Career Advice About Amazon

I enjoy reading case studies on how people were promoted to senior and staff but one archetype that stands out is the "Code Machine" archetype. Writing code is inherently not scalable, so if someone is writing and reading a large amount of code, how are they able to consistently work on projects that have the largest impact? Wouldn't that time be better spent? Talking with stakeholders and finding out what the highest impact problems are Project planning Writing status reports to keep everyone updated Delegating work to others as well as mentoring/unblocking them Essentially, doesn't the archetype of "Code Machine" contradict traditional staff-level engineer behaviors?

I was wondering what exciting new content is coming on Taro for 2025. After reading multiple posts, I noticed that many courses are planned such as Code review course Giving feedback Creating a startup Side project course #2 etc I wanted to ask if there are any other courses planned or any other exciting new content. Thank you!

This is my first job at a FAANG company, so I'm interested in what are the main mindset shifts needed to succeed when switching into massive environment like this for the first time.

I'm thinking of joining Amazon as an L6 Applied Scientist. The reporting chain they've proposed to me looks something like: VP -> Snr Dir -> Dir -> Snr Mgr -> Mgr -> Me Now I've been made to understand that as L6, my official scope is Snr Dir, i.e. impact across teams that sit under Snr Dir. I'm concerned how far down the chain I am here, especially if I eventually want to grow to L7, which would require impact at the higher level (VP). I doubt reporting to the Snr Dir is on the table, but I'm wondering if I can try to convince them to let me report to the Dir. They're telling me that who your manager is doesn't affect your scope, but I'm skeptical. On the flip side, it is Mgr who seems very excited to hire me, and I'm wondering if mentioning this to either him or Snr Mgr (who I have a sell call with next week) will cause problems. Any advice on how to navigate this situation would be most helpful.

Hi team, I currently work as a Software Engineer (5 months in the role) at a mid-sized firm. I recently received an offer for the new grad SDE role at AWS with a start date in first week of December. I also just heard back from Meta that they would like to proceed with virtual loop for their new grad SDE role. Given I clear the virtual loop, I am guessing the team matching phase takes a few weeks. Would you recommend I join AWS meanwhile or push the start date at AWS and complete my virtual loop with Meta? I am excited about the work at AWS based off of what I learnt from my hiring manager!

Hi Taro. I have two offers for contract roles through agencies. First I got a 6 month role at Amazon. I previously worked at Amazon for a couple of years before I got laid off. I signed the offer. Then I got a 12 month contract role at Meta. I decided that I would renege on Amazon and take Meta because it is longer. So I signed for Meta. Meta starts in a month and Amazon starts in a week. There is a chance that after reneging Amazon, I could lose Meta. Meta can rescind the offer for example. How should I handle this situation while minimizing damage to my reputation at Amazon because I may return there one day for a full time role? I am planning to ask Meta if I can start earlier, but I doubt it will be possible. Thanks

I know that we have to draft the answer in such a way that they have to have LPs imbibed in them. But how can we get to know if the story is good enough for passing the interview round?

I am struggling to draft these stories for SDE2 interview loop. Any help will be helpful

I have ~3 years of work experience, but it was spent working a non-SWE role within Amazon. Because of this, companies consider me between SWE 1 and SWE 2 when I'm interviewing. What’s the difference between SWE 1 and SWE 2 on the job, and how can I show that I'm in the latter camp in interviews so I can get a SWE 2 offer instead of being set back with a SWE 1 offer?

This is a follow up to I decided to keep both roles open for as long as possible, so both are open right now. Meta postponed once and will now start in 3 weeks. Amazon postponed multiple times but it seems that they will finally send the laptop this week. I am expected to start at Amazon on Monday. There is a 2 weeks gap between Amazon's start date and Meta's start date. I don't want to burn the bridge too much with Amazon but I have a large resume gap and I can't afford to lose both roles. So far, I don't see any reason that Meta would rescind the offer, but in this environment anything can happen. When should I tell Amazon that I am taking a different role? I am leaning towards doing it this week, but I am scared to do it before Meta is 100% secure. Honestly, I can't afford anymore resume gap.

I've noticed that Alex/Rahul can communicate very fast and a lot. This includes Answering questions on Taro Creating content (especially on Linkedin) In the workplace (Alex at Meta was a top code reviewer in addition to being senior/staff) My question is how. I struggle to write an email without overthinking everything. Usually, what goes through my head in communication involves Taro: What if my advice is wrong or becomes outdated? Taro: What if the requester did not give enough information for me to provide an answer (I notice that Alex/Rahul rarely ask follow-up questions on Taro)? Content: How do I post so much content without recycling the same concepts over and over again Workplace communication: I don't want to offend anyone in this email/slack message Workplace communication: I don't want to come across as self-promotional when posting status updates on work/meeting notes/etc Everything: What if people just don't like what I have to say and bash it (this is very common on social media) OR if people lose respect for what I say because it reveals how dumb I am I want to become someone who can communicate fast without overthinking since I believe it's holding me back from working much faster.

