Is this a true story?

Yes. John Dwyer is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.

What organisation produced this?

Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.

What did John Dwyer learn from this experience?

John believes the proof that you can do something, that you have tested it and it works, gives you the freedom to make different choices about your future because you are no longer betting on an untested theory.

What would John Dwyer want listeners to know?

The strongest predictor of what work will suit you is not a job title but the specific activities and tasks that made you feel successful and in flow; discover those by asking yourself about times you lost track of time because you were engaged.

What helped John Dwyer most along the way?

John learned that when you are no longer employed, getting hired becomes harder, so even if it is not your dream role, getting a job, any job, improves your chances of finding the work you actually want.

What would John Dwyer tell someone going through something similar?

Living your values inside a corporate system is possible if you identify your sphere of control and influence, do the right thing within that scope, and accept that you cannot fight everything outside it without losing your sanity.

What topics does this episode cover?

This conversation includes a man between worlds, day one of the rest of his life, what gets him out of bed, the coaching dream and the money problem, proof of concept and the hard lesson about getting hired.

John Dwyer · 70 min

From Saddle Making to Global Tech Leadership with John Dwyer

A school dropout who left at fourteen to stitch leather goods went on to lead global teams at Microsoft, Nokia, and Amazon, and found his deepest purpose not in technology, but in helping people discover their own strengths.

Rebuilding after it all fell apart Coming out, and living as yourself When your mind turns on you+3

Hear this story

Overview

John Dwyer left school at fourteen to apprentice as a saddle maker, teaching himself to code on a Commodore 64 in the factory afternoons. That dropout path led him through eighteen years at Microsoft, time at Nokia, and eight and a half years at Amazon Web Services, managing teams across Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa. A month ago, he stepped away from corporate leadership for good. On day one of unemployment, he is asking a different question than the one that drove him for nearly five decades: not what title comes next, but what work actually matters to him.

In 2010, sitting in Dublin and turning fifty, John recognised something that had been true all along. The technology had never been the point. People were. That realisation shaped everything after it, even when he returned to corporate roles to support his family through his children's college years. He tested his exit strategy by starting an executive coaching business, proved to himself it worked, then went back to earn. Now, with his children independent, he is free to follow what actually gets him out of bed: helping people discover their own strengths, and the intersection between what they love, what they are good at, what the world needs, and what they can be paid for.

John's path to this clarity ran through his transgender daughter's transition, his three years managing diverse teams across cultures in Singapore, and a lifetime of carrying imposter syndrome despite his success. He learned that curiosity, not judgment, is the antidote to fear and bias. He learned that pronouns matter not because the grammar does, but because using them correctly is the difference between harming and empowering another person. He learned that everybody, regardless of their title or credentials, carries self-doubt. And he learned that the hard start he shared with his mother gave him something valuable: the ability to relate to people in struggle, and to believe that everybody can succeed in the right circumstances with the right support.

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