I had worked for a few years in traditional, Japanese companies and was used to their style of working. I remember, in my first month or so, I was asking my manager for permission to do something – of course this would have been required at my old companies. His reaction was literally like “Why are you asking me? Just do it.” Bias for action, especially when it comes to focusing on our customers, is totally different here and I just haven’t experienced this at other companies.

Yes, actually I had to go to data centers a few times a year at previous jobs, although those were more enterprise customers renting a rack or half rack in a data center.

I would say it has helped me focus quite a bit. We have our Leadership Principles, and basing my actions off of these has really helped me focus.

Focus on our Leadership Principles. Of course having experience in IT and data centers is helpful, but having the qualities as shown in our Leadership Principles is essential. AWS is an exciting, fast-paced place to work – and remember, it’s always day one.

I really enjoy it. Our team is incredibly diverse and this is a huge benefit. Just in Japan we have an incredibly diverse team of people from all over the world and this leads to incredible diversity in viewpoints. We had a series of meetings on Diversity and Inclusion – I actually got to lead one of them. These meetings were great, and they helped me not only make AWS stronger, but also focus on our incredibly diverse customers as well.

My mentors and coworkers are great. AWS is such a huge organization so that nobody can know everything, even for your job area – everyone is aware of this, they understand it, and are willing to learn. For example, I changed from DCO to logistics, and I got to train my trainer in a variety of things.

Usually I spend time with my wife, study – I am working on a computer science degree, or focus on my investments.