[jstream67]

I work with a lot of Amazon AWS engineers as part of my job. I find that they are no better than any regular non AWS employee with some AWS experience. In many cases the Amazon employees are actually pretty new and have a lot less experience than the contractors they are working with - but their egos are massive.

The main thing that is different about the AWS folks is they expect people to treat them like they are geniuses because they work at Amazon. Whatever solution they come up with becomes "the gold standard" because of who they work for, even if it doesn't work. The other thing that sets them apart is they can spin up free amazon accounts to test things - which is an incredibly massive advantage that they do not extend to contractors