Werner Vogels is the CTO of Amazon, and that alone is an indicator that he's smart... But there are some gems in the interview really worth pointing out.
This is like proverbial Columbus' Egg: the people responsible for operating the service are those that know it best, they are aware of the operating difficulties and can design to solve them, they cannot throw any problem to the operating people and the operating people of course cannot throw any dumb problem to the developers.
They can do any design methodology they want as long as they deliver the actual functionality that they've been tasked with. Now, with this flexibility comes also the responsibility of actually operating the service. The same group of people that actually builds the service is also responsible for operating it. So there is no wall over which things are being thrown at Amazon, to which the operators who are then responsible for handling the service, but they are the same developers, the same group of people that has built a service are also responsible for operating it.
This is like proverbial Columbus' Egg: the people responsible for operating the service are those that know it best, they are aware of the operating difficulties and can design to solve them, they cannot throw any problem to the operating people and the operating people of course cannot throw any dumb problem to the developers.