Neil Metzler: 0:05

My name is Neil Metzler, and I'm a coach, mentor and trainer for careers in tech. Welcome to our program. I'm inviting you to take a step back. And imagine would you like to wake up every morning excited about what you do? What is the big idea keeping you up at night? And what if you are already closer to reaching it than you imagine, building a bridge to your next career step can be challenging. I know this, because I reinvented my career multiple times in multiple countries around the world, there is nothing like achieving a courageous goal that you set for yourself. Change and disruption are only accelerating careers are no longer linear. Let us choose to embrace this challenge and move forward together. Thank you. Well, Fred, welcome to your next big thing.

Fred Hoskyns: 0:56

Thank you so much Neil really excited to be here.

Neil Metzler: 1:00

Yeah, it's, it's a pleasure. We work together in London. And we've since both grown in new directions with our our own careers. And I've been inspired by the work that you've been up to, especially the content that you've been sharing on LinkedIn, about your career progression journey, and how you upskilled. So I think people who are interested in any of those topics about sector change, people management to IC, as well as upskill rescale, are really going to benefit from this episode. So welcome to the program.

Fred Hoskyns: 1:33

Nice, thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. It's great to chat, again, exciting your, your career journey as well. But yeah, really looking forward to talking about it.

Neil Metzler: 1:45

So in addition to the content, you've been posting about your upskill journey to AWS, not only have you moved into the cloud side of the business, but you've also transitioned from your career to date, and in a sales or an account manager type role to actually be now in a solutions architect role. So we're going to talk about some of the strategies and some of the leverage points you use to kind of build a bridge and also move up in your new sector and new industry, not only from oil and gas into E commerce, but then actually into cloud and into the technical solutions architect role. So I'm excited to speak with you. The first thing I'd love to ask Fred is coming out of university, you have a Bachelor of Arts in languages. So tell me, what do languages mean to you? First of all.

Fred Hoskyns: 2:42

I love that question Languages were the only thing I'll be upfront that I ever really enjoyed at school. In the UK, at least where I'd studied for my whole journey. I, I, they have French lessons from fairly early on from around age 10-11. When I joined my secondary school, there's then the option to take a second language, and right the way through that school journey, I would go into maths classes, I would hate them, I'd go into science classes, I would hate them. The only real passion I had was was languages. So when it came time to actually choosing my, my subject at university, it was a no brainer. And more than anything, I just I love the cultures of France and Italy being able to eat as much of their food as possible and watch a lot of their films as well. Yeah.

Neil Metzler: 3:36

So could you talk a little about what your maybe 12 or 24 months post graduation look like?

Fred Hoskyns: 3:43

Yeah, absolutely. I'll be upfront, I found it a bit of a struggle coming out of university because your, during your time at university, it's quite structured, you know, you have the whole roadmap in front of you, you know, you're either doing a three year four year course, particularly in in languages in the UK, you do four years, with your third year abroad. But then you finish your degree, and you're kind of spat out, and All right, go and, and try and find your way in the real world now. And particularly when you have I think people at the same age as you who were in the same class, or you were close with at university, who realized earlier on what they wanted to do, and they're already starting your careers, I think that can make it even more difficult. During my time at university in my between first and second years, I actually did an internship at an oil brokerage in Rome, primarily to improve my language skills and get a bit of hands on practice with Italian. But I stayed in contact with that company. And they in the intervening years had had started up an office in London, and I got back in contact with them a few months after finishing university. They had a job opening. I interviewed for it and I went and worked for them. The major benefit of working with with that firm is that they had a lot of clients in France and Italy and Europe. So it allowed me to actually put those language skills to the test. But that meant for the for the next two years in my career, I was working as a junior broker in the oil and gas industry. So it was a an interesting start to my career.

Neil Metzler: 5:18

So how did you then make your way into Amazon? And and how did you find your way into the global selling part of the business?

