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Digital Native with Andrea Sabet
17 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, I talk to AWS's Head of digital native solutions architecture for the east coast, Andrea Sabet. Andrea and I have been friends since she started at AWS as a Solutions Architect. We talk about what it means to be "Digital Native" as well as some of Andrea's other activities like She Builds the Women in Cloud summit coming up in New York, and one of my favorite topics Hour of Code.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello Basement Programmers and welcome. This is the Basement Programmer Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Moore. The opinions expressed in the Basement Programmer Podcast are those of myself and any guests that I may have, and are not necessarily those of our employers or organizations we may be associated with.
00:00:28
Speaker
Feedback on the Basement Programmer podcast, including suggestions on things you'd like to hear about, can be emailed to me at tom at basementprogrammer.com. And I'm always on the lookout for people who would like to come on the podcast and talk about anything technology related. So drop me a line. And now for this episode.
Guest Introduction: Andrea Sabet
00:00:48
Speaker
Hello, basement programmers and welcome. This is your host, Tom Moore. And today I'm joined by my friend and former colleague, Andrea Sabet, Head of Solutions Architecture for Digital Native Business at AWS. Welcome. Thank you, Tom. Great to be here and great to see you. We haven't seen each other for some time. So yeah, glad that you have me on your show. Oh, thrilled to have you here.
00:01:14
Speaker
So obviously, as the intro suggests, you work at Amazon and Amazon always says it's day one.
First Impressions at Amazon
00:01:21
Speaker
So I'm curious, what was your day one like, walking into the Boston office? Oh my goodness. You know, now I'm based out of New York, but back when I joined in 2018, I was actually in Boston. You know, I lived in Boston for many years. Day one at Amazon.
00:01:39
Speaker
I do remember walking in and it was a small team. The company has grown exponentially ever since. Small team, I remember I was in
00:01:53
Speaker
South Boston. No, where are they? Seaport. That's right. And I think it was their first day at the new office at Seaport because they just had moved from the Cambridge office. And it was great. I mean, it was fantastic. I walked in. I didn't recognize many people, but throughout the day, I did actually meet and bump into people I knew from the past.
00:02:16
Speaker
It was pretty fantastic. I would say a little bit sort of intimidating because, you know, super smart talent. Yeah, there's some smart people there for sure. But without a doubt, it was very welcoming. You know, people were very kind. We went for lunch, had great conversation, got to know my team. Just day one was was actually one of the days I still remember today, Tom, even if I, you know, just close my eyes, I could still remember everything I did that day.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, I still remember. My day one was actually in New York because at the time we didn't do onboarding in Boston. So, yeah. All right.
Role and Responsibilities at AWS
00:02:59
Speaker
So, head of solutions architecture for digital native business. That's quite the mouthful. What does that really mean?
00:03:06
Speaker
Okay, so what does it mean? So digital native business is a business that Amazon focuses on, which involves around customers who are digitally native, which means they are, for most parts, they develop the technology using cloud from day one.
00:03:26
Speaker
So these are companies that are pre-IPO, for most part is pre-IPO, and they have one or two products that have had success in the market and that are global. And for most parts, they use cloud technology.
00:03:44
Speaker
And I lead a team of solution architects who focuses on helping these customers identify technology needs that addresses their specific business. And that business spans across different domains.
00:04:03
Speaker
So we work with customers that are, for example, in financial services like Fintechs, Atix, Martech, technology data companies, you name it, right? So that's in a nutshell. And my team, they operate across the East Coast of the United States. So everything from, say, Maine down to Miami.
00:04:28
Speaker
And, you know, we have a great number of customers throughout. So yeah, that's what I do. I'm personally myself based out of New York City. And yeah, we have, you know, folks all around, all around the East Coast. Cool. So just a small territory then, right?
00:04:46
Speaker
Exactly.
Understanding Cloud Services
00:04:50
Speaker
You're talking about cloud services. How does that differentiate between the typical spinning up virtual machines and things like that? What's the differentiator there?
