I sat down with Werner Vogels

Technical leadership is about solving real problems, not chasing buzz. Werner Vogels reminds leaders to focus on the pain points customers face, whether that's a simple immutable ledger instead of blockchain or avoiding unnecessary generative AI projects. He frames decisions as two-way doors-move fast with 70% of the data-and one-way doors-slow down and think deeply before committing to irreversible changes.

At Amazon scale, failure is expected and must be planned. By categorizing systems into tiers of availability and accepting that not every service needs five-nines, leaders can allocate effort where it matters. Owning the services you build means carrying the pager, which creates empathy and rapid learning. The advice to build only when you can't buy, but to own the long-term critical components, balances cost, control, and innovation.

AI is presented not as magic but as a compiler that offloads repetitive work, giving engineers time to focus on product value, customer understanding, and clear decision-making. Visibility into cost, through real-time dashboards, turns spending into a product conversation rather than a finance afterthought. The overarching message is that technology should give leaders and teams more time, not less, by aligning effort with genuine problems and disciplined execution.