Amazon Engineer: eight important experiences I learned in my career

First , Let me introduce myself briefly ： My name is Daniel, This year, 28 year , Is a software engineer . I started from 13 I began to learn programming at the age of . After working for eight years , I am here 2019 In, he entered Amazon , And assume SDE2. About two years and three months later , That is to say 2021 year , I was promoted to the senior level of Amazon SDE.

In this paper , I will share with you some of the experiences I have learned in my career , These experiences are what I hope to learn before . These experiences bear my personal experiences and beliefs . I hope this will help you .

1. Although programming is cool , But if you can support other colleagues , You will achieve more .

Programming is cool , Very cool . As a software engineer , We love software development . For us , The most direct way of software development is to actually write a piece of software .

But if you spend a day writing code , Then you spend on a special project 6~8 Hours to write a piece of code . No one can learn anything from you , You can't learn anything , Because you are a senior engineer , So this field is not challenging for you .

Even if your code is written faster than an inexperienced engineer , But what's the use ？ This cannot last , And did not take into account the long-term development of the team and personal improvement .

As a senior engineer , You have enough support and skills , Parallel development can be carried out in many projects , In many ways , For example, code review 、 The system design 、 Product specification 、 Business validation 、 Excellent operation, etc . such , Your work will become more strategic , Use your skills to make your team more agile , Strengthen the collaboration between the team and the project , Let your colleagues make progress in their career and so on .

This is what we call the power multiplier , Your influence 、 Knowledge and behavior enable the whole team to deliver capabilities 、 Software quality 、 Teamwork 、 Morale 、 Work life balance , And other positive aspects related to software engineering have doubled .

2. Your words are powerful , Whether it's positive or negative . Listen first , Speak again .

You are a reference in your organization , Maybe the same is true in your company . Some people adore you , Think you are a person who can guide them to make progress in their career .

Your praise can inspire those inexperienced people to achieve extraordinary success . Your criticism will make the life of those inexperienced people very bad , Even give up because of this .

If you think someone else is wrong , Or there are opportunities for improvement , Then talk to him alone , Don't be rude . Besides , Talk about this person's thoughts , Instead of talking about this person . People are not what they think . Don't pretend to master the truth , Know everything , contrary , All you have to do is be a person who pays attention to others' progress and helps others . Listen carefully , Try to understand what others think . People are different , background 、 Beliefs are also different .

When meeting or making team decisions , Your opinion may prejudice the whole team , Because people will think that it is impossible for them to be right and you to be wrong , Because they adore you .

At the meeting , When discussing a topic , Please speak first , Listen carefully to all opinions and ideas , And speak at the end . If you come up with your own opinion , that , Others will either believe you （ Usually believe more than yourself ） And prejudice your opinion , Or they will suppress their thoughts , Because they don't believe that they will be right , But you are wrong . Even if you are a cool person , In your company , People can relax 、 Talk safely , But there are always people who are timid , Or no confidence .

3. If you don't take action because of lack of experience , You will never gain experience .

Experience is very important , But you don't have to know everything to start “ acting ”. actually , On the contrary , In order to accumulate experience , You must put what you have learned into practice . There are some things , You can't learn from books or classes , for example , How to fix the small mistake you made when creating a website , Or the skill you learned with your teammates when deploying the server . This is not what money can buy , You have to learn and use it flexibly .

Don't be afraid of making mistakes , I'm afraid I don't understand anything . What you're going to do , Just take action , Ask for help , To try . You will find a way to make everything go smoothly , believe me .

Everyone is focused on the goal , But you should try to focus on what you want to do , And enjoy it . When your goal has been achieved , Your learning path will go on forever , As the saying goes ： What a long long road! , I will go up and down .

4. Your English doesn't need to be perfect

This is an addendum to the last study , But it deserves a special theme . There is nothing to say here , It's already mentioned in the title ： Your English doesn't need to be perfect , You don't have to say the same as the local people .

In your daily work , No one will notice your grammatical mistakes . Don't get me wrong , I'm not saying , If given the chance , You can't try to improve your English , What I want to say is , Your fear of imperfection , You should not be prevented from taking the next step .

