NOTE: Originally posted on the Amazon blind channel. This deserves a wider audience. Relevant to L4-L6 SDEs. Sharing my $.02 from past experiences. YMMV. Be wary anytime someone is looking to hire SDEs to build a new service or something 'groundbreaking' in AWS. Building a new service is not rocket science. More often than not, it will involve: 1) Relying on a dependency that performs 50% of the work. 2)Using other publicly available AWS services and 3) Taking a apache/mit-licensed software and creating a control plane API around it. None of it is rocket science. When SDMs try to sell you on 'scale' and 'cloud', that just means more sev2s and constantly expanding your pipeline to deploy to new regions. Most designs are horizontally scalable. Don't be fooled into thinking you're building a rocket ship; you're not. Working in Amazon and AWS is cookie cutter work. You will work on a small part of the big picture and nothing beyond it. When a hiring manager/recruiter reaches out and say 'hey, im building a new service, you will get to design and develop it from scratch'. Don't fall for that trap. You will work against an unreasonable timeline, on a team that is continually understaffed. You will write prototype level code and push it to production. 1/2 the team that built the prototype will quit after re:invent and forte. A new bunch of fools will be brought in to stabilize and do region expansion. Those fools will not know the true amount of corner cutting that was done to launch the service until after joining the team and their first oncall. They too will get burnt out. Remember this, 'fault tolerant' and 'highly available' describe the on-call, not the service. Meanwhile our ambitious l6 or l7 sdm will add another launch win to their resume and repeat this shit show. Fools who think they will get a 4->5 or 5->6 promo, be warned: The slave driver who is your mid level l6/l7 manager would have oversold the promo opportunity to all the 16 people needed to launch this service. In the end, only 3 L4->L5 and 1 L5->L6 promo will happen. The rest of you fools will be made to perform rinse-repeat. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. TC - 250k (SEA) YOE - 8 yrs
Honestly thanks for speaking out. Helps me to remember to leave Amazon recruiters on read anytime I slightly consider answering them
This post should be permanently pinned, op you perfectly summarized and painted true picture. Most of the AWS managed services is just open-source stuff, and the ops/oncall workload - is the consequence of providing managed cloud services
Exactly this. AWS cloud is a modern take on the WITCH offerings from ye olde days.
I have been at Amazon for 3 years now and I couldn't have described it in better words. But in all honesty, what you have described happens in most of the companies. I moved to Amazon from another tier-2 company and I really enjoy the work Im doing, though it's just everything OP mentioned above. Things I like - Bigger scope and responsibilities Fast track learning Better name on resume than my previous company. Things I dislike - Constant pip fear and pressure to deliver Transactional team dynamics due to pip pressure Ps - Planning to leave soon as I'm becoming a father.
Congratulations on your new baby. I wish you and the family happiness and good health. Agreed with most of your likes and dislikes. For me personally, my learning got stunted after joining amazon due to its reliance on frameworks. I was in a tier2 company before, working on some highly specialized software, i learnt a lot more on that job. It didn't pay as much and when Amazon came knocking with a 2x pay increase, i fell for it. If i had to retrospect, my biggest take away from Amazon is the money and perhaps resume recognition (to be validated)
100%
100% with the promo bullshit. Best way to be promoted at Amazon is to leave Amazon
When I joined Amazon. There is QA with VP, were people send questions to HR and VP answers. This was my first week at Amazon. I was in meeting and VP took questions one by one . And one question raised by some one was. I am at Amazon and my hike has been been 1percent for past four years. What does Amazon expect from me. And to this VP replied seems like the person with this question is not happy. I would advise the person this is what it is. Take it or find some better place. I was never expecting such a reply. So rude full of arrogance. This is Amazon
Thanks for sharing. Sounds similar to my experience with many companies and hiring practices. One question: Why are you restricting this to L6? What is different with L7+ ICs?
L7+ ICs get a little bit more autonomy to figure out which Apache licensed software to rip off and create a control plane around it. Still a grind.
Remember that SDMs are also super low IQ. And they add zero value.
Thanks for sharing OP