Fred Hoskyns: 5:26

I think at the same time, you can tell by that age, you have good instincts. And you can tell if you're really not enjoying a role, I think that's a sign that that either you need to make a big change within that role, we'll find something else. And I could tell within that industry, it was not somewhere that I wanted to spend my career. So it was actually through LinkedIn, a hiring manager, or a recruiter who worked with Amazon got in contact, they'd seen aspects of my profile that they thought would would work well, at Amazon, they helped explain what the role would look like at Amazon and I had been an Amazon customer at that point for about 10-15 years, you know, I think it was already very present in my life. And I'd, I didn't know anyone directly who worked there, but I'd read a lot about them. And I understood that it was a really good opportunity. So yeah, in May of 2017, I started working in the retail e commerce division of Amazon, and working as a vendor manager. So helping UK based companies, helping them start to supply their products to Amazon, and enlist on the amazon.co.uk website.

Neil Metzler: 6:41

So you found your way into Amazon. And I what I noticed about your story, Fred was how you made sure to maintain that relationship with that broker in Rome that you've done the internship with. And I think that building and maintaining relationships is so important, because we're standing here today, your two industries on from oil and gas, but it's important to remember the those methods those behaviors, the ways that we've been successful, and and learn from how we overcame challenges. So we can we can overcome new ones in the future. Right. So I want to now talk about how you made this career change from from E commerce into cloud. And I know that you had also been in a team lead role. So you had some people management experience? How did you make the change, though, into cloud, you know, going, going in that direction? It despite this challenge of learning something totally new, which is the fast growing cloud market and kind of proving yourself in that space?

Fred Hoskyns: 7:45

Yeah, I think it's really, it's really interesting, you say that, despite the challenge of of learning something new, because it's almost like rather than thinking of it, despite it being a challenge, I almost think of it as Oh, my God, it's an opportunity to learn something new, right? That's always been something really important to me. And particularly, the more I've progressed in my career, I think the more you, the more you can develop an idea of what are the most important aspects of your role to you. And over time, I think learning has become almost my, my North Star, right? My guiding principle. And one of the, I don't know, maybe some of your listeners will have read a book called Grit by Angela Duckworth, a psychologist in the US really amazing, inspiring woman. Her book, Grit really focuses on what makes successful people, people who have done amazing things in the world. Are there any characteristics that that unite them, and she talks about passion and perseverance as being two of them. Now, in that book, she also talks about one really useful thing you can do in life is almost create a motto for yourself, right? I can't quite remember exactly what hers was, but she almost gives you the exercise of go away and have some sort of principle that you can live by. And the one I came up with, for me was "Always do better, always learn more". And I think it's because it's that aspect of okay, well, I don't want to strive for perfection isn't because I don't believe anyone or anything can be perfect. I think if you always think you know what, I could have done slightly better on that project or that task, or whatever it was. And if you can always learn additional things from that. I think you're always going to be pushing yourself to move along. So going back to your question, it's not a question of despite a challenge, it was really the reason that I wanted to make that change was because I felt that there was this exciting new space, the cloud to learn that I had always been fascinated by but didn't know that much about. And one of the things that really helped and I know that you talk a lot about the fact that careers are no longer really the linear, right, I love the fact that having been at Amazon now for five plus years, they really do encourage you to move around the company. It's not like, right, this is your team, this is your role you're staying put, in the very first week that I joined the company five years ago, they have this intro to Amazon session where people from Alexa come and talk to people from AWS Advertising people from AWS. And I just found that that session, so fascinating, it kind of planted a very small seed of I'd like to find out more about AWS one day. Through connections that I'd made in the business and people who had moved over from the retail side, the E commerce side to AWS, I maintain those connections, I found out a bit more about what their role involved whether they thought that my skill set would be applicable to the AWS business, and ended up there are you also do you mentioned the fact that I was a team lead, I'm happy to go into a bit more about what that looked like as well.

Neil Metzler: 11:03

I really liked how you how you put that when you then landed in the cloud side of the business, you've made the transition from from e-com to cloud. Can you tell us more about how you built that bridge? We're going to talk later about your move from sales into Solutions Architect. But first of all, were there mentors or projects? Were there particularly salient points that you did intentionally to help you build that bridge?

