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How can I learn technical things faster?

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Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon2 years ago

I'm currently working pretty long hours on the weekdays to boost my learning speed, but I know that this isn't sustainable. I feel like my micro-routines can be improved: How can I get the most out of each day? I'm also fairly new to the company, and I want to set myself up for a senior level promotion ASAP - These are 2 big reasons why this is very important to me right now.

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    Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal
    2 years ago

    I admire the ambition here! Before I dive into all my advice, I just want to say that it's always important to take care of yourself, no matter how aggressive your career goals are. Get 8 hours of sleep, spend time with loved ones, and exercise 3-5 times a week. Anyways, let's get into it:

    • Coding must be learned by doing, so focus blocks are crucial. Minimize your meeting load and stack them on certain days, so you can have long stretches of time where you get into a flow state.
    • If applicable to your stack, you can "hack" technical learning by building relevant side projects using your stack. Since I worked on consumer product with Android, this was very easy for me to do.
    • Leverage your peers very aggressively to understand the codebase. Don't be afraid to schedule 1:1s just to deep dive into code and push your peers to really expand their feedback on your code reviews, so you 100% understand the technical ideas behind it.
    • The SDE 2 -> SDE 3 promotion is also notoriously difficult at Amazon, so I recommend building up a strong relationship with your manager and charting a clear growth plan to that senior level. For that, check out these 2 masterclasses:

    Here's a bunch more resources on how to pick up a new tech stack and learn to code faster:

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, and much more. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world".
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