing at the

26:53

moment. Absolutely. It's going to be the thing

26:55

for a little while, but something else will come along. Something else always comes

26:57

along. Spoiler alert, how

26:59

are you conditioned to learn the next thing?

27:02

Or do you make a conscious choice to say, well, this is where

27:04

I'm stopping. This is it. This is

27:06

where I'm not learning anymore. I'm here on out. This is

27:08

just what I'm doing. So true. Yeah.

27:11

It's a valid approach. Now you're calling

27:13

out the people who are, are, Excel

27:15

and PowerPoint is the most advanced tech

27:17

that they're using. And I bet some

27:19

of these people, they're probably in companies

27:21

where you can relate. They're

27:23

not the most advanced. They're

27:26

a bit slower to adopt things that

27:28

are new in technology. But let's say

27:30

you've got someone who's listening, who's hungry.

27:33

They want to be able to apply the latest and

27:35

they see an opportunity, but they're in a company that's

27:38

not really moving as fast as they are. So

27:40

what advice do you have for this person to

27:43

be able to either apply

27:45

new technologies there or maybe it's they

27:47

have to explore other companies. I've

27:50

seen on multiple occasions, folks within an

27:52

organization who have seen a problem domain

27:54

and seen that it's like almost intractable

27:56

the way they're doing things and

27:58

literally have gone away and spent the. weekend

28:00

building something on AWS to do the thing

28:02

that their company said couldn't be done for

28:04

less than the bazillion dollars and bazillion

28:07

months. And on Monday morning went to

28:09

show their manager and said, Hey, look what I built. And

28:12

they're like, Oh, my God. And

28:15

that can be a change. Now, you may not always get a good

28:17

hearing. You may be well, that's great. But then

28:19

you know, well, probably not the company for me. You

28:21

know, there's there's times you can change the organization. And

28:23

there's times you can't and you as an individual have

28:26

to make a choice of whether

28:28

you fit or don't fit or want to

28:30

push or don't want to push. And there's

28:32

again, no right answers for that. But

28:35

it is amazing how different

28:37

showing something actually working can

28:40

affect people's decision

28:42

making. I can't overemphasize that

28:45

like, just showing

28:47

someone the reality changes

28:49

the conversation completely. Because until then you're

28:52

working with individual mental models and individual

28:54

perceptions of the world. And yeah,

28:57

you say you can do this, but I don't believe

28:59

you or I've never seen it done. It always fails.

29:01

It's not possible versus Hey, look, it's real. It's in

29:03

front of you, you have a key decision to make.

29:05

And so I think you know, it's a classic thing to be the

29:08

change you want to see in the world, you know, be the change,

29:10

implement that change. And if you realize that the

29:12

world you're in is not going to change, because

29:14

it's just not designed that way. Find

29:17

a place that suits you better. I

29:19

love that. All right. I've got

29:21

a vulnerable question is imposter

29:23

syndrome, because I feel like on

29:25

the other side, we're talking

29:28

about learning new things and

29:30

really jumping into opportunities to learn these new things

29:32

and being able to apply them. Usually

29:35

on the other side of that, there's always imposter

29:37

syndrome. It's that vulnerability of I

29:40

haven't done this before. Is this something that

29:42

you felt before? All

29:44

the time. But it's a feature, not

29:46

a bug. It's a feature,

29:49

not a bug. If you're feeling imposter syndrome,

29:51

then you're doing the right thing. It's

29:53

the people that don't feel imposter syndrome that are dangerous,

29:55

quite frankly, because they think they know everything. So there's

29:57

a saying that I heard many years ago, I think

30:00

is a great saying that if you're

30:02

the smartest person in the room, you're in

30:04

the wrong room. And my follow up to

30:06

that is at Amazon, I'm never in the

30:08

wrong room, because I'm never the smartest person.

30:10

So a simple example, you know, I can

30:12

go into a room and I have gone

30:14

to room. And there's James Hamilton, who's done

30:16

all kinds of incredible things, like blows my

30:18

mind what a smart dude this guy is

30:20

and lovely down to Earth guy, but you

30:22

know, brain the size of a planet. James

30:24

Hamilton is one of our vice presidents and

30:26

infrastructure gurus, he has pioneered more

30:28

development around our networking stack, service

30:30

stack, our CPU stack, the way

30:33

we build the cloud than most

30:35

have contributed to. Yeah, he had

30:37

a storage career back at IBM

30:39

helping develop DB two, and

30:41

lots of other things like I can't do justice

30:43

to his career, but brain the size of a

30:45

planet does amazing stuff. Another example, you know, sitting

30:47

down with Werner, Werner Vogels, I get to sit

30:49

with him quite regularly and chat about stuff. And

30:52

it's Werner, for goodness sake, you know, he's the

30:54

guy that people take photos with, I mean, you

30:56

could feel like an imposter, you can have a

30:58

really useful conversation here and learn some stuff. I

31:01

mean, I have James Gosling working

31:03

at Amazon, I mean, the dude created

31:05

Java. You

31:07

can bump into him at the team room. I

31:09

mean, it's this sort of thing. But what's really

31:11

interesting on that as well is that there's a

31:14

cultural thing at Amazon that I really like, which

31:16

is that the most senior person speaks last in

31:18

any meeting. And the

31:20

idea of that is, is in traditional world,

31:22

if the most senior person speaks

31:24

first, who's going to disagree? Everyone's gonna go, Oh, yeah,

31:26

yeah, boss, you're right. Oh, yeah, guru, you know what

31:29

you mean? I'm not going to disagree with Werner, he

31:31

knows everything. But smart leaders know that

31:33

they don't know everything. And it's much better to be

31:35

able to pick and choose all the best ideas before

31:37

they come to you. imposter syndrome is a thing. But

31:40

don't let it overwhelm you. Everyone's

31:42

making shit up as I go. People don't know what's

31:44

going on. Everyone's trying to figure stuff out. They all

31:46

make mistakes. If you talk to someone who says they

31:49

never made a mistake. Stop talking

31:51

to that person, because they're a liar. They're

31:54

just not doing anything interesting is the other

31:56

thing. So like I said, it's a

31:58

feature, not a bug, but don't obsess. over at either and I go,

32:00

oh my goodness, I'm gonna get caught out and

32:02

they're gonna sack me, et cetera, you know, not,

32:05

yeah. Don't feel that

32:07

way. Just do good stuff, meet with good people, mix

32:09

with people. If you're feeling a bit funny

32:12

about stuff, talk to folks you know and say, hey, you

32:14

know, here's how I'm feeling.

