[gigatexal]

Maybe that was the problem. He cited that there was seemingly not enough effort in making DynamoDB better as evidenced by the many orthogonally very close other DBs that AWS promotes. If Rick was ears to the ground listening to customers and sending back feedback but it was falling on deaf ears that's enough ground for someone as high up and as influential and productive as him to leave. It also speaks to inner AWS turmoil at least at DynamoDB.

[amzn-throw]

Based on what I know, that's not the case.

DDB is a steady ship. The explanation on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30009611 is likely the best explanation. L7 TPMs make the same money as L6 SDEs.

Getting promoted to L8 - director - is a monumental effort and likely seemed much harder than pursuing a comprable position at MongoDB.

Good for him for doing it, and for making Amazon take a long hard look at every way they failed in not keeping him.

[awsthro00945]

>It also speaks to inner AWS turmoil at least at DynamoDB.

How? Rick wasn't part of the DynamoDB service team. He wasn't an engineer, nor a manager on the team, nor even a product manager. He was a salesperson that specialized in DDB. He most likely had very little interactions, if any, with the engineering team. I don't see how him leaving speaks at all to anything about the inner workings of the engineering teams.

Rick seems cool, and after skimming some of his chats he seems really knowledgeable about the customer-facing side of DDB, and I mean absolutely no disrespect to him. But I think you're making way too many assumptions about his "rank" and "influence" within the company.