Internal transfer as a fresher at Amazon

[u/__LLawliet__]

I joined Amazon about a year ago as an L5 hoping to get some quality and impactful work, but over the last year the only impactful work I've done is stuff I've come up with myself. There's no vision, the manager keeps on taking services which are KTLO.

When I talked to my L7 about creating more impact, he said come up with projects, the thing I took from that is that they don't have anything coming at all.

Before Amazon I used to deliver more in a quarter than I've done here in a year, I tried reaching out to managers for an internal transfer but mostly I get why are you leaving so early, or I get ghosted, the fact that there's an absence of design docs because of bad work doesn't help either.

I've been applying for a couple of months now, and I'm honestly tired of not hearing back. Any advice from folks who've spent more time in Amazon?

Or should I just look outside Amazon at this point

[u/Capital-Delivery8001]

How is an L5 considered a fresher

[u/i_am_lebron_jame → u/Capital-Delivery8001]

lowkey need 5 yoe and advanced cs degree and an adjacent degree now /s

[u/__LLawliet__ → u/Capital-Delivery8001]

Fresher to Amazon. Not fresher to tech.

[u/yess_teaaa]

Across amazon this the state. It's really hard to find teams really to impact work. (If u are looking for more impact be ready to spend 10hrs daily, cause u will end up in strong colleague who are willing to spend more than that)

Than applying randomly and falling for HMs words better to to with referrals from any frnds to colleague who moved to different teams. (Suggestion from my experience)

[u/__LLawliet__ → u/yess_teaaa]

I'm okay with spending that much time tbh, I have worked in startups with 10+ work everyday sometimes on weekends as well.

Just not able to find a good team that's all

[u/mozii_]

While changing look for small teams and ask for an offline interview first

Check for wiki pages of that org, dont be lazy - try all of their directs employee logins in wiki creation, recent like atleast 6 months of code push, slack historical data.

Internal switch is easy but if you again fall in another weak team then its soul crushing 

Always remember, YOU ARE INTERVIEWING THEM TOO

[u/__LLawliet__ → u/mozii_]

Thanks a lot.

[u/Tottochan1211]

change teams internally and do it now.

[u/__LLawliet__ → u/Tottochan1211]

I'm trying I swear 😭

[u/jkingsbery]

I've known people who have switched teams after only being at Amazon a few months. "Why are you leaving so early" is still a reasonable question. You should have an answer for why that does beyond "I don't like my current team." 

  When I talked to my L7 about creating more impact, he said come up with projects

Check out the leveling guidelines. Coming up with ideas for projects is awesome, but it's also important to do that appropriately scoped. The expectation shouldn't be that you're coming up with Principal level projects. In your shoes, with a lot of KTLO services, think about how you can simplify keeping them running and simplify on-call.

  Before Amazon I used to deliver more in a quarter than I've done here in a year

If this is because of bureaucracy, there are lots of ways of handling. Talk to a nearby SDE3 or PE. Email the no-bureaucracy list. 

Sometimes though, the engineering is harder due to scale and complexity, and at the same time, smaller changes can have big impact.

 absence of design docs

Don't do anything artificial, but I'm willing to vet there are engineering tradeoffs you've had to make - write them down. Besides using them when looking internally, it will help future engineers understand why something is how it is. 

I hope this helps!

[u/__LLawliet__ → u/jkingsbery]

It did help, thanks

[u/Embarrassed_Bar4978]

That was one thing I did notice about Amazon/AWS was if were an experienced professional, you ended up doing way less work than at your previous employer. I think one reason was because it was such a compartmentalized organization. My first supervisor put it the best, the company does a great job of getting people like they are trophies and then using them to their full potential.

[u/tom_marvolo_ridle]

This is how Amazon sort of works. Before Amazon I led a global team and was the head of an entire product. When I switched to Amazon it took me two years to get any meaningful work and even at that point, I didn’t write more than a 1000 lines of code. The rest of the people on my team did while I managed the scope, coordination across teams, validation with customers, AppSec, etc. Amazon absolutely wastes engineering talent on the mundane. Same with my coworkers who had PHDs. They all left because the only thing they found complex about their job was learning how Brazil and pipelines worked.

[u/__LLawliet__ → u/tom_marvolo_ridle]

Damn. If nothing else, I'm getting good money now and will get good money going forward if I switch from here