Career Advice About Amazon

I have been at SDE 2 for a couple years now, and I feel like getting to SDE 3 is unnecessarily complicated. I've gone through multiple teams, and the recurring theme is that there isn't enough SDE 3 scope for me. You also need a lot of documentation (think 5+ pages) to show that you have the sufficient impact to deserve the promo, and that's really daunting as well. Any tips on how I can find that SDE 3 scope and navigate this senior promotion in general?

Say a recruiter from Series C reaches out to you for a SWE role.

What all are the questions that one should ask in order to do the understand the potential of the startup so that there is less risk of layoffs when joining there, given the uncertain times.

I am aware of crunchbase website and looking at the news article that are linked there. What other homework one should during/before/after the interview process in terms of questions to ask, information to collect?

The limitation that is usually is the startups have very few employees so it is difficult to get concrete answers about the culture, WLB, actual work unless you are in their network.

Across my career, I've felt bad about my skills sometimes because I'll have teammates, who are also at my level, doing as much as 2x more than me. This has led to me feeling like an imposter many times - Any thoughts on how to process all this?

Amazon is well-known for its design doc reviews, which appear to be small-scale system design reviews. However, I'm having trouble understanding them, let alone recommending modifications.

I'm aware of Alex Xu's , but I'm skeptical using it as it's specifically for interview preparation. I want to learn for the workplace. I can definitely look at blog posts and current design documentation, but I'd prefer something more structured. How can a novice learn system design and grow to the advanced/intermediate level? What books or resources would you suggest?

I'm pretty good at leetcode (was able to pass some 3 to 5 rounds of interviews), I got good at by practicing and continuous learning. Now I want to be good at software engineering in general like debugging, building components, understanding complex things/systems, etc. I see one of the suggestions is to improve on fundamentals of software engineering, how do I do that? and What action items can I follow consistently? Any concrete suggested steps will be great instead of just some general bullet points. Thank you all.

During session, Rahul mentioned only a few projects are important. I would love to get some concrete examples from Rahul or others on what that looks like. This is my very first question that I am posting in Taro forum. Thank you for the encouragement Alex. Looking forward to everyone's answers.

I've heard Alex, Rahul, and other engineers within Taro talk about handholding when joining a new company for all engineers and for newer engineers in general.

What does it mean that an engineer doesn't require handholding anymore? Does this mean the frequency of the questions gets diminished or is it more about needing as much initial help to start tasks or something else entirely?

Lately, I have been finding myself with a lot of free time and am unable to shake this feeling that I am not "doing enough." After finishing my school work, I usually just go to the gym, hang out with friends, or play video games.

Is there anything else I can do to further improve myself as an engineer and set myself up for success later on? Perhaps some books or resources to read.

I've tried working on some side projects, but honestly find it hard to follow through with them due to lack of urgency with no deadlines and prior fatigue from working on school assignments.

In particular, what are the upsides of living in the SF Bay Area? Is it worth the high cost of living?

For my situation in particular, I would like to end up at Amazon working full-time after school, but I don't live in Seattle or the Bay Area (I live somewhat close to another major metro area). Does moving make sense?

I would like some info on how hiring decisions are made. I understand DSA and System Design are important but HMs know these aren't good predictors of performance so I see a disconnect there.

I'd like to understand what goes through the mind of the HM and/or committee before a decision is made.

I know it's a broad and complicated question that has different answers depending on the company, but any info is helpful.

I used to describe project in three sections:

1. Problem
2. Action
3. Impact

Not every project is straight line. Some projects have lot of ambiguities and need lot of discussion to clear those ambiguities, certain features where we spend are de prioritized/removed, process challenges, changing direction/vision. How to explain all these as a story to express the complexity of the project by showing the challenges faced?

I am looking for some good books or detailed courses on system design which are targeted for Mobile engineers specifically.

Looking for resources on increasing your team's / peer's productivity. I thought I've seen some videos / posts in the past about this and wanted to brainstorm some ways I can boost the productivity of those around me.

Does it make more sense to specialize in something? I feel like senior engineers focus more on a specific area, while mid-level engineers work on something that’s more generic.

If I were to specialize, how do I pick something that’s going to be on the cutting edge in 5-10 years? I want to work on something that stays relevant long into the future - Are there any specific technical spaces that you're excited about that fit this description?

I have my 1:1 catch up call scheduled with my manager soon, this is the first 1:1 / call I'll be having with him since I met him in the interview. What are some of the good questions I can ask w.r.t to the team and the work that I'll be doing? He had taken my System Design interview and there he went on to talk about the team for 15 mins where we discussed about the team work, team size, on call structure, wlb etc. One important point which I feel is that I won't be joining the team immediately, there's still 3 months time.