00:05:02
Speaker
Oh, between cloud services. Think of the utility, right? Like you turn on the light switch and you get your power, right? So in the back ends, obviously there's a whole facility, there's someone, the energy company is providing you with that electricity. So in the cloud service, similar to that,
00:05:26
Speaker
you know, any company can take advantage of different types of technology components without necessarily having to be the provider or creator of that technology themselves. So as Amazon being one of those main, you know, AWS, Amazon Web Services being a cloud provider, what we do is we deliver, you know, database, if you want to store information, we deliver storage, we deliver network capacity,
00:05:54
Speaker
We deliver advanced things like artificial intelligence. We deliver it as a service. So essentially a customer can say, look, I just need to store my data. And then almost like you have your Gmail or you have your right, like anything sort of that you use on the web, similar to that.
00:06:17
Speaker
a company can take advantage of storing the data in, you'd see it almost like a web interface, right? But realistically, that's sitting on service and storage media that are hosted by Amazon Web Services.
00:06:33
Speaker
So that's what we focus as our main business. That's what it means. So it's different than virtual machines because virtual machines could be one component of the bigger technology landscape, right? A virtual machine you can consume as well as a technology product that is delivered as part of your overall cloud consumption. I hope that gives you context.
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, so do your customers focus more on some of the higher level services or do you still run the whole gambit? It varies, right? It varies from customer to customer. Some of them are, and it also varies depending on, you know, their staffing. Some customers, right, they have, say for example,
00:07:27
Speaker
you might have a company who is in a technology space, right? Like say a data company and they might have capacity to or staff that are highly technical and they design products
00:07:43
Speaker
And their job, the main business, is essentially building technology that delivers some sort of a data service to an end client. So they might be staffed with data scientists, they might be staffed with data engineers, and for them, that's bread and butter. That's their core competency.
00:08:04
Speaker
So when you have a team like that, typically they're much more creative in using some of these foundational, very low level programming languages or components to build and design things that would set them apart in the landscape.
00:08:21
Speaker
So that's one category that uses kind of more the core components of infrastructure and technology. And then you have customers that might be in the, say, you know, my core competency is insurance and I am a retailer and I run an e-commerce website. You know, I might not necessarily be heavy on, you know, hiring a bunch of IT folks. I might index more on marketing and sales and, you know, a little bit on the more
00:08:50
Speaker
the core domain that I'm in. So for those, it's much easier for them to say, look, let me outsource or let me kind of use and consume a technology that's already been built and designed. And maybe there's some level of customization, but that's minimal. That's not my core competency. And they tend to be more on the higher level services. But there's nothing that kind of prevents each from consuming. Again, like we do see full spectrum of each.
00:09:18
Speaker
in consumption, both lower and higher level services across both, but that's typically how that aligns. Sure. Now, I actually had a question thrown at me from a prospective listener.
Lessons from a Production Outage
00:09:34
Speaker
Okay. What is the biggest production outage you've ever experienced in your career and how does that affect how you work today? Oh my goodness. Okay.
00:09:47
Speaker
Let me see, production outage that, okay, so I did, you know, look, as we, anything, things break, right? And things sometimes, oh yeah, you have and whatnot. Um, I think it was, it was a while ago. I can't, you know, give specifics, give sensitivity of the matter, but I do remember, you know, we did have an incident where, you know, and handful of customers were impacted by,
00:10:17
Speaker
I think it was just, it was an outage, right? Like it was an outage. It was a number of services that was down. And I think, you know, with that, you know, a handful of customers were really impacted by some of the core capabilities that we're using in cloud. And I think one thing that kind of was very, I guess, obvious for us at that point was
00:10:43
Speaker
you know, as what's our role, we really kind of rethink our role as architects, solution architects, but it really helped us kind of understand like, look, maybe we are trusted advisors to customers, right? To kind of maybe describe the role a little bit more. So it starts as advisors, you're there to provide guidance on, you know, how to use this technology and then assemble this technology to be able to achieve outcomes, right? And these technologies,
00:11:10
Speaker
It's complex, right? You need to be highly skilled. You need to have certifications and be technically savvy. And our solution architects are also there to guide the customers through what if things doesn't work? What if you need to have a disaster recovery? What's your disaster recovery plan? What if you need to make sure that your right size
00:11:34
Speaker
your cloud environments to be cost efficient, right? How do you achieve the best performance given the constraints that you might have or given the components that you're leveraging?
