My specialty is I don’t have a specialty. I can talk to and work with developers and teach them just as easily as I can work with the database folks, operations, etc
They assume you can program at the simple level required by enterprise apps. The questions they have are have you demonstrated being able to do at scale and know how to think on a systems level - security, availability, disaster recover, throughput, etc. I had to walk through my previous system design work.
They also want to know whether you can navigate the complexities of large organizations and you should be just as comfortable talking to CxOs or “the business” as developers.
My interview was all behavioral.
I didn’t say I was paid little compared to new grads. I said new grads five years out of school, I was a mid level consultant. Which was fair. I had only opened the AWS console two years prior and the startups and small IT companies I had been an architect with before had about the overall revenue of one “work stream” in a large enterprise implementation.
I was still making 10% less than an equivalent SDE. I was also working remotely.
Now, after leaving, I’m doing what would be considered L6 level work at my current job (without the L6 level compensation).
There is also a clear road for me to get back to Amazon level pay either at my current company, by changing jobs or if I really wanted to deal with the hassle, going out on my own.
The industry is always hiring. It was hiring in 2000 (I looked for a job then. But I accepted a counter offer). It was hiring in 2008. I found a job in two months and it was hiring two months ago.
Focus on creating an “unfair advantage”.
1. I got on to a high profile open source project and stayed on it until it became a more official “AWS Solution”. In still high on the list of contributors for both code and the documentation. This actually led directly to my current job. The company I was hired for uses the solution.
2. I found out the process to open source my own work and get it published to the AWS Samples GitHub repo. I went through the open source process for every piece of code I wrote after removing the proprietary customer specific parts. I had an open source portfolio that I could say was being used by real customers. I’ve used two of those projects at my current job (legally - MIT licensed by AWS)
I still have one of the two only public solutions to automate deploying one complicated AWS service. I volunteered to design the solution for the service team when they had the APIs it for it in beta and I worked with the guy that created Terraform support for it.
3. I responded to every recruiter over the last three years and kept in touch with former managers and coworkers. This led to an offer of a full time job that I didn’t accept and a side contract I did accept.
4. I constantly kept my resume up to date and I used the leveling guidelines to word it. I also have a career document.
5. I used the extra money I was making to pay off debt, save and “decontent” my life so if necessary, I could go back to enterprise CRUD compensation without having to hold out for BigTech level compensation. I actually turned down a chance at a job that would have paid more than I was making. I didn’t want the stress.
A former coworker is a director of a well known (non tech) company and he was willing to create a position for me overseeing the entire AWS architecture and their transition effort.
6. I kept my LLC active all three years just in case I needed it to ramp up a solo consulting business. I used it for the side contract I mentioned that I started the day I was left (in addition to the full time job I got two weeks later)
I'm not a lawyer, so I'm under the belief that in general this is quite difficult. Once you're paid to create project X, it's ethically or legally difficult to simplify it into an X' for another purpose. It will depend on the company and the contracts you signed, right?
Of course we had to strip out any proprietary information and then put it through the approval process to get it open sourced.
It’s the same at my current company. Anything we create that doesn’t divulge proprietary company information belongs to us and the customer.
If you come to AWS’s own Professional Services division , what are you going to do? Say you’re going to another consulting division that’s better?
I worked on mostly frameworks around AWS that are reusable across implementations and then put any custom business logic as a layer on top of it.
I had only opened the AWS console two years prior.
When you get a PIP at Amazon you might as well give up. Would you rather give up $40K+ or $20k 6 weeks later or $10K when your appeal fails. I was making less than the average software developer at Amazon 5 years out of school or one working for any major tech company. Why weren’t they saving money? I knew what Amazon was about why didn’t they?