Fred Hoskyns: 11:34

Yeah, I think there's, there's a lot of things, right. There's, I mean, particularly I, you know, I've read through and I'm a really big fan of the the five pillar method that you've devised, right? They're actually aspects of that, that really resonated when I think about how I built that bridge, right? Because you talk in there, one of the one of the pillars is mentors. And throughout my time at Amazon, on the the E commerce side, before coming over to AWS, I had a mentor, he was a really experienced person in the business, he sat in a different part of the business to me, just having that external perspective to your own team, and someone who, when I started to become more interested in AWS, someone who could give you fairly objective advice to help you on that, it's really good to think of, and again, someone who's not your manager, who's not a hiring manager in the team you plan to go into, I think that's really helpful. So mentors really helped. And just on that note, I would say, we can often think of mentorship as quite formal, right? I think you can, you can get mentors from anywhere, it might be your friend who's sitting next to you during the day, it might be a family member, you just want to get some ad hoc advice from mentors are all around us. And I've found in my whole career, even very senior people are very generous with their time. So you should try and try and use that when you can. Having said that, if you do go through the more formal mentoring approach, and get yourself a mentor, you really should really strive to and have the discipline to come to those calls prepared with an agenda prepared with goals that you want to set. Because that is someone who's who's giving their time to you, you should really respect that and get the most out of it. So mentors helped in that in that move over. When I moved over to AWS, I also got a mentor on the technical side, which I'm happy to talk a bit more about. Did there any questions, though, because I know there's other elements of the pillars that comes up to talk about just because I really felt like they they resonated with how I made that move over.

Neil Metzler: 13:43

Yeah, one of the things that I've found challenging and, and had friction or setbacks with at times is establishing my credibility in a new space. There were times when I felt that okay, yeah, I can see I'm capable to do this. How can I establish my credibility? So I'm wondering, maybe there were other steps that you took that helped you create a concrete reason to believe in you?

Fred Hoskyns: 14:08

Yeah, yeah, I think for sure, I think one of the main things and, and this is one of the things that I really like about AWS and ultimately impacted my decision to eventually move into a more technical role. We have something called AWS certifications, right. And, and, and that is, there are 12 of them. That is something exams that you can take where at the end of it, you get a badge to say you are certified in this particular area or domain of the cloud. They run right from the very foundations of cloud computing through to very specialized areas like networking and security. And before applying for the role at AWS, the hiring manager made it very clear that they would be open to people from with different backgrounds applying, they didn't necessarily have to have, you know, this amount of IT experience and or experience in a cloud computing company. But they made it clear that in order to signal your intent, and that you are really invested in this, that you should get the what we call the AWS cloud practitioner. That's like the entry level, AWS certification. I think doing going through that course, taking the time finding the time in between my day job and being able to come out of that, take a timed exam, and pass it and be able to show them you know what, I've done this, I now understand the core fundamentals of cloud computing, that it's a real confidence boost, because before I started studying for it, I thought, Well, surely, I don't have enough IT experience to actually succeed here.

Neil Metzler: 15:43

I love what you mentioned about signaling intent. So of course, there's establishing baseline knowledge. And I love the rigorous debate online about, do certifications matter? Yes, no. And I feel we could do a whole whole episode breaking that down. Why it's not a yes. No dichotomy. It's more like a yes. And in my view, but yeah, that signaling intent, right, I remember the day I took my Solutions Architect Associate exam, and I was so hyped. My friends and family knew I was going in, they knew that I had been on this growth and learning path. And they knew how much time and reading and studying I'd done, practice exams, you know, labs, getting into the account, actually building stuff yourself and checking the outputs seeing that things were connected properly. So when I when I got the message on screen that I passed, I think I went back to Li Ma, who we both know in the in the UK office, and Li, who is now also a solutions architect and has been on stage. And at that time we both met and it was it was so nice to be able to share that with another learner and say, hey, it's possible for someone from here to do that. And yeah, that is I was just joyful that day. And in that moment, so yeah, I hope it was your experience. When you did pass. I hope it was great. And I'd love to hear your words. Yeah.

Fred Hoskyns: 17:12

It's funny that you say that I not only put you further, you just talked there about the debate between how useful certifications are I was having that debate this morning with someone. And so you're right, it could go on to its own episode. But I love your story about just the elation you felt because I was very similar.