00:11:46
Speaker
I think it just really forced us to think during that outage, I do remember going back and sort of in retrospect, obviously revisiting some of these customers and thinking about like, hey, should we go back to the foundation really looking and assessing, right? We have it called the well architected framework and really going through and saying like, are you really, you know,
00:12:07
Speaker
Do you really have a disaster recovery plan? Do you have a resilience plan? What if things doesn't work? And I think for some of these customers, they're running really fast and they have to take advantage of whatever bleeding edge technology there is because that differentiates and that sets them apart in the landscape. And sometimes it's important as you do so is
00:12:30
Speaker
you know, over time, it could get complicated because you need to also bring stability to play. And in this context, right, we have some customers that are, again, like just to be in the market forefront, their market makers, they were just running like 200 miles an hour. It's just really good to have, you know, like an upgrade. I would say almost like you need to have a practice within the organization to really think through these as you're continuously evolve and innovate.
00:12:59
Speaker
And for us was really about, you know, taking a step back and say, look, it's not just about, you know, running fast, but it's also rethinking and thinking about like, are you running operationally efficient? Like, what if things doesn't work? Right? That's as much I can say about this specific event, Tom, but but I hope that gives you some good idea. As they say, hindsight is always 2020. You know, you look back and say, Oh, yeah. So
Career Journey to Amazon
00:13:29
Speaker
So you are amazingly well traveled. When I first met you, I remember hearing Sweden. You had spent some time in Sweden. And I thought you were born there, but apparently not. You've had this, you've traveled all around the world. What's your story there?
00:13:52
Speaker
Okay, so all right, what's my story? So yeah, so I grew up in Sweden. You know, I was after so I live in, I used to live in a small, let's say small, it's a city called Uppsala. It's known and recognized for its university. So I studied there and I was in my 20s. And I said,
00:14:14
Speaker
Look, I mean, I did so much to see, I just want to go out there and do something different. I just didn't want to stay in this small town. So I said, why don't I just go and do something, you know, outside this, not just my city, but let's go and live overseas. So I, the first thing I did was I found, I went to UK and I had my mom's cousin, he lives in the UK, in London. So I stayed with him and I was like, like, let me figure out what I want to do.
00:14:45
Speaker
So then I start like both looking for jobs, but also seeing like, maybe I should pursue a higher education. So that's kind of what I ended up doing. I went to, uh, and pursue the PhD in physics crazy as I am, right? Yeah. That's what I ended up doing in London. And then from there, you know, once I finished and I said, well, you know, let me go and look for a job. And funny enough during that time, um,
00:15:12
Speaker
You know, I think my mom sent me an article and said, look, IBM is looking for people, but they're based out of Ireland. I was like, where's that? And it's very mild. Like, I've never been to Ireland before, but, you know, I.
00:15:25
Speaker
I just say, okay, let's go and work for IBM. So I just submitted an application to the same department, Global Services, IBM Global Services in Dublin. It was like early 2000. And yeah, they called me, they contacted me during my interview to say, when can you come? So
00:15:51
Speaker
I was like, well, when do you want me there? Well, can you come next week? Sure. So I took a, you know, with my backpack on a plane to Dublin. I ended up staying there for seven years. That was some of the best times of my life. You know, I met some of my lifetime, you know, lifelong friends in Dublin. I still, you know, meet them often. They come and visit and I go there and visit them. So,
00:16:16
Speaker
Yeah, I was kind of well-traveled and then from there in Dublin, I was at Oracle at the time and I just happened to say, look, so European customers are very interesting. And I used to work in solution architect capacity. We call them solution engineers at Oracle. And what was interesting is European companies tend to be much smaller.
00:16:39
Speaker
and decision-making things tends to take longer. So, you know, because there's so much that goes in it and they're very much down to the weeds, right? Like what's the components? What's the battery lifespan? They're not sort of as fast movers as North America, you know, companies in North America. But I said, like, look, I just want to get international exposure. I've kind of worked with these more smaller
00:17:04
Speaker
obviously the company is very tech savvy. They're very thoughtful, very well organized. And I said, like, I just want international exposure. And I happened to see on my LinkedIn this request of like, they're looking for same role that I had, but they were looking for solution engineers in Boston. And it's like, so I reached out to this gentleman. It was at the same company. And he's like, yeah, I'm looking for someone to come and join. So that's kind of brought me to Boston.
