Onboarding Successfully To A New Semi-Chaotic Engineering Org

Congrats on the new job! It's great that you're excited about the opportunities ahead and proactively thinking about how you'll hit the ground running.

Unfortunately, planning too far ahead (especially without reputation or a clear structure with the team/company) won't end like you'll expect: it's very likely that you won't be able to execute on that plan at all (either due to the company putting you on previously committed priorities or because you don't have the reputation needed to get traction on suggestions). This is a wrong turn I've personally taken down and a common one I've seen among junior and mid level engineers. The more detailed you are with things without a nuanced grip of team/business context, the more likely you will fail and waste time for little yield. Things are constantly changing in any healthy team/company, and attempting to force structure into something preestablished will not work. If you fight against the natural flow, your time and energy will be spent for little value and the current will probably just plow you over (aka your manager or TL politely tell you to work on some other task/project instead). Don't get me wrong: the things you are proposing are nice and generally good things to do/have, but the question is: does the team/business actually need these things right now? And are you even the right person to solve it?

If you want make the best impressiom you can and build a healthy path for senior, the main recommendation I have is to start out by being more passive and progressing with the flow of the team/company:

• Be thorough with your onboarding tasks and projects. Ask questions around the tools and frameworks used in the company, and try to clearly understand their interfaces and why the company chose those tools/technologies.
• Oberserve the people on your team and on your projects. Who is on your team? What responsibilties do they usually fulfill? How do they behave when they're interacting with different stakeholders?
• Instead of introducing solutions and trying to find their problems, observe the problems and then fix them. If there are any technical/process gaps you've observed during your onboarding that you have the exact experience at that moment to efficiently fill them in, look to fill them. If the team has a problem with writing tests efficiently and you have experiences with a framework that solves that problem, introduce it. If your teammates have a hard time chasing xfn threads, own driving some xfn discussions into clear action items or outcomes. As a senior eng, I will say this is most important thing that makes or breaks if you're perceived as a senior eng/lead: it's very easy to tell the difference between a junior/mid-level engineer who's trying way too hard and thrashing around and a senior engineer who's passively identifying and resolving issues they encounter.

As for your concerns about your growth and your career: thess is an opportunity you're clearly excited about, there's a comp increase, and the company is able to hire tenured talent from other notable tech companies. Just take the job: what determines your career growth is less about the companies you work for, and more about the behaviors and fundamentals you develop throughout your career. If you want to make sure you'll have the support needed in the new company, work with your manager to have a clear growth plan and maybe even find a mentor who's willing to take you on.

However, I'm slightly concerned if the lack of co-operation from other org and lack of documentation, and the fact that the entire org is being setup fully freshly could be a concern. What's the best course of action i could take to minimize this risk?

1. Play a big role onboarding teammates - Become the newbie that rises quickly to the top and starts leading the other newbies. In hyper-growth orgs, you should get a lot of credit for this. I wrote an extremely in-depth explainer detailing this here: "How do you deal with the explosion of features and ensure that the knowledge is widely distributed/discoverable by the team?"
2. Strive to claim credit for your work - Share weekly project updates and demos. In a chaotic org, visibility is key. To learn more, check this out: "How can I get my work better recognized by leadership?"
3. Work with your manager to craft a growth plan - Of course, do this with the understanding that it will be super rough as things change super fast in a hyper-growth org. This is our crown jewel for this topic: [Masterclass] How To Navigate Your Performance Review In Tech

Second, one would view moving out from FAANG to a not well known company as a downgrade, would this still hold true if the problem space and opportunities in the new company is more complex?

FAANG is never automatically an upgrade or a downgrade. There are so many terrible teams within FAANG. And there's so many amazing teams outside of FAANG.

At the end of the day, your company's name brand, doesn't put food on the table: Money does. It seems like you're working in an exciting, hyper-growth organization with higher TC, so your new offer seems like an upgrade from FAANG. Congrats!

Also, the important thing about FAANG is the "first touch". Once you have FAANG on your resume, you will reap the benefits of it going forward. People aren't going to look down on you for switching out of it - They're almost certainly going to assume that you're still a very talented engineer who decided to change career direction.

In fact, most engineers eventually leave FAANG, generally within 3-5 years. I think your situation makes a lot of sense as you're an Amazon SDE 2, and that level is notorious for trapping engineers. We talk more about this here: "When does it make sense to leave big tech?"

Thanks a lot for the responses, Jonathan & Alex.