Amazon Web Services keeps hiring for experience: Deirdré Straughan

When I wrote about AWS hiring for experience recently I got some pushback. One of the issues raised was the the list of folks I was talking about were all white men. Very fair point. I was really pleased therefore when Deirdré pinged me on twitter yesterday to comment on that post, and to self identify as one of the experienced ones. Alongside Tim Bray and James Gosling, Deirdré is a Sun alumna. Indeed she played a really interesting role at the company.

When we look back at the history of modern technical engagement and communications Sun is right up there as an exemplar. Deirdré helped define the culture of outbound communications by engineers at the firm. Steeped in engineering and open systems experience it’s great that she is joining the AWS Open team alongside Zaheda Bhorat and Adrian Cockcroft.

You might enjoy this Monktoberfest talk by Deirdré about “marketing your tech talent” – it contains a great deal of wisdom about how to engage with technical influencers. It will benefit all of us the more open AWS becomes about how, why and what it is building and the choices it is making.

AWS is a client.