Been away from the forums for a while, family issues and new job;
I recently started working at Amazon web services (AWS) as a senior development engineer (L6). They reached out to me in November, initially I had no plans on taking the job, as I was in the process of waiting for the US embassy to open - as I was elligble for an L1 move to LA with my current employer. However I thought I'd put myself through the interview process just to see how well I did, more like an assault course - just for the fun of it.
It was a tough interview loop, I had 8x interviews in total all held over zoom, very deep level technical discussions and lots of Amazon leadership stuff. The deeper I got into the process, the quicker I realised that this would be a very nice role, and I'd get to work on the biggest, cutting edge tech in the industry. If I could get an offer - I should probably take it.
Eventually, the offer came in and it was very good, to the point where only a lunatic would turn it down. I did go back and tried to negotiate with my current employer, but over the last 6 months things had gotten a bit 'weird' several people had left the team and weren't being replaced - which told it's own story. Our 2021 roadmap was practically non-existant too. With the embassies not opening any time soon, and the potential for being locked into a dying team in LA whilst I get a US green-card (2-3 years?) it felt like a good time to bail.
I went back to Amazon, and did some negotiating on the relocation part. I'm currently stuck in Ireland (long story involving big tech companies and tax) and I absolutely ******** hate the place, it's the worst, most stupid, expensive, dull, god-awful place I've ever lived. So Amazon agreed to move me over to Seattle (pending my performance/probation etc, checks out) so that was that - I signed up.
My biggest worry about joining AWS was that it would feel like being a cog in a giant machine, like being assimilated by "THE THING" and I'd just become an inconsequential wheel in a machine. Turns out it's actually nothing like that at all, I'm in a team of 24 people - doing some literal cutting edge stuff, things I'd never get to touch anywhere. I've worked for countless large organisations, and AWS doesn't feel like a big organisation to work for, it feels pretty compact and agile.
The culture is very inventive, many of the problems we encounter are often at such enormous scale, there's no 'off the shelf solution' you can buy to solve it, so creative whacky ways of solving problems - stuff I'd scream at if I'd seen it elsewhere in my career, are a thing here - simply because of the size and scale, so it's very very interesting.
Of course it's not all perfect, onboarding here is hard. There's just so much stuff to learn and understand, you spend the first 1-2 months buried deep in documents and training, to the point where it just becomes one big block of nonsense and you feel burnt out and useless.
It's probably the first time in my life I've experienced mild "Imposter syndrome" there are a lot of very high level people here, some of the most respected engineers in the industry, and mixing with them at their level is pretty daunting, asking questions and getting involved in discussions can be difficult, it's a very competitive environment. I've learnt that not holding back, and just getting stuck into conversations, and asking lots of questions - even silly ones, is actually the best way to make headway here, rather than sitting in the corner of every discussion.
So far, for me - it's been a very good move, my priority for now is to just focus on my first project (which is insane) get through the first year and get my L1 visa going, when Biden hopefully starts to open the US up. After that I'll reevaluate.
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