Neil Metzler: 17:31

So So Fred, you have since accomplished multiple of these certifications. And so And you've also blogged about your story. And I wondered if you could share one or two of the things you've learned that can help someone whether it's with a certification and technical certification, or anything important that they're that they're striving for, that has a big, you know, a big check point, like these exams do?

Fred Hoskyns: 17:58

Yeah, I think there's, I think there's, there's many elements to it, I think the two that I would highlight is, number one, be incremental in what you do, right. I before before I started taking a single AWS certification, if someone had said to me, in a year, you will have these seven AWS certifications, I would have laughed them out of the building, I wouldn't have believed them for a single second, you got to take these things in little incremental chunks that based on where you are in your learning path in your trajectory, in how much time you have during the day to study, you got to take them in manageable chunks. Otherwise, you're going to bite off more than you can chew and become demotivated. So that's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is then discipline, right? You, you've got the motivation and, and hopefully, you've got the motivation, because you're thinking about studying for a certification. And maybe you could ask yourself a bit more about where that motivation comes from. So you understand that, but that aside, presuming you've got the most motivation, you could have all the motivation in the world. And yet, unless you've got the discipline to sit down, whether it's, I'm going to take half an hour each evening to go through this course, or I'm gonna set Friday afternoons to do it. And I'm going to book the exam for this day, knowing that I've got that to work backwards from and that pressure to work towards. You're not You're not going to hit that goal, right. And that's not to say that, okay, exam and you know what, something came up at work that is just too urgent to deal with. That's not to say, you can't, you can't delay it. But you've got to implement that rigorous discipline to actually achieve those goals in in little minute bite sized steps.

Neil Metzler: 19:43

That's such a good point of emphasis, because it's hard to do that late in the process. Suddenly to go, oh, shoot, I have too much of a gap to my passing score. I now need to get rigorous. It's a lot better, as you said, to pace yourself to take it into Thanks to avoid feeling burnt out on it or, or, or feeling sometimes, like, you know what, maybe I'm not meant to pass this or maybe this is just one step too far for me. And yeah, yeah, I firmly believe that chunking and iteration, as well as things like connecting with peers, or especially, as you mentioned, setting regular habits. I used to do mornings, like one hour before the rest of my work. So I could use fresh brain on this, on this new material. And it when I, it's, it really didn't feel great. When I started, I was like, Oh, I have one extra hours stuff before everything else. But then I started to take pride, I was like, you know, I could feel my progress, I started the day off on a high note. And then the rest of the day, I wasn't anxious about what was happening, because I already felt that I logged a win in my book. And that was one thing that worked for me. So

Fred Hoskyns: 20:53

Completely, it is exactly that you chunk the chunk things, you do them incrementally, just you get a little confidence, dopamine boost, whatever you want to call it, each one you do. And just very briefly, you use I mentioned, techniques that you can take maybe pairing up with someone to study with. I actually along with a colleague last year, I founded something within AWS called the study buddy program, I if you're looking to cert, get yourself certified study for a certification, we found a lot of people had the motivation, but they lacked the time they lacked the accountability to do it. So we created a mechanism whereby you sign up, you say I want to take this certification by this date will match you with someone else in the business looking to do the same. And then you have that buddy, you have someone who can say, alright, let's meet, let's match up. Let's set ourselves a date. Exactly. And let's help hold ourselves accountable and make sure that I'm boosting you when you need it, and vice versa.

Neil Metzler: 21:51

Well, Fred, I think we'll take a break right there and come back in a moment for our second part.

Fred Hoskyns: 21:59

Awesome. Sounds good.

Neil Metzler: 22:00

This episode is sponsored by learning content creator, Adrian Cantrill. Fred and I just spoke about how effective skills training and a powerful certification can help you reach your next big thing. Adrian's learning content is always up to date. And it helps you prepare for exam performance, plus the real skills you need for the job. There's a one time purchase for lifetime access. So use the promo code in the show description and find your next certification today at (link in description). So Fred, you've arrived in AWS? How was it arriving in that new industry and getting your bearings there?