I am in need of guidance in understanding an offer from a series A funded startup and also what to look out for in terms of red flags. Some of things I noticed during interview and in linkedin is that the 2 out of the 3 founders are recent bachelors grads and engineering consists of only 2 engineers and 1 scientist/researcher (including the founder) . There are total of 20-26 employees. They did show a demoable platform with claims to multiple customers in the airline, fulfillment centers and manufacturing centers. They are in series A with 10 M funded from corporate venture capital. My worry is that the founders don’t have the experience and the number of engineers are very less.

I have gotten an offer for a security engineering internship from Amazon for Summer 2025. However I have already signed an offer with a unicorn. I was wondering if I could move this Summer internship to Spring so I can have the potential to get experiences in both?

I was working on a P1 - High priority bug today which needed to be done within a day. This bug was assigned to me by a Senior Engineer who was supposed to pick up this task but was delegated to me. This engineer has been pretty helpful to me when I was ramping up on things. He explained me the context of the bug in a short call. I figured out the fix and sent him the method which was responsible for the issue and the stack-trace from the log and how I am going to fix it. I was then told by the same engineer to not 'swing by small small things by me and that I take the entire ownership of the task I am doing and bring it to closure'. I do agree with this and understand that they have other priority meetings and features to work upon but my entire purpose of sending him updates was then I was not going off track and that the CR which I am going to raise does not have a lot of revision / reviews. I just need to know when exactly are we supposed to let the other team member know how much we have progressed and also at the same time not let them feel that I am not taking ownership of my tasks?

Hey all, I’ve been at Amazon for a while now and starting to think about what to look for next. I did a lot of innovative UI work on my last team but now have transitioned into fully backend/distributed systems work. The UI work that I was doing was extremely innovative and I felt like I was starting to develop a deep specialization in that space before transitioning to backend (not voluntarily since team priorities changed). I’m starting to casually look for new opportunities and I feel like I’m sort of at a cross roads on whether to pursue a specialized career in UI or focus on becoming a more generalist SWE. I really enjoyed the exciting UI work I was doing but I’m worried that most tech companies do not have enough scope to grow beyond senior levels as a UI engineer. This seems to be the case at Amazon, and my guess is that it’s because the backend always grows in complexity as your user base grows but the same can’t be said for front end. Of course there are some companies like Figma, Netflix that have a lot of UI scope/ambiguity. Im looking to eventually move to Chicago for personal reasons and am a bit concerned about the market out there (always open to remote also). I’ve been getting a bunch of big tech/unicorn/HFT recruiters reaching out. Some would let me interview for front end but there are others that seem to only be hiring backend. I’m comfortable working in both, but I feel like I need to pick a side since that will determine what prep work I need to do. Was wondering if I could get advice on whether it’s smarter to become more of a specialist vs generalist in today’s market. Right now im mostly interested in working at big tech/HFTs/large unicorns instead of smaller startups.

I am a tenured software engineer and have upcoming software interviews lined up. I am looking for someone with whom I can pair up with for mock DSA and system design rounds.

I have couple of interviews lined up with Meta, DataStax and couple more. But, I did not get any interview call from my other desired SW companies like Google/Netflix/Microsoft/DataBricks/AirBnb. I am confident that I will receive call for interview after I improve my resume, polish LinkedIn, reach out via DMs on LinkedIn (already doing that but no luck so far). Also, I can not wait indefinitely for other companies call (already waiting since November). So my question is, Is it fine if I join a company such as A and quit within a month or two provided I have a job offer from B (which is obviously more lucrative). Are there any downsides of switching too soon in tech. I feel changing employers quickly will help me to boost my overall compensation. Note: I am currently on work visa and working for AWS US as senior backend engineer.

This may seem like a dumb question, but I'm rather lost here. I've been here for about a year at Amazon, but I don't know how best to review my team's code. Most of the other engineers on my team have been here for 3+ years, so their code is usually quite good in terms of business logic and doing what it needs to do. When I look at the types of feedback I get on my own code, it's a mixed bag - some people leave comments on how we should handle exceptions, other ask about why we use certain libraries instead of others. There's a whole range of comment types that focus on a variety of different things from different people. I sometimes leave a few comments here and there when I see something I know could be better, but I feel like I have no effective process, paradigm or checklist for reviewing at other people's code. What would you recommend I read, watch or learn to do this better so I can help my team? How do you generally look at code? Are there areas or parts of it you focus on? Thanks in advance!