Hi John, this is an absolutely great video. I was a Principal Engineer at Amazon for six years and my experience was similar to yours. I am a Senior Staff Engineer at Google today and really love it, but the PE community at Amazon was unique. +1 to the suggestion of making a video comparing Microsoft, Amazon, Google in terms of the PE experience.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I'm checking in with a few folks in the next week or so to see how PE has changed at Amazon since I was there. If it's anywhere near as good as it was, still a cherry position!
This is really great - Thanks a lot sharing your experience and thoughts. It helps. Keep sharing your experience/thoughts/knowledge. That helps software engineering community. thanks.
Awesome ! I happened to find your youtube channel. Great to get insights from somebody who is a real veteran in tech career. Keep the videos coming. I am currently an SDE at Aamzon. I will try to apply the insights from you in practice.
This is great - thanks for sharing your experience and vision for the role. You mentioned how far Amazon is from your home as a deciding factor in going back. I’m curious what your perspective is on the feasibility of remote senior leadership positions. I’ve been growing steadily towards principal and I’m a little worried that my desire to stay in my specific region may be a limiting factor in my career in big tech.
It's a good question. If you're a principal and willing to travel, and if you're good enough that a company needs your specialization in particular, you're in a good position to have a special arrangement. Otherwise in the places I've seen you need to be geographically close to the group you're attached to. Covid might have changed all of this, though!
I'm a mid-level engineer so I'm definitely closer to the lower end of this community/have more empathy for them but wouldn't it speak volumes to a company's overall culture if it's widely considered a toxic place for juniors and interns? I mean taking a step back of course every company wants to treat principals/staff engineers well, you are some of the highest paid engineering employees, but how a company treats those at the bottom of the ladder seems more important as to whether or not said company deserves praise right?
My personal experience at Amazon was that the engineers were happy to be there and enthusiastic about their work. I didn't see a higher rate of dis-satisfaction among junior engineers there than I've seen at Microsoft, for example. They have gotten some bad press, but the specifics I saw were for non-engineers, and I have no direct experience to judge it.
If possible, can you post a video on personal life aspects of being or striving to reach the position of PE, and WLB in general. Can one spend adequate quality time with family and friends at the same time excel at work? I know everyone's miles vary. But, curious to know about your insights
I focused on work for most of my career: didn't get married for almost 10 years, didn't have a kid for another 10 years. That was when things started shifting a little for me. In general I would say that it's possible to make it to principal without having work be your top priority, but people who are passionate and spend extra time learning about it and doing it are more likely to succeed than those who put in their time and go home. However, you can still have a great career and great compensation while putting in a standard work week throughout your career, as long as you're good!
Most experienced engineers with years of excellent experience, are poor on writing what they have done.... Choosing the right words, phrases, etc ..., It is same issue for me too Thanks
Hi Abdlhafiz - I think the resume is a lot more important for junior engineers than senior. With senior your work experience pretty much speaks for itself. I think there's already a lot of great advice out there on preparing resumes. For example, Life after Layoff has uniformly awesome advice in general. Here's a link to a playlist on resumes: th-cam.com/video/YhoKMtv100U/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for watching! Here's a video on how to reach principal - th-cam.com/video/Xfq5iyX7BLQ/w-d-xo.html and one on how to reach senior in case you're not there yet - th-cam.com/video/B3O__6UIAVI/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for watching and commenting! I've saved a note and will make this video sometime in the future. I'll throw in Oracle as well, although the experience might have been atypical.
Hi John, this is an absolutely great video. I was a Principal Engineer at Amazon for six years and my experience was similar to yours. I am a Senior Staff Engineer at Google today and really love it, but the PE community at Amazon was unique.
+1 to the suggestion of making a video comparing Microsoft, Amazon, Google in terms of the PE experience.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I'm checking in with a few folks in the next week or so to see how PE has changed at Amazon since I was there. If it's anywhere near as good as it was, still a cherry position!
Excellent video John. I too enjoyed my time at Amazon and found that their approach to the community of principal engineers unique.
Thanks for checking it out and commenting!
This is really great - Thanks a lot sharing your experience and thoughts. It helps. Keep sharing your experience/thoughts/knowledge. That helps software engineering community. thanks.
Awesome ! I happened to find your youtube channel. Great to get insights from somebody who is a real veteran in tech career. Keep the videos coming. I am currently an SDE at Aamzon. I will try to apply the insights from you in practice.
Thanks for watching and commenting! Congrats on working at Amazon!
This is great - thanks for sharing your experience and vision for the role.
You mentioned how far Amazon is from your home as a deciding factor in going back. I’m curious what your perspective is on the feasibility of remote senior leadership positions.
I’ve been growing steadily towards principal and I’m a little worried that my desire to stay in my specific region may be a limiting factor in my career in big tech.
It's a good question. If you're a principal and willing to travel, and if you're good enough that a company needs your specialization in particular, you're in a good position to have a special arrangement. Otherwise in the places I've seen you need to be geographically close to the group you're attached to. Covid might have changed all of this, though!
I'm a mid-level engineer so I'm definitely closer to the lower end of this community/have more empathy for them but wouldn't it speak volumes to a company's overall culture if it's widely considered a toxic place for juniors and interns? I mean taking a step back of course every company wants to treat principals/staff engineers well, you are some of the highest paid engineering employees, but how a company treats those at the bottom of the ladder seems more important as to whether or not said company deserves praise right?
My personal experience at Amazon was that the engineers were happy to be there and enthusiastic about their work. I didn't see a higher rate of dis-satisfaction among junior engineers there than I've seen at Microsoft, for example. They have gotten some bad press, but the specifics I saw were for non-engineers, and I have no direct experience to judge it.
If possible, can you post a video on personal life aspects of being or striving to reach the position of PE, and WLB in general. Can one spend adequate quality time with family and friends at the same time excel at work? I know everyone's miles vary. But, curious to know about your insights
I focused on work for most of my career: didn't get married for almost 10 years, didn't have a kid for another 10 years. That was when things started shifting a little for me. In general I would say that it's possible to make it to principal without having work be your top priority, but people who are passionate and spend extra time learning about it and doing it are more likely to succeed than those who put in their time and go home. However, you can still have a great career and great compensation while putting in a standard work week throughout your career, as long as you're good!
Thanks John.
Can You prepare at least one video on Professional Resume Preparation? May be Some Key advises ,...
Thanks
Most experienced engineers with years of excellent experience, are poor on writing what they have done....
Choosing the right words, phrases, etc ..., It is same issue for me too
Thanks
Hi Abdlhafiz - I think the resume is a lot more important for junior engineers than senior. With senior your work experience pretty much speaks for itself. I think there's already a lot of great advice out there on preparing resumes. For example, Life after Layoff has uniformly awesome advice in general. Here's a link to a playlist on resumes: th-cam.com/video/YhoKMtv100U/w-d-xo.html
Great video. Can you please let us know how to get promoted as PE from being an SDE , internally.
Thanks for watching! Here's a video on how to reach principal - th-cam.com/video/Xfq5iyX7BLQ/w-d-xo.html and one on how to reach senior in case you're not there yet - th-cam.com/video/B3O__6UIAVI/w-d-xo.html
Nice video, can you compare your principal engineer experience from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
Thanks for watching and commenting! I've saved a note and will make this video sometime in the future. I'll throw in Oracle as well, although the experience might have been atypical.
@@TheDeliberateEngineer Thanks. Really appreciate it.
Video on this dropping friday morning. Thanks again for the suggestion!
@@TheDeliberateEngineer woohoo !!