Fred Hoskyns: 22:38

Yeah, it was, it was a really, it was a combination of nerve wracking, but also super exciting, right? I think, obviously, I had had the experience earlier in my career of moving from oil and gas or E commerce. But I felt like the the amount that I learned and the amount I learned about working in a big, exciting company like Amazon, in my two years prior, it really did feel like a very big change, then coming over to AWS. And one of the things that really struck me was just how customer obsessed we are in this part of the business, right? In previous roles, customer obsession range across Amazon, and we're always talking about the customer. But in this role, particularly I got to talk directly with the people who were using consuming our services. And that was super inspiring, because you can see the business visions that people have and how they actually translate that into technology and, and utilization of our services in the cloud. One of the things that really helped and we've kind of touched upon it already is the certification aspect of the role, right? I think that the fact that you have these certifications, and while they are primarily aimed at AWS customers, it's also a really useful mechanism for people internal to AWS, being able to progress in their journeys, the fact that you you have these applications that you can take, and then you can demonstrate to your managers, to your peers, to your customers that you've achieved, it gives you that extra helping of confidence and progression. So it was it was definitely daunting. But I feel like a combination of sales experience that I'd had prior to joining AWS and then topping that up with improving my technical knowledge really gave me a good foundation to proceed.

Neil Metzler: 24:42

So you've been accumulating more and more technical knowledge at this point. So tell our listeners kind of what happened next.

Fred Hoskyns: 24:51

Yeah, I It's funny. So I mentioned earlier that I before applying for the role, I took the cloud practitioner certification that's really the entry level core fundamental concepts of cloud computing and an introduction to some of our services. In my team that I joined in AWS, while it is a sales role and account manager role, where you're dealing with customers and their business requirements, the team really encourages you to get extra certifications, because they know We'll then be better equipped to deal with our customers. So within the first three months, you're encouraged to take the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam, which obviously you've mentioned, was a really big thing that that you managed to get as well, it's a real step up from the cloud practitioner, it goes a lot more in depth on the different services gives you the opportunity to get a lot more hands on with AWS and the console, and how you actually build applications. But I really had, you know, and looking back at it, in hindsight, a lot of people often ask you, oh, did you ever have any sort of Eureka or lightbulb moments in your career where you realize something, when I started studying for this solutions, architects associate course, I had that lightbulb moment, right, the course I took was by someone called Adrian Cantrill, cantrill.io is where you can find his courses. And he teaches his students to be holistic students of the cloud. It's not just right. Here's the content, part of the exam. It's it's so much broader than that, rather than only focusing on AWS services, which in itself is, you know, it's complex and interesting and very technical. Yes, he tries to teach you about the internet, in general, he tries to teach you about wider concepts that you can use to actually better better learn the cloud. At this point, I didn't know at this point that there are undersea cables going under the Atlantic and all of the oceans around the world, which is where the internet, the data that traverses it is actually being transported across continents, and things like that.

Neil Metzler: 27:03

struction imagine the construction of those cables, right? This is fantastic. And like the thickness and the the ability to withstand pressure, and all sorts of elements and things like that. Yeah, I think it's fantastic.

Fred Hoskyns: 27:16

A is yeah, I'd encourage your listeners even to search for the ships that actually lay those undersea cables. They're fascinating, and whoever, whoever has to design those and actually implement them, kudos to them.

Neil Metzler: 27:30

So you mentioned this, this holistic approach, and working with the with the material and the learning community from from Adrian Cantrill. And I'm wondering how that lightbulb moment that that realization, or that awareness translated into action and next steps?

Fred Hoskyns: 27:50

Yeah, exactly. So I suppose you know, tangibly the lightbulb moment was, Wow, I find this super fascinating. I think it planted quite a firm seed in the back of my mind that one day, maybe not immediately, because I was still adjusting to a new industry, a new team, one day, I would love to try and see if I could do a more technical role. So with that seed planted, it allowed me to, to then take certain actions to plot that course a bit more firmly, right. We talked earlier about mentors. So I got a mentor who was a Solutions Architect. And that is the role that I'm now doing that it's the more more technical role at Amazon, where, rather than, like an account manager, who supports customers, as they, you know, from a business and strategy standpoint, that a solutions architect, while they absolutely focus on business and strategy, they are ultimately the main technical point of contact for our customers. And so a lot of these people, you know, they'll come from computer science backgrounds, and some of them will have been developers in the past, some of them will have been cloud architects at other companies. And I wanted more insight into that role. My mentor, who was a Solutions Architect, really was able to give that to me and say, right, this is what I do when I get up in the morning. These are my priorities. These are how I can measure my growth and my targets. These are the things that my my managers look out for. And and these are the things that I've recognized in the past that that really good Solutions Architects all have in common. So it allowed me to start to

