tc's page

peace & chaos

not posts, but wikis

When I left Amazon, I scheduled 1-1s with leaders and friends to farewell (virtually) in person. During these chats, mostly my gratefulness to work with them and memories we shared, also seeked some last-min feedbacks, and a little bit uncertainty about next adventure. I promised that I would get back once I figure it out.

I took a 2-weeks gap traveling around northen western Washington, in the middle of the trip, I got the news that my green card arrived home, so I drove home and grabbed the gc and de-routed 1-week to Vancouver, CA. First time visiting Canada, first time camping, first time to the northern western point, a fullfilling trip. I felt lucky and deeply appreciated for things moving smoothly.

Back to the topic.

First month retro

  1. 1w Boot Camp;
  2. Lots of reading and training;
  3. A ramp up task within the team under others’ coach, just finished my 3rd PR in python for a ML pipeline, almost done with one step of them;
    1. some contributions on how pipeline should be organized.
  4. Suggested a new way to project setup so that we could do development easier with IDE;
  5. Some comments and reviews.

Good parts

  1. lots of autonomy
  2. smart and senior teammates, the technical discussion could focus on the right thing
  3. privacy field seems to be an interesting area

Not so good parts

  1. completely new environment, working style and product; lots of things to ramp up.
  2. change process is not as convenient as Amazon, release with one monolithic repo reminds me the giant alexa service day.
  3. reminds me the HSBC life where the HR training is so heavy, Amazon is actually doing better.

Misc

  1. SQL first API, mono repo and release train
  2. Isolated, governed product/prioritization
    1. reduced scope compare to Amazon
  3. Less team wise meetings, more pod wise small meetings/chats/huddles

Summary: I can’t promise this is a great and better place to work with atm, I will get back to it after another Q or half year.

Finally, I would like to end this with one friend’s quote,

what you have is only a temporary fresh air, eventually, engineers always solve the similar staffs. there is no good choice, bad options, all depends on luck?