Ep 14 – Being Mindful Of Your Life with Brent Holley, Senior Finance Manager, Data Center Construction, AWS Artwork

Finance Guys In Tech

The opinions on this show are our own. The voices in our heads... still figuring that out. Charlie & Sid bring you some humanity, fun, and other useful stuff from the trenches of working in finance at Amazon. An interview show with our friends and colleagues at Amazon about how they ended up here, how they thrive, and most importantly…what are they doing this weekend. This show is all geared towards helping you perform better in your career, forming stronger teams, reducing stress & anxiety, and having plenty of laughs along the way. We’ll go micro on the day-to-day tactics and tips. We’ll go macro on creativity and mindset. We’ll give you all kinds of new ideas to play with about how to get into tech finance or what an optimal career might look like for you. We'll also bring you guests who you might not otherwise have access to. And since our number one objective is to bring you value we'll listen to you about the things you really want to hear. Sid joined Amazon in 2016 and AWS one year later. He's a value investor at heart so his presence on the show should be all you need to know about choosing to listen. Charlie (that’s me) has worked in finance at Amazon since 2014 and joined Amazon Web Services in 2015. He is also 1/2 of GoodBaby.band | Bass and songwriter for fornow.band | Recovering drummer | Author of the Art & Work weekly newsletter at charleskunken.com | Writer. Rider. New Yorker. Artist.

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Finance Guys In Tech

Ep 14 – Being Mindful Of Your Life with Brent Holley, Senior Finance Manager, Data Center Construction, AWS

February 13, 2020 • Charlie Kunken & Sid Dhodi, Finance At Amazon

“Be conscious of your tradeoffs…if you’re perpetually doing things not aligned with your priorities, that’s a recipe for unhappiness.”

Today Sid and I got to sit down with our friend Brent Holley, Senior Finance Manager of Data Center Construction here at AWS Infrastructure.

This episode was like a fireside chat (a campfire actually). Brent talked to us about adding value as a finance partner and shared his philosophy on being conscious about how you spend your days. He told us a about a recent vacation too – no, not Cabo. Try, getting dropped off in the middle of the Alaska wilderness by a plane.

We left much wiser than we came! This is truly valuable. Please enjoy!

2:40 | Getting dropped off in the wilderness above the Arctic Circle

5:40 | a chemist business guy makes his way to Malaysia

8:30 | Life in Malaysia

12:20 | Returning to the states, MBA at Texas A&M, a good fit for finance

13:30 | What does finance do? Act like a business person with a broad perspective.

16:00 | Brent’s Leadership philosophy – empowerment

20:45 | First years at Amazon (2016). Learning & scaling the finance team for AWS

23:15 | 4 years experience in the role – investing in understanding the business, thoughts on rotating versus staying in one position: what do you want out of your career?

25:30 | Long term view of career & post-career life – being deliberate about how you want to spend your time

29:00 | Making transitions – you’ll figure it out

31:00 | Career philosophy – work from the end backwards, think about the future. Don’t kid yourself, you can only be in one place at a time, prioritize and be conscious of your tradeoffs.

34:55 | Focusing on ‘what’s next’, not spending time dwelling

36:30 | A culture of humility at Amazon is really useful

37:50 | Consuming content outside of work – Altering between Intense & Goofy. History (A cool recent book, “Empire of the Summer Moon”), sports, funny movies (‘Shawn Of The Dead’, ‘Hot Fuzz’)

41:30 | Big groups vs. small? Small.

Brent on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-holley-357692/
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Theme music by Good Baby. ‘Rose Colored’ (instrumental version). You can peep the full music video here: https://www.goodbaby.band/musicvideos