Neil Metzler: 29:29

Wow, just a moment. Yeah, that's really excellent stuff. Because I for myself as an Account Manager, I often wondered how Solutions Architects continues to deliver consistently, because there is so much ambiguity and so much breadth of the challenges that customers face. So when you mentioned the kind of rigor and structure and kind of conceptual approach that you gain from that mentor, has that helped you in the role

Fred Hoskyns: 30:00

Absolutely without doubt, because it's allowed me, you hit the nail on the head when you say that the Solutions Architect role is ambiguous, right, because of the breadth of our services because of the depth because of the constant evolution of our services and new features that we're adding, you could you could feasibly spend all of your time just trying to keep up with the technical developments that are happening. But if you did that, you would be kind of abandoning your customers. And so those guidelines, those frameworks, that KPIs or targets that you have a really to make, allow you to make sure that you are constantly developing, that you're serving your customers to the best of your ability. And I think that's something that I've definitely found really helpful since starting. Again, I suppose it talks to the the slight difference between a sales-y account manager type role and a solutions architect more technical role in a sales role, often you will have right here is your target for the number that you have to hit the end of the quarter. And again, this is not specific to AWS or Amazon, this is this is talking about sales roles more generally, in a lot of technical roles, you won't have that aspect. And so while some people might find that a bit of a, you know, weight off the shoulders, it also means you don't quite have those parameters or those guidelines, those those guardrails to know, okay, I'm, I'm doing the role, and I know I'm doing it correctly. So yeah, any any way you can implement those, it might sometimes come from above, or it might be you yourself, who has to establish them, it's really going to help you.

Neil Metzler: 31:45

Thank you, Fred. I'm interested now that you have told us about these changes that you've made. As you reflect and look back, is there one thing that you have learned about yourself, now that you've been on this journey so far,

Fred Hoskyns: 32:00

the more time that I spend in this company, the more time that I spent seeing different people in different roles, the more that I realize it's very easy as human beings, to set limits, internal limits in our mind about what we can achieve, right. And actually, the only person that you're damaging there is yourself, if you if you release those mental blockers, that you're establishing for ourself, if you tell yourself, there's no reason I can't do X, Y, Z, you are much more likely to be able to achieve that. And I go back to the point of okay, you could say there is a debate about certifications. But if someone had told me two years ago, you will have seven AWS certifications. And you will be doing a technical role at AWS, you know, one of the most groundbreaking technological companies in the world, I would have not believed them for a single second. And I actually I look back and there was never a single point where I told myself, Oh, no, I can't do that role. I'm not technical enough, right? whether consciously or unconsciously, I didn't have those internal monologues saying that. And I think that applies to all humans, right? If you tell yourself, I can't do it, course you can't do it. If you tell yourself that you can, there's a much better chance you'll be able to achieve that.

Neil Metzler: 33:14

That's a great frame that I would love to share more broadly with our audience. And it resonates for me, because I had several points, where I was feeling friction on my learning path. I think it was the very first project I worked on, using using AWS products and services to deliver for our business team. And over on the E commerce side. So this was before I'd spent a day in AWS and I was really getting my feet wet. And I wasn't sure if I could deliver on time, I wasn't sure if I could deliver on spec. And I knew that a business leader and a senior data scientist were counting on me. And I think I said to my my teammate, the senior data scientist, who, Liz, she's a fantastic, fantastic person, and a mentor of mine. I said Liz, like, this is hard for me, you know, I'm not I'm just not a technical person. And she said, as long as you keep telling yourself that you're only holding yourself back. And, and she did so much for me in that moment. Because she, you know, challenged my assumptions about myself. And it also invited me or or invited me to give myself permission to grow beyond that limiting limiting belief that I had. So think I'm glad that you got to speak about that.

