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I think I've seen you post something similar on r/aws about how Rick was "top DynamoDb person at AWS" (apologies if that wasn't you). I think you are overestima

I think I've seen you post something similar on r/aws about how Rick was "top DynamoDb person at AWS" (apologies if that wasn't you). I think you are overestimating Rick's "rank". I just looked him up (I had not heard of him before seeing his name mentioned on r/aws a few days ago) and he was an L7 TPM/Practice Manager in AWS's sales organization. That's not really a notably high position, and in the grand scheme of Amazon pay scales, isn't that high up. An L7 TPM gets paid about the same as, or sometimes less than, an L6 software dev (L6 is "senior", which is ~5-10 years of experience). Also, him being in the sales org means he had practically nothing to do with the engineering of the service. AWS Sales is a revolving door of people. I mean no offense towards Rick (again, I didn't know him or even know of him before I read his name in a comment a few days ago), but I would not read anything at all into the fact that an L7 Sales TPM left for another company.

gigatexal 5y ago
was not me at r/aws unless he posts here about it we can't really know -- we can only speculate but I think he had a higher amount of influence than his title/rank might suggest. I think Rick's influence with respect to DynamoDB is akin to that of Kelsey Hightower's influence over k8s at Google.
belter 5y ago
You never heard of Rick Houlihan? He is the 90% of DynamoDB Evangelism... At the same time you are able to this internal lookups? Do you work with DynamoDB? AWS re:Invent 2018: Amazon DynamoDB Deep Dive: Advanced Design Patterns for DynamoDB (DAT401) https://youtu.be/HaEPXoXVf2k https://youtu.be/HaEPXoXVf2k AWS re:Invent 2019: [REPEAT 1] Amazon DynamoDB deep dive: Advanced design patterns (DAT403-R1) https://youtu.be/6yqfmXiZTlM https://youtu.be/6yqfmXiZTlM AWS re:Invent 2020: Amazon DynamoDB advanced design patterns – Part 1 https://youtu.be/MF9a1UNOAQo https://youtu.be/MF9a1UNOAQo AWS re:Invent 2020: Amazon DynamoDB advanced design patterns – Part 2 https://youtu.be/_KNrRdWD25M https://youtu.be/_KNrRdWD25M AWS re:Invent 2021 - DynamoDB deep dive: Advanced design patterns https://youtu.be/xfxBhvGpoa0 https://youtu.be/xfxBhvGpoa0 Amazon DynamoDB | Office Hours with Rick Houlihan: Breaking down the design process for NoSQL applications https://www.twitch.tv/videos/761425806 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/761425806
- amzn-throw 5y ago
  Do you expect the engineers on your team to know the top sales person at your company? This person might be responsible for the majority of evangelism and revenue for the company. Do you expect the SDEs to know about him? Again, no shot against against Rick - he is amazing, smart, technical, competent, and a deep owner. But the average SDE on the team won't know about these or watch these talks. There are too many deep internal engineering challenges to solve.
  - belter 5y ago
    Are you calling the person who did the core DynamoDB Technical Deep Dive sessions at reInvent, for the last 4 years in a row, a sales person?
    - amzn-throw 5y ago
      What do you think Solutions Architects and Developer Advocates (between the two groups who do most Re:invent sessions) are? Hell, what do you think re:Invent is? It's a sales conference. In any company you have two groups of people: Those that build the product, and those that sell it. Ultimately, solutions architects and developer advocates are there to help sell the product. Of course Amazon is customer obsessed. And genuinely interested in ensuring customers have a good experience, and their technical needs are met - through education, support, and architectural guidance. But ultimately, that's what it is.
      - belter 5y ago
        I think I understand now why he left...
    - awsthro00945 5y ago
      There are over a thousand breakout sessions at every reinvent every year. Some of the speakers are sales people, some are engineers, some are managers. There are L5 or junior engineers who give reinvent session talks. It's a fun gig, but it doesn't mean that the speaker is some top executive or anything like that. Rich was in the sales org. His primary job was sales. Reinvent is a sales conference. Speaking at reinvent is a sales pitch. He was a salesperson. I'm not sure why you're so offended by that. Being a salesperson isn't bad, it's just an explanation for why engineers wouldn't have heard of him.
rhoulihan 5y ago
Actually, I was a direct report to Colin Lazier (https://twitter.com/clazier https://twitter.com/clazier) who is the GM for DynamoDB, Keyspaces, and Glue Elastic Views. I was the original TPM for DocumentDB before joining the Professional Services team as a Senior Practice Manager to head up the NoSQL Blackbelt team which led the archtecture/design effort for Amazon's RDBMS->NoSQL migration. I was brought back to the service team by Jim Scharf to lead the technical solutions team for strategic accounts, but I maintained the org chart role of Senior Practice Manager until I left for MongoDB. Compensation was a minor issue. I was an org chart aberration already and AWS pulled out all the stops to retain me. I will always appreciate the opportunity that AWS provided me and my time at DynamoDB will always hold a special place in my heart. I really do believe that MongoDB is poised to do great things and my decision had more to do with being a part of that than anything else.
- gigatexal 5y ago
  Whoa straight from the source!

