Building high-performance teams at AWS: insights from an AWS intern

This is my first internship ever. I’ve worked as a PR assistant at AWS since mid-June, just one week after finishing my third year at Northwestern University. Throughout my time at AWS, I’ve shadowed media interviews (thank you, Dr. Sherry Marcus), reported on media coverage and trends, staffed AWS Summit New York and AWS re:Inforce, and wrote for Life at AWS.

I’ve scheduled over 25 coffee chats with Amazonians on and beyond my team to learn more about the people that make the company what it is. During my chat with AWS Comms Director Matt Lambert, a New Zealand native and All Blacks rugby superfan, he likened AWS to a high-performance sports team. That stuck with me, so I asked the 10+ year Amazonian to dive deeper into this concept.

I asked Matt about how he defines high performance and how AWS fits the bill. He smiled and spun in his chair, “I actually wrote it down because I wanted to get this one right.” He opened his laptop and read, “High performance is about continually pushing yourself to be better every day — being smarter, faster, kinder, more inventive, and never settling. High performance is what leads us to deliver better service to our customers.”

Matt turned to me again. “I've got many friends who are ex-Amazonians, and they always point to this being the best time in their career. They always take parts of what they learned here with them,” he said. “They have things that resemble the Leadership Principles and Amazon’s Two-Pizza teams. That's testament to the high-performance culture that we build here.”

I’d define high-performance as some combination of quantity and quality—someone who produces a lot of work and does it well. Sometimes, I found it difficult to meet those criteria myself. Sure, I can update a spreadsheet right but can I update it better? Still, I tried to automate more tasks, even small tasks, so that the team wouldn’t need to do it manually. And across the entire team and the number of projects we work on, that time adds up.

But Matt said high-performance is more than what happens inside the office. It travels with you. “This isn’t just professional. It’s also personal,” he said. “It’s about being a better dad, being a better son, being a better neighbor.” High-performance enters and exits the office building. It’s more than performing well at work, it’s also about improving as a person.

Skye Garcia, a 2024 AWS summer intern in Amazon's Global Communications and Community Impact organization.

“One of the great things about rugby is it takes people of all different shapes and sizes,” Matt said. “You have tall people who are good at jumping playing in the second row. You have very strong people that are good at scrummaging playing in the front row. You have very quick people playing in the backs. Everyone has something that they bring to the game. And it’s the same here.” He gestured around the office, “You can't win a rugby game with all the same person. So, you need to embrace that diversity.”

If I replaced rugby with another sport—one I was familiar with— Matt’s point made a lot more sense. I played volleyball in high school and although I don’t stand taller than 5 1/2 feet, I was the second tallest on the team and responsible for spiking and blocking, while other teammates were strategically positioned to defend as they were better at getting to the ball quickly.

Matt continued, “In order to win, you've got to play to those differences. Those differences become strengths. And for me, that’s how I see it like a rugby team,” he said. “We have to lean on all of those differences here to be a stronger team.”

Teams need to have players with different skill sets. Even my experience as a journalism student found its way into the office. In August, the executive social media team asked another intern, Jazlyn White, and I to attend an intern social event and collect content. As Jazlyn recorded the speaker, I walked through the room to collect video footage and take pictures. Jazlyn took lead interviewing attendees, and I collected their contact information for follow-up questions. As a journalism student, this was common practice— but when our microphone failed and the speaker’s audio wasn’t recorded, the social team was able to use the footage I collected and contact the interns Jazlyn and I interviewed.  

“The thing I really appreciate is we understand how we’re on the forefront of technology,” Matt began. “Some of the technologies that we’re creating as a company have never existed in all of human history. In some cases, there’s no words to describe that technology and how it works—and it’s our job to do that. We need to insist on the highest standards as a communications organization because we need to understand— ‘how do we want people talking about this thing? And not just next week or next year, but next decade or next century?'”

“How do you insist on the highest standards and motivate your team to do their best work?” I asked.

“Lead by example,” he said. “If I don’t hold myself to the highest standards—higher than anyone else—how can I expect anyone to follow me? How can I expect people to understand what my version of good looks like?”

“And how do you maintain those standards for yourself?” I asked.

“Self-reflection,” he answered. “Every Sunday night I’ll write a list. Everything in the list is something that I want to improve about myself, and how I want to be a better person in the coming week.”

I won’t lie— I struggled to maintain high standards at AWS. I am a bit of a perfectionist, especially when I write, and I pushed deadlines just to add a word here and a sentence there—until everything sounded perfect. But in the last couple weeks of the internship, I made compromises. I’d send out a story to be reviewed even if I wasn’t 100% happy with it. Because when I got back those edits, I had a stronger understanding of what the story was missing and where I could go with it. I’ve learned how to navigate ambiguity, dive deep on the things that matter, and ask the right questions to get me to where I need to go.  

Matt and I were 27 minutes into our chat, and I saved this question for last. I thought it was a bit silly, but afterward, I realized that it probably should’ve been my icebreaker: “So, if Amazon had a rugby team, who from AWS would be your first pick and why?”

He chuckled for a second before answering, “Well, I have to say (AWS CEO) Matt Garman.”

Matt explained that he’s a fan of utility players. Take Beauden Barrett. He’s a New Zealand fullback, but he can play on the wing, in the centers, or at 10 and be world class at any position. He can kick, pass, and tackle.

“How is Garman a utility player?” I asked.

“He’s the engineer that can dive down to code-level details. He can also go up to the 100,000-foot view and sit with a CEO, CFO, or anyone else in the C-Suite and talk business strategy,” Matt said.

Nearly 20 years ago, Garman interned at AWS. He was hired full-time in 2006, after finishing his MBA at, coincidentally for me, Northwestern University, and became CEO of AWS June 2024. Hopefully, there’s something in the water at NU.

“Are you a specialist or utility player?” I asked.

“Me?” Matt questioned. I nodded. “You mean now or when I was playing rugby?”

“Both,” I decided.

“When I was playing rugby, I was a utility,” he said. “I’d play on the wing, I’d play fullback, I’d play at 10.”

I nodded like I understood. I made a note to look up rugby positions after the interview. He continued, “But I’d like to be a utility here as well. I want to be a specialist in communications, but I also want to dive into the tech and talk about customer strategy. I want to do the issues, do policy, do infrastructure, do internal, do social.”

“Every day is a school day,” Matt said, smiling. “The day you stop learning is the day you die.”

From the sound of it, Matt Lambert wanted to do everything and—after over a decade of working at AWS—I had no doubts that he could. But he still didn’t claim to be a utility player, he wanted to be one. And as an intern, I felt the same: I wanted to do well, and I wanted to work on several projects at once. And after our chat, I wanted to be a utility player, too.  

About halfway through the interview, Matt gave me some advice, and I think it’s something that all interns, new hires, and late professionals should hear. It’s something I’ve been thinking about as I start my last year at NU. He said, “You’ll show your quality in time.” Basically, you’re not here to prove anything. You’re here because you’re good. So, relax and take your time.