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In commemoration of this moment, I am doing a thread on the time my friend @gergi saved my career at Amazon. Lot's of people asked, what advice would you give to others? My advice is to seek out people like him. A Thread..... 1/15 https://twitter.com/JonathanMHenson/status/1245472502513414145
My first gig at Amazon was working on this disgusting monolithic Java code base running one of our fulfillment center technologies. It was THE WORST. It was three services running over the same code base, and an op config value changed which service it was. 2/15
It was easily a million LOC. Anyways, I hated this job. I didn't feel challenged, I wasn't passionate about the domain, and it was quagmired in technical debt. We had a hard time getting anything new done, and any project that came my way was small in scope. 3/15
Less than a year in I tried to transfer to a team working in my domain (Amazon Instant Video). The interview went well enough but I didn't get the job and it was a real kick in the teeth. 4/15
Why didn't I get this job? A senior engineer on the team asked me: "tell me about a time you improved the quality of your system when you weren't on-call and the improvement wasn't assigned to you". I didn't have an answer. I didn't get the job and I was devastated 5/15
Now mine was an almost religiously idealistic scrum team. Working on things not on a sprint was actually very much discouraged at the time. I felt stuck. How can I grow with no opportunities? How can I improve this system when nothing gets prioritized. 6/15
I was on the verge of quiting when I had an evening conversation with my friend Shawn wherein he taught me:
a.) How to talk to the business in a way that will get necessary projects prioritized (Are Right A Lot) 7/15
a.) How to talk to the business in a way that will get necessary projects prioritized (Are Right A Lot) 7/15
b.) To sometimes just go do the work that needs to be done, with or without permission. Do it iteratively and carefully, but do it regardless (Bias for Action) 8/15
c.) Learn all things operational excellence: hard assed testing, CI/CD, metrics, alarms, canaries, etc... (Insist on the Highest Standards, and Ownership) 9/15
d.) Break large aspirational projects into actionable, deliverable increments that can be tested for success or failure quickly. This way, when you deliver those few small in scope projects already on the books, you're still moving towards the end goal (Are Right A Lot) 10/15
e.) He invited me to shadow him for interviews, and also gave me mentorship experience by just me doing for others what he did for me (Hire And Develop The best). 11/15
f.) One time he gave me a stern talking to after he caught me working through a meeting with our senior leadership about the need to engage and offer my thoughts, the need to listen more, and to ask more questions (Earn Trust). 12/15
Over the next year, I learned what it meant to be an "Amazonian" from him. On my own, I began to work on my own initiatives. I got into trouble with leadership ALOT. But I usually failed upwards. But he pushed me to exercise the muscles necessary to succeed at Amazon. 13/15
In short, lot's of folks have helped me along the way. I've learned from so many folks that have invested their time in me. But @gergi saved my career. My best advice I can give anyone is to find people like him, stick to them like glue until they tell you to back off. 14/15
Also, you should follow him. He's an awesome person. He mostly tweets about history, video games, and how awful POTUS is, but he's one of Amazon's best, and he's the GOAT to me. 15/15
P.S. Shawn, I'm sorry for at-ing you like this, but quarantine makes me sappy/sentimental and I promise never to do it again.
