Michael Smith Jr.

March 10, 2021

Always Be Learning

I have had many different gigs over my lifetime.

Each of them has some aspect that is slightly or even radically different than past gigs but all of them share a common trait. I have to learn something new in order to perform my duties.

I keep a daily log on an internal wiki at AWS. It helps me find stuff since it is searchable and I since it's by day I can recall stuff on the calendar but get the link to the doc from my log. With the amount of meetings and papers that go around - I need to be able to index my days. So far it has been quite simple, but useful.

Let's list what is stretching me at AWS:

  • Managing scale businesses - the scale is astonishing
  • Managing large teams across APJ with the scale issue in mind
  • Range of day to day complexities - mostly back to the scale issue
  • Defining strategy knowing that even small changes can have massive impacts - both good & bad
  • Staying focuses on the customer when scale almost always gets in the way
  • Improving my writing - but always discovering someone is way better at it than me

For sure I am learning lots of new tricks and also coming to grips with how much I don't know. Which is a lot.

My advice is discover what you can learn in any gig and make the most of it.