There may be many grammatical mistakes in my article , Poorly written sentences , But it doesn't matter , You can still understand what I want to say , That's the most important thing . Most people don't speak a second language , If your mother tongue is not English , But you can also say it , Then it means , Your English level is quite good .

5. FAANG Your engineer is no better than you

FAANG Is an abbreviation , Used of Facebook、Amazon（ Amazon ）、Apple（ Apple ）、Netflix and Alphabet（G finger Alphabet The core company of Google） These five technology companies .

Before I entered Amazon , I feel inferior to FAANG Those engineers . For some reason , I once regarded them as the God of software . They created apps that I use every day , A billion requests per second .

When I entered Amazon , I'm also a little worried , I'm afraid I'm not good enough , Not enough ability to play that role . however , I soon noticed ,FAANG In fact, most people are ordinary people , They only know some topics , But I don't know other topics .

Of course , I met great people in Amazon , however , I have met such people in other companies where I used to work . Finally, I'll give you a word , Let me share with you ： company , thus .

Now I am a FAANG The engineer , I'm no better than anyone , No worse than anyone . You are no worse than me , No better than me . Everybody's the same .

I don't know everything , And never know everything . The most important thing is to open your heart , Study with others .

6. An understanding of the business will help you make better decisions

in the final analysis , Software is developed to solve business problems . If a software can't solve the problem or there are no users , Then build a complete CD The Conduit 、100% Test coverage and follow best practices for masterpiece software , It doesn't make any sense .

And a low-quality software , In addition to causing some trouble to users , It is also difficult to solve users' problems .

The senior engineer is one of the key figures in the team , It acts as an adhesive between the technical team and the business team . Do that , You must have a good understanding of the business and products . On this basis , You will learn how to weigh , In addition to considering the technical aspects , Also consider business .

Final , You'll find that , Most of them depend on risk and potential return .

Will you deploy a known bug Software for ？ A junior engineer may say no . And senior engineers will say so ： It depends on the circumstances . It depends on this bug Influence . It depends on how long it will exist in production . It can be seen that bug How much is controlled by the user pool . How is the customer success team involved in helping users solve this bug Of . For users and businesses , wait for bug How bad it is to be able to start all functions after repairing .

Understand the business you are developing software , Contact the business team and the customer success team , Understand the project and product roadmap , And customer frustration and complaints , These are the keys to making high-quality software and bringing value to people .

7. Pay attention to your sitting posture , Pay attention to your health

You spend all day sitting in front of the computer . In the long run , Poor sitting posture can cause serious spinal problems , This will bring pain , And it may be difficult to cure . So you have to spend a lot of money to buy ergonomic seats 、 Table 、 Keyboard and mouse . Pay attention to your sitting posture .

Besides , Try to stand up every hour , Go get some water , Have a good sleep , exercise .

I know it sounds like parental advice , I thought so when I was young , But you will grow old , Your body will feel the impact of your current bad habits . I'm not a professional , Unable to provide specific guidance , So I suggest , You seek help from professionals .

8. You should learn how to turn an idea into a website or application , This will help you innovate and explore your creativity

Everyone has their own ideas , And many of us already have the idea of creating a revolutionary application or platform .

As a developer , Because you know how to develop your application , You will be one step ahead of others .

However , If you're a front-end Developer , You may not be able to develop the back-end logic of your application , Or you can't create a service from scratch and deploy it .

If you are a back-end developer , You may not be able to develop a front-end application , Nor can we develop a mobile application .

Last , Although you are a developer , But in creating your application 、 Test your ideas 、 And learning through practice and experiment , There are still many difficulties .

therefore , I highly recommend that you learn how to build the front end of the application （HTML、CSS、JavaScript、React） Back end （ Any back-end language , Such as Java and Python）, And how to deploy applications （ Amazon cloud technology 、 Gu Ge Yun 、Azure、Firebase、Heroku……）, A little bit more UX Designer experience .

The authors introduce ：

Daniel Costa, Amazon Senior Software Engineer .

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