00:17:34
Speaker
Uh, so I kind of always been, you know, traveling and just pursuing and it's pushing myself to just go a little bit outside my comfort zone. And the reason I'm saying that is because it feel like if I don't learn or if I'm putting the position, so here's how I describe it. If I'm in a position where I feel too comfortable, I feel like I can't be the best version of myself.
00:18:01
Speaker
So over time, it feels like, you know, if I do something that I feel very confident about, I think I, and I don't prepare for it. It just feels almost like I'm, I'm not pushing myself hard enough to think differently. And that doesn't help me always stay on top of my game. So that's kind of the reason, right? Like always want to see how I can expand. It's not just right. It's not for the sake of travel, but that happened to be that my career has taken me all over the world. Yes.
00:18:34
Speaker
Let's see.
Involvement in AWS Initiatives
00:18:36
Speaker
Now, fairly early on at Amazon, you kind of became a bit of the face of this is my architecture, which I love watching your episodes, by the way. Thank you. How did that happen? What's that like?
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah, this is my architecture. Yeah. For those who may not know what this is, my architecture is a video clip, right? It's a video series. It's like a five to seven minute video clip where we go and dive deep into a technical architecture. So a customer partner describes how to using Amazon to deliver some business outputs.
00:19:14
Speaker
And I happened to watch the episode myself, Tom, like you did. And I was like, I want to be on that show, I said, right? How do I get there? So I happened to, at that time, I was lucky enough, they were having a, you know, they did recordings in New York City. So I was in Boston, so I traveled down and I organized a meeting with them to say, like, look, I have a customer that I want to showcase.
00:19:41
Speaker
And, um, so I took my customer there and before then, like, trust me, we had to rehearse so many times. So you're not supposed to rehearse for these. You're supposed to be like very ad hoc, very non-scripted. And we just, we just did such a good job that they, and I said like, look, how do I, I want to continue working with you guys. And they just liked the episode and say like, would you like to.
00:20:05
Speaker
Join us for the next one. And that's kind of trickled, right? Over time. It's just that that show is the most watched show. I think they have like about a million viewers a year watching different episodes that are published weekly.
00:20:19
Speaker
Yes, I became sort of one of the few handful of hosts they have on the show and we kind of interview customers twice a year or so. So yeah, this is a really great opportunity to meet people and learn from customers really is amazing. So watch the show. Absolutely. Check out, this is your architecture. This is my architecture.
00:20:42
Speaker
Now, the other thing that I often see you get involved with, especially on social media, is the She Builds program. Yes. What's that about? So She Builds, okay, so through the media team that I work with for disparate architecture, I happen to be connected to a group of solution architects out of Australia. And there are two women out in Australia. Yay for Australia.
00:21:14
Speaker
Exactly. I know, Tom, you're from Australia. Well, not really from. I spent 16 years there. I was actually born in Connecticut. So there you go. There you go. Good. New facts about Tom. So I happened to speak to these two ladies and who were doing something very cool under the brand name of Shebils. And Shebils is essentially
00:21:36
Speaker
building an inclusive community where women technologists can come together and learn from each other. She built many different areas. They focus on technical skills or you want to get your certification. You can do that. You want to get a mentor or mentee-mentor relationship type stuff. They do that. She built, existed, and originated from Australia. Then I thought,
00:22:03
Speaker
But it was very internal facing. So they usually had solution architects or other women within the company go in and then showcase and do it like an hour long demo. So when I spoke with them, I said, look, you know, you don't have a presence in North America. Why don't I take that program and just help you scale it?
00:22:25
Speaker
But contingent that, you know, I kind of almost have, you know, I customize it a little bit. By all means, go for it. So then when I took it on, I said, like, what I want to make Shiba's North America about, I want to make it about our customers. And mainly what I wanted to highlight was how does our customers, of which many are women, how they are making an impact in the field of technology.
