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Dr. Matt Wood, who joined AWS in Europe in early 2010, pretty much against the opinion of a few people. He had a tremendous career at AWS, starting as a tech evangelist and ending up very high in the rankings.

If you happen to be at re:Invent these days and see him, tell him Simone says hi :)

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It seems like the best people that my employers have hired are not just "better" but "different" than most other employees. Unfortunately, the criteria and methods that most firms use are designed to reduce the risk of a bad hire, instead of maximizing the odds of hiring someone amazing.

Software is a creative business, so someone thinking outside of the box can out-gun someone pumping out 10000 lines of code in a week. But companies are testing your ability to pump out nice enough lines of code. What about a coding test where you have to 'delete' the right lines of code. Or a whiteboard exercise where you choose what NOT to work on. Those things are not tested.

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