Tech IndustryNov 5, 2018
AmazonConnector1

Amazon Team Culture

I recently joined Amazon. But I was shocked with how little my team provides attention to the design before any new feature or new application design. We have design reviews, but even in those meetings convince is preferred. For e.g. We have to have use Dynamo database with 10 different tables and global indexes, even if we don't need it or we could perform it better with other databases. When I raise these concerns to the team, they said we should use Dynamo as most of the team is familiar. This is very unusual for me. Is this something part of Amazon fast delivery culture? Also, do all big tech companies has same culture, I read lot of posts about how much Google engineers focused on the detailed and precise design and implementation. Or Am I expecting too much?

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DraftKings dkings Nov 5, 2018

Sounds like you lack convincing skills or maybe even if the design is not ideal, it's not that bad and they don't want to affect the velocity over not so important design decision.

Amazon Connector1 OP Nov 5, 2018

May be I lack convincing skills, but one more fact we need to consider, I think weighage of your opinion is directly proportional to the number of years you spend in Amazon. As a new team member, my opinion counts very little value, that is what I feel. I mentioned most of the disadvantages for using that design and how we are not considering scalability and quick debugging with data in case of high severity bugs

DraftKings dkings Nov 5, 2018

Well don't get discouraged. Always give your opinions. Also try to give alternatives instead of just saying disadvantage. Tell them to add metrics properly and help create meaningful dashboards that you can use to detect scalability issues early on.

Amazon 123raj Nov 5, 2018

Tldr: water is wet.

Vertivco FastPapuan Nov 5, 2018

^ \ Status quo Amazonian

Amazon solitude7 Nov 5, 2018

Some teams are like that. Rigid and not open to new ideas. You'll even witness the other team getting defensive about the design. Don't change your ideas for the team. Disagree and commit and don't sweat it out. It is just a project. Many teams take short cuts when the leadership isn't really focused on operational excellence. Switch teams when possible

Vertivco FastPapuan Nov 5, 2018

Which teams are this?

Google Shaktiman’ Nov 5, 2018

This is typical Amazon culture, and most external hires get this culture shock. Without knowing details, difficult to say if your teammates are right, but there is lot of value in using technology that is well known within team. Think about the people who will manage the software. Btw dynamo db works pretty well for most use cases, except it doesn’t scale well for some use cases.

Adobe cQKG54 Nov 6, 2018

What all use cases? If you are looking for strongly consistent reads from dynamo , your design is flawed. Also you need to provision minimum capacity correctly otherwise the cost can kill you.