Friday, February 14th is my last day at Amazon.
I’ve been at Amazon for over 5½ half years, and it’s been a great run. I came from 8 years of leading technology at Artsy, and wanted to go back to coding. I found a Principal Engineer role to help launch the new AWS Data Exchange service. I was excited to work on a marketplace (Artsy is a marketplace for fine art), and the idea of a service that could connect data providers and data consumers at Amazon scale was big. Plus, I was finally going to learn how Amazon, and especially AWS, was so relentlessly successful, from within.
I half-jokingly talked of this as semi-retirement, because being an individual contributor at a F.A.A.N.G. seemed a lot easier than being CTO of a company that had grown from seed stage to Series D, raising $100MM. It was certainly different. Six months into my IC role the service had launched and I felt that I had made the right decision. I didn’t write enough code though, and was missing working on open-source (Artsy was open-source by default), so I moved to OpenSearch, a fork of Elasticsearch sponsored by Amazon, in 2021. That year was incredibly exciting work, getting the product off the ground, followed by steady growth, culminating with OpenSearch Project joining the Linux Foundation in 2024. In thinking about what to do next, I was not sure I could beat helping convince a 2.5 trillion dollar company to release control of a key project to a non-profit.
What have I learned over the years? If anything, it’s that Amazon is a unique company that is capable of changing its mind, but it’s not for the fainthearted. If you are considering a job there, I recommend it.
Allow me to share a few thoughts from my tenure.
- Nobody is irreplaceable, but people make all the difference.
- A successful business is a simple one, and does what customers are asking, and willing to pay for.
- Writing well is a superpower, and a useful tool for influencing people.
- If you are passionate about what you’re building, it will not feel like work.
- Most people will recognize and appreciate your passion, and maybe even give you the benefit of the doubt.
- There is a time and place where criticism can bring value, be sure you know your intention or value before giving it, or risk losing trust.
Finally, I’m forever grateful for my colleagues, the company leaders, and the Amazon PE community.
So, what’s next? We shall see! My criteria for a new role are as follows.
- I want to work for a company that has a high NPS score of both employee and customer happiness.
- I want to continue increasing my time living outside of NYC, especially in Latin or South America, and therefore be able to do much of my focused work remotely.
I recognize that I am privileged and extremely lucky to have opportunities where both of these can be met.
Onward!