32:16

Actually, one quick story I wanna share, cause I

32:18

think it is important is, I worked with someone

32:20

who, and got the chance to work with them

32:22

again, who's fantastic, great professional, unbelievable professional. And they

32:24

resigned and went to another company for a few

32:27

years and then came back to Amazon. And

32:30

when they resigned, I said, why are you resigning?

32:32

I said, I'm just imposter syndrome, I'm just not

32:35

good enough, da da da da da. Was totally

32:37

not true, but that's how this person felt. And

32:39

I said, why do you feel that way? They told

32:42

me who they were comparing themselves against. And

32:44

I'm like, why are you comparing yourself against those

32:46

people? Those people have got 15 years more experience

32:49

than you do. They've been doing this longer. They're

32:51

not better than you. They've just been doing it

32:53

longer. You know, you can't, you're not making a

32:55

fair comparison. So I think when

32:57

you compare yourself against others, don't

33:01

do it unfairly. Like, you know,

33:03

if you're five years into IT and

33:06

you're saying, well, you know, can I do the things that

33:08

Simon does? Well, Simon only does the things he does because

33:10

he's been doing it for 30 plus years. Come and talk

33:12

to me then, then we'll talk about it. You'll probably be

33:14

doing things way better than I could ever do. You

33:17

know, you gotta be fair, but I see people like creating

33:19

these unrealistic expectations and that's what

33:22

makes imposter syndrome really bad. The

33:24

only way to solve imposter syndrome is to firstly

33:26

accept, like I say, it's a feature, not a

33:29

bug, and use it to fuel your desire to

33:31

learn interesting things and talk to interesting people and

33:34

talk to other people about what they do. I

33:36

don't think I've ever spoken to anyone

33:38

on Amazon who doesn't feel imposter syndrome,

33:41

like every single person. Me too. No matter

33:43

what level, like vice presidents, you know what

33:45

I mean? Let me tell you, when

33:47

people sit down with Jeff Bezos, they feel imposter syndrome.

33:49

Yes. Yes. I

33:53

love that it's a feature, not a bug.

33:55

I think you summed it up just so

33:57

well. So a lot of things I would say. One

34:00

of the huge takeaways really is just throwing

34:02

yourself into, or diving deep,

34:04

as we would say, into anything that

34:06

you really want to learn about. Diving

34:08

yourself into the cloud, or maybe there's

34:11

a certain topic within the cloud that

34:13

you're really interested in, and

34:15

getting hands-on with it. And

34:18

imposter syndrome is normal. Any

34:21

parting advice to our listeners?

34:23

Maybe we can kind of break it out, because

34:25

we've got listeners who are at different levels. So

34:27

we've got people who are new to AWS, and

34:30

you know, we've got the people who they've

34:32

been doing AWS for a while, and they're asking

34:35

themselves, what's next for me? So let's start with

34:37

the person who's new to the cloud. I'm going

34:39

to apply, I'm going to be cheeky, and I'm

34:41

going to apply the same advice to everyone. And

34:44

it's the advice that I've given over 600 times.

34:48

Because what do I say at the end of

34:50

every podcast? I say, keep

34:53

on building. That's

34:55

the advice. That's the secret. You've

34:58

got to keep on building. Because

35:00

every time you're building, no matter where you

35:02

are in your career, super beginner, super

35:05

advanced, in the middle, changing careers, what

35:07

have you, build stuff

35:10

for yourself, for others, for your

35:12

community, whatever it is. That

35:15

is the catalyst to learning,

35:17

to finding passion, to finding what you don't like.

35:20

Learning what you don't like is just as important

35:22

as learning what you like. Probably

35:24

more important even. It's so true, yes.

35:26

Always be building something. You've got to be

35:28

always be building something or have something on

35:30

your mind that you're working towards, that you're

35:32

trying to solve for. That I

35:35

think is what creates that spark, that

35:37

inspiration and drives the learning and drives

35:39

the development of your career. Because you're

35:41

always building something interesting and better. Like

35:44

I say, keep on, I'm not just, I don't just say

35:46

it. I do it as well. Like I'm building stuff all

35:48

the time. Like, you know, I was coding something just before

35:50

we got on the call and it was going terribly. And

35:52

that's okay. Because I'm learning. I'm

35:54

learning stuff. Keep on building. It's not

35:58

just a sign. That is the perfect. way to

36:00

end things, there's the cheat codes from Simon is

36:02

that there are no cheat codes. You

36:05

just got to keep learning and building and putting the work in

36:07

Simon. I'm so grateful that you just

36:10

like gave so many people who are

36:12

listening. Just all this advice were vulnerable.

36:14

I really about imposter syndrome is just

36:17

a feature, not a bug. So thank

36:19

you so much for being

36:21

here on a maybe unfamiliar territory

36:24

as being the person interviewed

36:26

on the AWS podcast. My

36:28

pleasure. And thanks for doing a great job. Make it easy for me, Julian.