gigatexal 5y ago

was not me at r/aws unless he posts here about it we can't really know -- we can only speculate but I think he had a higher amount of influence than his title/rank might suggest. I think Rick's influence with respect to DynamoDB is akin to that of Kelsey Hightower's influence over k8s at Google.

belter 5y ago

You never heard of Rick Houlihan? He is the 90% of DynamoDB Evangelism... At the same time you are able to this internal lookups? Do you work with DynamoDB? AWS re:Invent 2018: Amazon DynamoDB Deep Dive: Advanced Design Patterns for DynamoDB (DAT401) https://youtu.be/HaEPXoXVf2k https://youtu.be/HaEPXoXVf2k AWS re:Invent 2019: [REPEAT 1] Amazon DynamoDB deep dive: Advanced design patterns (DAT403-R1) https://youtu.be/6yqfmXiZTlM https://youtu.be/6yqfmXiZTlM AWS re:Invent 2020: Amazon DynamoDB advanced design patterns – Part 1 https://youtu.be/MF9a1UNOAQo https://youtu.be/MF9a1UNOAQo AWS re:Invent 2020: Amazon DynamoDB advanced design patterns – Part 2 https://youtu.be/_KNrRdWD25M https://youtu.be/_KNrRdWD25M AWS re:Invent 2021 - DynamoDB deep dive: Advanced design patterns https://youtu.be/xfxBhvGpoa0 https://youtu.be/xfxBhvGpoa0 Amazon DynamoDB | Office Hours with Rick Houlihan: Breaking down the design process for NoSQL applications https://www.twitch.tv/videos/761425806 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/761425806

amzn-throw 5y ago
Do you expect the engineers on your team to know the top sales person at your company? This person might be responsible for the majority of evangelism and revenue for the company. Do you expect the SDEs to know about him? Again, no shot against against Rick - he is amazing, smart, technical, competent, and a deep owner. But the average SDE on the team won't know about these or watch these talks. There are too many deep internal engineering challenges to solve.
- belter 5y ago
  Are you calling the person who did the core DynamoDB Technical Deep Dive sessions at reInvent, for the last 4 years in a row, a sales person?
  - amzn-throw 5y ago
    What do you think Solutions Architects and Developer Advocates (between the two groups who do most Re:invent sessions) are? Hell, what do you think re:Invent is? It's a sales conference. In any company you have two groups of people: Those that build the product, and those that sell it. Ultimately, solutions architects and developer advocates are there to help sell the product. Of course Amazon is customer obsessed. And genuinely interested in ensuring customers have a good experience, and their technical needs are met - through education, support, and architectural guidance. But ultimately, that's what it is.
    - belter 5y ago
      I think I understand now why he left...
  - awsthro00945 5y ago
    There are over a thousand breakout sessions at every reinvent every year. Some of the speakers are sales people, some are engineers, some are managers. There are L5 or junior engineers who give reinvent session talks. It's a fun gig, but it doesn't mean that the speaker is some top executive or anything like that. Rich was in the sales org. His primary job was sales. Reinvent is a sales conference. Speaking at reinvent is a sales pitch. He was a salesperson. I'm not sure why you're so offended by that. Being a salesperson isn't bad, it's just an explanation for why engineers wouldn't have heard of him.

rhoulihan 5y ago

Actually, I was a direct report to Colin Lazier (https://twitter.com/clazier https://twitter.com/clazier) who is the GM for DynamoDB, Keyspaces, and Glue Elastic Views. I was the original TPM for DocumentDB before joining the Professional Services team as a Senior Practice Manager to head up the NoSQL Blackbelt team which led the archtecture/design effort for Amazon's RDBMS->NoSQL migration. I was brought back to the service team by Jim Scharf to lead the technical solutions team for strategic accounts, but I maintained the org chart role of Senior Practice Manager until I left for MongoDB. Compensation was a minor issue. I was an org chart aberration already and AWS pulled out all the stops to retain me. I will always appreciate the opportunity that AWS provided me and my time at DynamoDB will always hold a special place in my heart. I really do believe that MongoDB is poised to do great things and my decision had more to do with being a part of that than anything else.

gigatexal 5y ago
Whoa straight from the source!