00:22:52
Speaker
So our women customers who are in the field of technology and business and the impact they're making in this field. That's what I wanted to make this all about. So I created this video series and I took a lot of inspiration from this architecture to not just highlight the technical need from a customer and how they use technology to advance it,
00:23:16
Speaker
but holistic 360 view of their landscape. So what we talked about in our video series, which is a little bit longer than four minutes or like 20 minutes or so. So we look at it from like both business side. What are some, you know, what was the motivation? What was some decision criteria? Why even pursue this? What does it mean to your business? And then we dive deep underneath and see, you know, what's the technology behind it?
00:23:44
Speaker
But more importantly, where this focus on women comes in is with the interviewers, what we ask them is, how did your background prepare you for the role that you're in now? And working in the male-dominated field, how do you earn trust of your team who are mainly men?
00:24:01
Speaker
or what's the barrier blocker that you have encountered along this journey that you would like to share on how you overcame? It's more about women empowerment and really empowering those who are viewing. It could be male allies, obviously, we have a lot of them as well, and those who identify as women.
00:24:22
Speaker
to learn from people out in the field and seek inspiration. And then the She-Bills have kind of taken on now and grown way beyond just being a video series. So right now we are actually, we instantiated a focus on, and we have about 200 mentees, and these are people outside Amazon who are looking to get connected with the mentor.
00:24:48
Speaker
within Amazon. So we want to facilitate that mentorship and we use our video series catalog as learning catalog for these mentees so they can almost like
00:25:02
Speaker
You pick and choose whichever makes the most sense to you. You learn it, but at the same time, you have a mentor who helps you along a 14-week engagement cycle. So that's what we do. Yeah, if you want to be part of it, shebuildsnaatamazon.com. Shebuildsnaatamazon.com. I'll have to put that in the notes. Thank you, Tom.
STEM Education and Volunteering
00:25:31
Speaker
So with all of these things that you're doing, and one thing that's particularly close to my heart that you've gotten involved with a bunch of times is something called Hour of Code. And like I said, you've been involved a whole bunch of times. So what's that like for you to get involved with the kids? Oh, by the way, you're the credit to you, Tom. If it wasn't for you, I would not even know what Hour of Code is.
00:26:02
Speaker
Every year, I think, with the exception of COVID, I think it was 2020. Every year, I've been tagging along under your leadership, and I love it. I love it. 2020 sucked.
00:26:15
Speaker
It is, right. And it was hard that year. I remember I just, you know, it was some challenges, like family wise, that made me not be able to participate. But, you know, my motivation for doing that, I mean, look, a lot of the times when we look at our our company now, right, like we just kind of take more of an reactive approach is like whatever is in the market, like,
00:26:40
Speaker
even look at our, I'll say this, right? Like I look around in the field of technology in my, even our teams and it is like, you know, 10, 15%, 20% woman representation and mostly men. And so where do you, where do you make, you know, where do you make changes? And I think it's early, right? Like you need to make those changes early on, meaning like you need to,
00:27:08
Speaker
really go out there and educate and help maybe young girls, right, even earlier to go and pursue education in the field of STEM. So I think like the impact you can do, and this is obviously our code is for everyone, is all these high, you know, elementary school kids, they're still kind of figuring out what they want to do later on in their lives, right? So I think in helping them
00:27:33
Speaker
really see the potentials of technology and really kind of find passion for Philostem. I think it's really rewarding personally for myself. I really enjoy that. I do think
00:27:48
Speaker
you can regamify it and we make it really fun for them to learn right through cool games and things that we do on their phones and whatnot. But just going out there and opening up the eyes of these young kids to show like, hey, look, did you know that you could do all this cool stuff or did you know technology does all this cool stuff and they had no idea?
00:28:12
Speaker
And all of a sudden it just kind of clicks. And you never know, right? Like an event like that could eventually lead some of these young, very smart kids to pursue, you know, education in the field of STEM.
00:28:25
Speaker
And I think just being able to impact early on is really rewarding. I just love doing it. And I think this opportunity to do it both hour of code, but there's also Girls Who Code, which I've also participated in, which is really cool as well. It was just, you know, again, like young, you know, elementary school girls who are looking to learn how to code and develop and really, you know, going out and speaking to them and giving them some advice and coaching. I really enjoy that.
