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- What I'm looking for first is I'm looking
to make sure that the wires are in the right order.
My philosophy is,
"Let's throw you in the deep end
"and let's see what you're capable of."
That first day of class
is just always a day that I look forward to
because I'm gonna be meeting these students
that I'm gonna get to know.
What I love about teaching
is seeing that spark from my students.
If it's going right,
I'm learning something from the students
and they're asking me questions
that I don't know the answer to.
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We created this program
in partnership with Amazon Web Services.
Amazon came to us and they said,
"We expect over the next three to five years
"that we're gonna be hiring a ton of technicians
"for our data centers."
I wanted to design this program
so that it would prepare students
to work in these jobs as best as I knew how
and that we were designing it for the tasks
they would actually perform on the job in a as practical
and pragmatical way as possible.
What they wanna have is something that they find meaningful
where they have some chance to advance themselves,
not just in their career, but in their lives.
So for the last few years,
AWS has very generously funded a total
of $50,000 of scholarships for all of our students.
And this last year, they doubled that scholarship amount.
So that's a total of $100,000
split between all of our students.
- I heard about this program through my father.
So I gave it a shot.
I didn't really have a lot of hardware
or networking experience.
And so it was sort of like drinking from a fire hose,
but they made it a little bit easier to understand.
Pete was one of my instructors.
Me and Taylor were in the same course or the same year.
From what I've seen,
everybody but one person in our group that completed
the program has ended up in some sort of IT role.
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- Do you think anything from the program
helped you get where you are right now?
- Oh, yeah.
None of it would've ever been possible
without going through the program.
It kept me focused on learning more and more about tech.
And you and I would've never talked
to each other outside of that.
And now, we're coworkers.
- The most valuable thing that I think I got from it
was how much Pete talked about meeting people
and the attention we put on interviewing.
Because a lot of times, people ask,
"Could you help me get a job?"
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- One of the things about going in a data center
is just seeing the extraordinary scale that AWS works at.
It's almost just boggles the mind.
A couple years ago, I was taking a sabbatical.
And I thought,
"Well,
"I need to make sure that I actually know
"what goes on in a data center."
And so I went to work as a contract employee
at a "foot in the door job" that many of our students get.
And it reaffirmed my commitment to teaching hands-on skills.
- Pete would be great at our job, hands down, right,
but he doesn't wanna do our job.
He wants to be a teacher.
- No, he's an interesting (speakers crosstalk)
and talented person to be able
to take all of those different personalities,
and different skillsets, different backgrounds,
and help them all succeed.
- I can't imagine what the program
would look like without Pete.
- Hearing about your success,
it's always one of the best parts of doing this.
- It's been a pretty cool journey
to go from not knowing what a data center was,
not knowing much about fit hardware,
or software aspects of IT,
and then have a somewhat successful career
given my experience and education.
- My advice to you is just to stick with this.
There are parts of this program
that I know for sure will really be tough.
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So there's that assignment.
It's due today.
- This is like a month into the course.
And now, I'm kinda panicking.
Like, "Oh my gosh, am I gonna pass?
"Am I gonna get a job with Amazon?"
In the end,
I'm just trying to stick with it
and just focus on what I gotta do.
I think it's a great opportunity to start a career.
And now that I've heard about it,
I've been kinda telling people,
"Hey, if you guys are looking for something to do,
"you should come check this out."
- I was going to school here originally in the medical field
and then I've seen flyers around.
The whole class experience, it's been challenging,
and I like the challenge.
Anytime I can accomplish something,
it's been like, "I did that."
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- I remember one student, he would say,
"What I really want is just a career
"that's gonna make my family proud."
And he had a couple young kids at the time.
And I ran into him at the data center.
He had gone from a dead-end job to really a career
where he had achieved what he'd set out to do.
And so for me,
(giggles) and I'm sorry this is such an emotional topic,
but that for me is what this work is all about.
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So when I think about students who achieve that
and that's what I'm most proud of.
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