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

Should I be wary of what tools I work with to maximize delivering impact?

Entry-Level Software Engineer [SDE 1] at Amazon profile pic
Entry-Level Software Engineer [SDE 1] at Amazon

I've always been the one to dive into problems and solve them without thinking about how difficult they are but recently I've been running into this failure mode where many of the problems I work on involve using old tools that are cumbersome to work with. The result is that it takes much longer to deliver my work compared to those that work on packages with newer tools (I'm talking about native AWS lambda, s3, dynamo, etc) and sometimes I wonder if I'm doing what's best for my career.

Some cumbersome tool examples include

  • One package uses an old technology that doesn't allow us to test our changes in our dev desktop before we can submit a PR
  • Another package doesn't map correctly our dev desktop to the prod environment so it's sometimes difficult to reproduce the issue
  • Some non aws tools do not really provide much information to help the user debug their problems compared to the native aws tools

My company has at least acknowledged the issues with the above first two bullets and has slowly started deprecating those tools. Oftentimes the senior and mid-level engineers work with newer tools and therefore aren't as familiar with the older ones, which is fine. I could just avoid working with these packages altogether and only work on the packages that involve the shiny new aws tools but I'm not sure if that mentality is what's best for my career.

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2 months ago

Worried about Q1 2023 performance cycle

Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon profile pic
Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon

Since Dec 2021 to Aug 2022, My managers changed 4 times after and I got promoted from sde1 to 2. Due to multiple projects and managers, I could not take ownership as I was still in ramp up phase but manager was expecting more at the SDE2 level, pointing issues, demotivating. So I took internal transfer to a different team. I am in this new team for 3 months. 1 month - I took to even understand the basics. Manager left and new manager joined. I had to go on vacation for 15 days. I don't have metrics to show that I am performing at the SDE2 level because

  1. I didn't get design projects (design phase has already been completed by the time I joined this team).
  2. No OPS, this is a new product. There are no operational tasks. Working on beta launch.
  3. I am the last person who joined this team. I don't have anyone to become mentor since I have limited knowledge on this new team and work
  4. Have not taken interviews due to hiring freeze

Worried about Q1 performance cycle in 2023. 2022 was difficult for me to show any impact. Is there anything I can do now to not get low rating in Q1?

At this point, I am no more interested in work and just want to leave due to lack of mentorship. I have a buddy who answers questions if I ask in this team but I don't have anyone to mentor me to guide me to see what kind of projects I can work, coming up with the initiatives. I feel stuck. There are no hirings happening outside and inside the company. What can I do to proceed further?

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4 months ago