00:28:55
Speaker
And you being Tom, you've been spearheading those efforts. And I've always loved to participate. I absolutely love having you. And one of the great things is that I reach out and an NGO goes and then finds like 20 other people to come along. So it's a great scale factor because you're awesome in that recruitment drive.
Future Aspirations Outside Tech
00:29:22
Speaker
So if you were to give up technology tomorrow, what would you do for a living? Oh gosh. So my second hobby is real estate, just to let you know. I would probably go into full-time real estate.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah, real estate, you know, say anything in the sense of investing, development, selling, you name it, right? I think the reason I'm saying that is because I feel like it allows me, it's a very fast-paced like moving kind of landscape. It allows me to learn. I really like the dynamics.
00:30:03
Speaker
I really like kind of, you know, every area, every city, every geography that has these nuances and like going diving deep and understanding those nuances is just like very fascinating thing. It's almost like, yeah, it's like technology, right? So today is this flavor, tomorrow is another. You have to stay on your game, right? Like you have to know what's going on, the dynamics.
00:30:29
Speaker
uh what's you know what's coming what's not coming that's that's my passion i really like it i do it aside you know obviously from my day work but that's what i would do full time just go and sort of figure out like a play in that field
00:30:45
Speaker
buying and selling houses and things of that nature. Yeah, investing, helping people find their dream home. I mean, for some reason, I find it very satisfying. I think just the learning the market, I think that in itself just it's such a vastly different space than technology in itself. But like you understand the nuances and
00:31:08
Speaker
and, you know, development projects and sort of how they think and, you know, what's, and it could be things like, you know, certain technology fields, like say, tech or healthcare or biotech, it drives a set of
00:31:23
Speaker
Um, people to cities and that whole, you know, just, you see people kind of relocate throughout the country because concentration of different domains or tech businesses. It's so interesting and how, you know, real estate response to that and how this chat landscape changes. That whole, it's, it's constant learning. And I, and I love that, that part of it. Hey, well, I mean, we both moved countries for different jobs, you know,
Career Growth and Leadership at Amazon
00:31:56
Speaker
So you've had quite the ride at Amazon. You started off as a solutions architect over the wall for me, as I remember, in the Boston office, to now you're a leader of leaders. So you're a manager for managers. What was that ride like? Oh, what was that ride like?
00:32:21
Speaker
Look, I mean, all I did during that time was like, just focus on my passion. My passion was always was, you know, how do I, it was almost, I'll say this,
00:32:37
Speaker
At the very start when I started, I worked with a biotech company out of Boston. And I just wanted to learn as much as I could about biotech. So I went and sort of just socialized. Whenever I got the chance, anyone I knew that was in that field, whether it was technology or not, I just kind of learned that space so well.
00:32:59
Speaker
and just navigating myself. And then eventually, you know, my relationship with the customer improved as well over time to the point where they actually gave me a badge. So I was, I could go into their offices at my, you know, at my convenience and they had, they were very close to where I lived too in Cambridge. So I used to pop into the office and then eventually I ended up being in their org chart. So I had a dotted line, like a leader and then
00:33:25
Speaker
So I spent most of my time with my customer than being with Amazon, just to let you know. And, you know, they had their Christmas parties or, you know, they had their if people were leaving, leaving parties, I was always like on the invitation list. So, you know, they almost saw me as an extension to their team. And I love that stuff. And that whole kind of partnership with the customer really almost, you know, see myself as an extension of them. Yes. Within that bond. But it also helped me
00:33:55
Speaker
be impactful, like I was very intentional with where I focused because I knew exactly their needs. It wasn't more about, I'm a technology provider, you know, come to me with your questions and I can, you know, tell you what to do. It was more of where I saw inefficiencies, it just helped me go out and sort of say, hey, look, customer, maybe here's a couple of things you should think about, or here's maybe some ideas that you can maybe take on. And they appreciate that, right? Like that partnership,
00:34:24
Speaker
strengthened over time. And that helped me also like learn a lot that I could bring back to my group, my team back at Amazon and say, look, this is cool stuff that we are doing. And then have an opportunity to share broadcast, whether I did this through videos or publications and things. So that whole thing, right? Like it just, it gives you a brand, right? Like it helps you create a brand.