Fred Hoskyns: 34:39

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Bingo, and I think part of that I've been fortunate that mentors or people that I've worked with, whether it's the mentor I mentioned, Andrew who addressed that point head on whether it's my onboarding buddy and my new team Amir, where I've sometimes been in meetings with him and said, I don't know how to do that. I don't have a computer science degree. And he, you know, he doesn't let me settle for that. So we'll give it a try. Read the documentation, see if you can do it. And the confidence that it builds, when you actually remove that limiting belief, you go, you try it and you succeed. It just opens up so many doors to, to what you can achieve.

Neil Metzler: 35:21

I wanted to ask you, as we wrap up here to maybe finish us on on a high note here around another one of the pillars, which is marquee events. So I understood that you, you and I both had attended the AWS London summit in the past, is that right? How was your experience at that at that event and tell listeners what what these AWS summits are like? Yeah, it's

Fred Hoskyns: 35:44

a really, it was a fantastic experience, essentially, around the time that I started to think about AWS and become more more curious about it. I went again, but you were there as well to the May 2019 AWS summit in London. And what these events do, it's a way to get lots of different customers in one place lots of different experts on AWS service services, and also AWS partners, third parties who have their own expertise in different areas, whether it's migrations or particular software as a service solutions, you get them all in a big conference hall lots of different talks that you can go to to increase your technical breadth and depth and learn about AWS services and programs. And it's just this amazing melting pot of industry experts and, and fun conversations, networking, the whole shebang, all packaged together, I think you've touched on an important point around events. And them being another of the the five pillars, that that event that I attended in May 2019. Again, if there was a seed about whether I was interested in AWS, then that provides it allowed it to grow a lot, allow me to ask a lot of questions of very open, very interesting people that maybe answered some of the doubts I had from from myself about my confidence and my ability to transition over to that industry. It allowed me to actually make some some networking connections, who I would then go on to meet later in the offices when I was preparing for the interview. And it just allows you to get a much better feel for whatever element that you're exploring in that particular event is.

Neil Metzler: 37:34

For me, yes, just as you said it, the marquee events allow you to connect with the people and the ideas crucial for your next big thing. And my experience was it allowed me to come out from behind the monitor behind the laptop, see these customer journeys on stage, like with great production value, whether virtual or in person. And it just made it all kind of concrete and real for me so that it was such a powerful reinforcement to my learning. So that's why I encourage anyone who's changing industry to try to identify what the marquee events are for your target industry, to really go and be a participant there to go in with an intent to learn the key messages and and to generate some, you know, some follow up conversations from that I'm including with hiring managers and information as well. So, Fred, thank you so much. Thank you so much for sitting down with us and sharing a bit about your journey. And are there any projects or things that you're looking forward to as you you look ahead to next year, what's on your agenda? Or maybe your learning agenda, anything you'd like to share before we go?

Fred Hoskyns: 38:46

Yeah, there's 1,000,001 things I'd like to talk about, especially being new to the role opens up all these possibilities that you didn't know existed before you start. I can get involved in this. And the one the one that I would talk about, and it's by no means more important than the others, but it's something I'm really passionate about. I was talking earlier about the Study Buddy Program where we match two learners studying for an AWS certification. I've always thought in the back of my mind that, you know, why does this have to be limited to an internal thing? There are people all around the world who want to study for AWS certifications and would really benefit from having that buddy to help on that learning journey. So we're in the process of exploring what that could look like if we were to offer it to AWS customers, for example, if they have a lot of people in their business who need to get certified or indeed to the to the general public, if if they're thinking about a career change or a role move or just exactly broadening deepening their technical knowledge if they could get paired up with someone to help really foster those those positive actions then I think that will be really exciting. I think

Neil Metzler: 40:03

Well, thank you so much, Fred. We'll go ahead and include a few links in the show notes if anyone's interested to follow up on their learning journey from here. And once again, thank you so much for sitting down with me today, Fred.

Fred Hoskyns: 40:16

Thanks for having me, Neil. It's been a pleasure.