Comment by gigatexal

Maybe that was the problem. He cited that there was seemingly not enough effort in making DynamoDB better as evidenced by the many orthogonally very close other DBs that AWS promotes. If Rick was ears to the ground listening to customers and sending back feedback but it was falling on deaf ears that's enough ground for someone as high up and as influential and productive as him to leave. It also speaks to inner AWS turmoil at least at DynamoDB.