00:34:47
Speaker
And as you do so, it opens up doors as well and opportunities because you extend your network and you start socializing and working with teams. And that's kind of in itself as a door opener for career development. And as this happened, a lot of people came to me naturally and asked me questions like, what are you doing here? What are you doing that? So coaching and mentorship became something that I naturally did in my day to day job.
00:35:17
Speaker
led me to say, hey, look, maybe this is a passion that I want to pursue, right? Like, it was a passion of mine, don't get me wrong, but I love doing it. So that led me to pursue a career in the field of leadership, right, at Amazon. And that kind of has worked itself up now, right? So now I'm leading a larger group
00:35:38
Speaker
But it's the core and foundation to that. It was really doing what's right for the customer, using that opportunity, then be intentional with where you focus. It wasn't just, I am here, my task is the one, two, three, that's all I do.
00:35:56
Speaker
Have a core mission. What's your purpose? What's your vision? What's your focus on that? And if you focus on the things that you feel that you can make an impact on and use it as a navigator and then everything is as a byproduct. So I see career development and things, a byproduct of the good work you do. It shouldn't be a destination. It should be more of a
00:36:23
Speaker
Here is a set of things that would happen. You get your promotions, you get career opportunities, but it's not because that's the end goal. That'd be my advice and that's kind of how my journey has been so far at Amazon. I do remember speaking with another essay in Boston who, and I won't mention names, but was having a bit of a difficult time and said that you were the person that took him under your wing.
00:36:52
Speaker
and really made him successful in that. So that was definitely a good point for you. That's good to hear, Tom. And I learned a lot from others too, right? I mean, it's mutual relationship. Often in these, you say, took someone under your wing. It's almost like, I learned as much as they learned from me.
00:37:19
Speaker
But that's the beauty of it, right? Yeah, definitely. Well, I think that's all the questions I have for you. It's been an absolute pleasure. Are you doing anything like speaking engagements or anything like that and coming up here, are you going to be a re-invent?
Upcoming Events and Participation
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, so we have just kind of heads up on a couple of things that are coming. Maybe people are based on where you're located. So there's a woman at Cloud Summit in New York City on July 25th.
00:37:58
Speaker
at the Javits Center and I will be there. Obviously, we're trying to get a booth for She Builds and go out and essentially what our presence there is, it's an interview broadcast from the event, but interview customers, just hear a little bit more about them and their participation at the summit. I will be there. We also have
00:38:27
Speaker
a New York summit, AWS New York summit on the 26th, July 26th. That's also same venue. I will be there as well. You know, there's going to be a lot of key announcements and events and whatnot. So if you're there, you know, I don't want to say I have a booth there, but actually it's called the digital native business booth. So if you're around, come by that booth on the 26th, July 26th,
00:38:55
Speaker
It's the full day and then reinvent yet to be planned. Tom, I still waiting to see, but, you know, hoping to be there as well this year. I wish I could make it to New York for the, for the summit. Unfortunately, I can't do to other pre-planned engagements that have been around a long time, but it would be absolutely fabulous. So if you're a woman in technology, go to the, or a woman in cloud technology, go to the,
00:39:24
Speaker
The Woman at Cloud Summit. Yeah. The Woman at Cloud Summit. We sponsored the Woman at Cloud Summit, 25th. If you're just interested in technology, go to the AWS Summit as well and say hi. Exactly. All right. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you as always.
00:39:48
Speaker
And I look forward to seeing you this November up this way for Hour of Code again. Awesome. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Tom, for having me on your show. And yeah, just I hope let's stay connected. Love to do Hour of Code with you later this year. And if you have anything else you want to talk about on the podcast, always hit me up. Thank you. I'll definitely will. Awesome.
00:40:15
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Basement Programmer Podcast. I really appreciate you tuning in, and if you have any feedback or comments, of course, send me an email. Also, please consider subscribing. It lets me know that you're enjoying this production. I'm looking forward to you joining me for the next episode of the Basement Programmer Podcast. In the meantime, take care, stay safe, and keep learning.