Feeling a restless urge to shift your career trajectory? AWS Senior Vice President Colleen Aubrey, a veteran of over two decades at Amazon, reveals her three indispensable criteria for assessing job fulfillment: working with the right boss, being part of the right team, and engaging with the right business area. Her insights offer a compelling framework for tech professionals navigating their careers in an ever-evolving landscape.
In the dynamic world of technology, career paths are rarely linear. Many professionals find themselves at crossroads, questioning whether their current role truly aligns with their aspirations and potential. For those grappling with this uncertainty, Colleen Aubrey, the AWS Senior Vice President of Applied AI Solutions, offers invaluable guidance drawn from her more than 20 years at Amazon, where she also built its advertising business from the ground up and is a member of the company’s elite S-Team.
Aubrey credits “constant change” as the primary reason for her sustained engagement and fulfillment at Amazon. “Pretty much every six months, something significant changes,” she told Business Insider. This constant evolution—new product ideas, new problems to solve, new customers to understand—has kept her invigorated. She argues that for anyone questioning their current role, three fundamental elements must be in place to foster a truly satisfying work experience.
The Three Pillars of Career Satisfaction
Aubrey advises professionals to check off three critical boxes. If these elements aren’t present, it might be time to re-evaluate your current situation and consider a change. When these elements align, she asserts, “work is invigorating.”
1. The Right Boss: A Foundation of Mutual Respect and Growth
The relationship with your leader is paramount. Aubrey emphasizes the need for mutual respect, inspiration, and a continuous learning environment. She prompts us to ask: “Are you working for a leader that you respect, that you’re inspired by, that you’re learning from, and vice versa?”
A good leader provides crucial support, offering things only they can deliver, such as resourcing, facilitating hard decisions, making trade-offs, exercising judgment calls, ensuring proper prioritization, providing advocacy, and offering essential big-picture thinking. If you find yourself with a mismatched manager, even one trying their best, and feel “disenchanted,” it can be profoundly challenging. Staying in such a role out of inertia can lead to persistent dissatisfaction.
2. The Right Team: Cultivating Innovation and Learning
Beyond the boss, the immediate team environment significantly impacts job satisfaction. Aubrey, who has worked with numerous teams during her long tenure, highlights the importance of working alongside individuals from whom you can genuinely learn. The key questions here are: “Are they challenging you, or is it a creative and innovative environment that works for you?”
This philosophy resonates deeply with Amazon’s famous “two-pizza teams” concept, which advocates for small, autonomous teams—ideally six to eight people—that can be fed by just two pizzas. This model is designed to promote rapid innovation and end-to-end ownership, fostering an environment where team members can challenge each other creatively and learn continuously.
3. The Right Part of the Business: Aligning Passion with Purpose
Finally, Aubrey stresses the importance of engaging with the stage and type of business that aligns with your innate problem-solving preferences. “It’s important to think through what is the type of product and business and problem that you like solving,” she explains. This involves understanding the characteristics of the work that truly motivates you.
For example, she mentions a colleague who thrived on optimizing costs and supply chains within the complex retail sector. Personally, Aubrey is drawn to “X-factor growth,” preferring to work on projects ripe for exponential expansion. She seeks the “blank sheet of paper” where she can build new ventures from the ground up, highlighting the importance of identifying whether you prefer refining existing systems or pioneering new ones.
Broader Insights on Career Pivots in Tech
Aubrey’s advice dovetails with broader observations about career changes in the modern workforce. Many professionals will navigate multiple roles and even entirely new careers throughout their lives. According to a Gallup report, a significant portion of the workforce remains unengaged, underscoring the universal struggle for fulfilling work. This sentiment is echoed in advice suggesting that persistent unhappiness, a wandering passion, or sheer boredom are undeniable signs it’s time for a change.
The tech industry, characterized by its rapid evolution, frequently demands that professionals cultivate self-awareness to recognize when a pivot is necessary. This might involve a lateral shift within an existing organization to take on new challenges, or a move to an entirely new company or industry. Whether you’ve hit a plateau, found a new passion, or your personal values no longer align with your company’s vision, the ultimate goal is to position yourself for continuous growth and engagement.
The Long-Term Impact for Tech Professionals
For the onlytrustedinfo.com community, Aubrey’s framework provides a practical lens through which to evaluate long-term career satisfaction. It moves beyond superficial considerations like salary or title, focusing instead on the intrinsic motivators that sustain engagement and foster professional development. In a field defined by innovation, being in a role that genuinely invigorates you—supported by the right leadership, a challenging team, and a compelling business problem—is not just desirable, but essential for both personal well-being and sustained impact.
Regular self-reflection against Aubrey’s three pillars can empower tech professionals to proactively manage their careers, ensuring they are not just employed, but truly fulfilled and continuously growing within the ever-evolving digital landscape.
