Aliraj Rehmani: This is Ali Raj Ravani, interviewing Owen Sullivan for the position of systems. Administrator at Amazon. Aws
Aliraj Rehmani: Hello, Owen, how are you?
Owen Sullivan: I'm doing great. How about yourself?
Aliraj Rehmani: I'm doing wonderful Now I'm going to have a few questions for you, and then we'll get on to more technical questions. and then you can have the opportunity to ask me any questions you or concerns you may have regarding this position.
Owen Sullivan: That sounds great.
Aliraj Rehmani: perfect. Well, then let's start with.
Aliraj Rehmani: Why did you apply for this position? Was there something as specific in this job advertisement that drew you
Aliraj Rehmani: that you your attention?
Owen Sullivan: So I applied for the physician, because, you know, I'm very experienced in the this admin
role, and I wanted to go on to something a bit more.
Owen Sullivan: you know, tightly organized. I've worked for a lot of smaller companies and aws is by far one of the largest systems administration platforms in the world, and so I think that a more tightly integrated, more fast-paced environment might be a good change of pace for me.
Aliraj Rehmani: right? I can definitely understand where you, coming from?
Aliraj Rehmani: Our next question is, what would you like to learn, or what skills would you like to develop as you continue to work here with us within your first year.
Owen Sullivan: So I am conceptually very familiar with the products and services that Aws offers. But I have very little experience actually working with them. And you know, like, I said, if i'm moving on to a more fast-paced environment such as Aws
and I think that is a perfect opportunity for me to become more familiar with
Owen Sullivan: the products and services that Aws offer, because there are so so many of them. and that could help me both at Aws as well as down the road in my personal development, because
Owen Sullivan: so many other organizations rely on Aws services, and knowing them, is a very valuable skill.
Aliraj Rehmani: We are very lucky to have a quite a lot wide members, wide variety of team members.
Aliraj Rehmani: and so many different sections which you can refer to for various help.
Aliraj Rehmani: And Here's our last of the general questions. What would you do if your member Mits, our manager, assigned you to a past? You did not know how to vote.
Owen Sullivan: So I like to think that I can be pretty good at solving problems independently. I think I would. you know, give it a little while. Try to come up with a solution myself that can include, You know.
Owen Sullivan: online research. If I have any close coworkers, you know, right here next to me, then, bouncing my ideas off them. But if it's becoming clear after a little bit, that i'm not going to make any progress on this just by myself, then
Owen Sullivan: I would certainly start to get in contact with people more familiar with what I'm. Working with people who have been to the organization longer.
and especially if i'm working with an Aws service that
Owen Sullivan: doesn't pertain exactly to the scope of my role. Then I would try to seek out people who work with that service or product on a daily basis, because i'm sure they'd be more knowledgeable about it.
Aliraj Rehmani: Yes, we always support reaching out to your fellow co-workers reaching out for using our wide variety of team members, as I mentioned before, always great to utilize what we offer.
Aliraj Rehmani: And here are the technical questions.
Aliraj Rehmani: Let's say you're stuck on a coding problem.
Aliraj Rehmani: What would you do if we in this situation do you go to your superior, us, your you work by yourself. What would you do
Owen Sullivan: so. I like to spend a little bit of time like I said, on a problem before I start seeking out external human resources.
Owen Sullivan: I definitely, you know, I spend a lot of time trying to find examples such as open source code, or maybe other code within our internal source.
Owen Sullivan: That sort of accomplishes what i'm trying to do. See if I can make it work to fit my needs, or see if I can use it as inspiration to come up with a conceptual solution that I can later implement.
Owen Sullivan: But I would definitely look for a supervisor's help. you know, before too long I wouldn't give it more than a few hours if I'm truly, truly stuck, because you know, I want to make sure that my management knows that i'm staying on top of something that I actually am thinking about it. And
Owen Sullivan: besides, there's there's no point in staring at Google forever. So that's definitely what I would do.
Aliraj Rehmani: Yes, it's a fast-paced environment, and you definitely don't want to get caught up
Aliraj Rehmani: when you don't understand something best to reach out before you get stuck in the mine. Sure.
Aliraj Rehmani: And could. Our last question for today is, could you describe your personal debugging process?
Owen Sullivan: Sure. So I must admit that i'm not terribly familiar with a lot of popular debugging tools I've sort of come up with the process of. I like to trace the operations of whatever I am working on. You know. One step at a time. Start at the very beginning, start seeing what works, what doesn't, and
Owen Sullivan: just try to come up with unit tests that work well to see. You know, whatever little changes I make here and there. How do these affect the results of the unit test?
Owen Sullivan: And then, if at that point i'm not making any progress. Then i'll start working with the more complicated debugging tools. or same as the last one start getting in contact with people who might be more familiar with us.
Aliraj Rehmani: That's a great approach.
Aliraj Rehmani: Do you have any questions for us.
Owen Sullivan: Sure, Just a couple. So the first is, what is aws's policy these days on working from home versus in person at the office
Aliraj Rehmani: at Aws, we allow each team to decide how often they work from home. based on the requirements of the job as of right now. I can't speak directly
Aliraj Rehmani: for your team in particular, if you'd like, I can reach out to them and get some more information, and then reach out back to
Owen Sullivan: perfect. Well, then, if if you're going to be able to get me in contact with some other people. Then I think what i'll ask them that they could probably answer it pretty well for me is, you know how the stress level work with system, administration roles, aws. But I would. I would absolutely appreciate if you could get me in contact with some other folks there.
Aliraj Rehmani: Yes, of course I will get back to you soon in regards to that.
Aliraj Rehmani: Thank you so much. Thank you, Owen. I look. I hope to see you here soon.
Aliraj Rehmani: Thank you. Have a good day.