In this episode of The Outspoken Podcast, host Shana Cosgrove talks to Gerard Spivey, Senior Systems Development Engineer at Amazon Web Services. Gerard speaks in detail about Amazon’s interview process, giving us insight into their procedures and how he prepared himself. We also hear about Gerard’s time at Amazon and the types of work he’s taking on. Side hustles are a way of life for Gerard, and he speaks about his latest experiences managing his YouTube channel, Gerard’s Curious Tech. Lastly, Gerard talks about his time at NYLA and how he was able to bring his full self to work thanks to NYLA’s culture.

QUOTES

• “I can do slow and steady, I can find my target audience, and then once I have that I can figure out what I want to parlay that into later.” – Gerard Spivey [25:59]
• “‘I’m a Senior Director [at Intel], and I can do what I want’ is basically what he told me. He’s like ‘the company has a 3.0 thing, but for someone like you who actually knows what they’re talking about it’s not a problem.’ So I said, ‘Ooh this is my time, they’re letting me in’” – Gerard Spivey [42:07]
• “You’re in a good spot in your career when you’re valued for the thing you’re going to do next versus the thing you did previously. What you’re going to do next is your competitive value – that is what you bring to the table.” – Gerard Spivey [48:27]

TIMESTAMPS 

• [00:04] Intro
• [01:31] Gerard’s Wedding Ceremony
• [02:32] Working at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• [05:33] Amazon’s Interview Process
• [12:06] Gerard’s Experience with the Job Market
• [15:54] Working at Amazon
• [19:11] Starting a New Job During COVID
• [19:43] Side Hustles
• [23:21] Gerard’s YouTube Channel
• [31:08] Gerard’s Childhood
• [31:52] How Gerard Decided to Study Electrical Engineering
• [34:19] Choosing a College
• [45:13] Gerard’s Advice to his Younger Self
• [47:42] Favorite Books
• [50:57] Gerard’s Time at NYLA
• [55:36] Outro

RESOURCES

• Amazon EC2
• Amazon EC2 Instance Types
• Amazon DynamoDB
• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
• Commercial Cloud Services (C2S)
• STAR Interview Response Method
• Microsoft Exchange
• Microsoft Azure
• CI/CD
• Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT)
• Harvard Business School
• Andreessen Horowitz
• YouTube
• NSBE Pre-College Initiative Program
• Johns Hopkins University
• Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)
• North Carolina A&T State University
• Morgan State University
• Howard University
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• Penn State University
• Digital Systems
• Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs)
• The George Washington University
• Intel
• PCI Express
• Serial ATA (SATA)
• Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki

RELEVANT LINKS

• Gerard Spivey on LinkedIn
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Gerard’s Curious Tech YouTube Channel
• Nyla Technology Solutions