Advice from a Principal Software Engineer at Amazon (Steve Huynh)

in this video I'm going to give you a bird's eye view looking down at me having a chat with a principal software engineer who works at Amazon he's been there for 20 years you probably know who he is he's the owner of the YouTube channel a life engineered his name is Steve Quinn he's got a great YouTube channel you should check him out we had a chat and somehow I convinced him to Mentor me as many of you know I work at Square as an Android engineer and now that I have a job this is my you know first job ever I know I've been an Android developer for several years but I never actually had a job I got a job now and I'm struggling I'm struggling to climb the corporate ladder it's very different than sitting down and writing code all day so I I reached out to Steve who has you know so much experience in the field he makes great videos gives great advice and I asked him to Mentor me and somehow I convinced him in this video I'm going to show you how I convinced him I really I really can't emphasize enough how great of a chat this this was mostly because he gave me some highly really personalized advice but I suspect that a lot of you are probably struggling with the same issues that I'm struggling at your job he gives me some great tips and things that I can do to help move me along in my promotion cycle or what to do for my next one how to prepare for it uh generally this is good advice I really suggest you watch this video if you are struggling to get promoted or even if you're not these are good tips anyway maybe you have no problem getting promoted but I I suspect if you listen to these you will get promoted even faster but the the thing that I've been thinking about to actually differentiate is this like mentoring series and so what I was really gonna like what I wanted to do is basically be like make a video called can I be your mentor because every single day you included somebody is like hey can you Mentor me um every single day in my internal slack on Twitter on LinkedIn like everybody is sending a message they're just like can I be can you be my mentor and it's like no I don't have time like I would yeah I would like you know and I don't do that I know yeah yeah you probably haven't for you a ton the the big thing is I I I think a lot of the benefit like the a lot of the the interest in my channel is like being in a room with a conversation uh or some advice that you would just not get right like elsewhere like just being the fly in the wall and you know and then you know either it's basically like my office hours I'm like hey this is what you should be thinking about in your career or and this is why I think it'd be good like talking to somebody like you and then going like longitudinally just be like hey you get to listen in to Stephen Mitch talk about like career progression or whatever I was gonna like open it up to like like literally have people apply to be my mentee you know I think I think it'd be it's very practical because like I I have so many things that like I I never I never would have watched your Channel or rahul's channel for example like a year ago because I have no use for it but now it's like the things you guys say are just like they're hitting the buttons I'm like yeah yeah yeah that the dopamine is just like oh my God but then like the you like the internet could like just listen in on our conversation that's a great idea I was talking to some people though they're like man you need to get somebody that's like okay on camera yeah like well I don't know yeah a lot of people are very awkward on camera and yeah yeah you you gotta get and then you gotta find the right person who's at the right level yes someone who you think will be successful by listening to your advice and then somebody who is not crazy weird on camera yeah okay yeah that's hard to find like you know I was so when you like you slip into my DMs I'm just like oh my God there's somebody like you have more subscribers than I do that's great obviously you're fine on camera and then you're like oh you know hey I've tried a bunch of stuff non-traditional background um now I work for you know megacorp or whatever like I need to get promoted I'm like wow you're like you're perfectly my demographic you just happened to that's funny what are your Cycles the promotion Cycles would it be beginning of the year or yeah I think it's I think they do them January like early January and then they do and then they do another one um like May or something and then and then it's a three-month time period to get to get the result yeah okay you came in at four senior senior is five seniors love five yeah okay so I'm I'm just like a regular old engineer meteor yeah yeah yeah whatever um I understand it though because like I got I did very well on all the technical stuff but the other it's just like I have no work experience and you know it's and and to get hired at a senior level because that's what they were saying do we hire him at a senior or do we hire him at L4 and then they ended up going with The L4 yeah I mean I understand it because yeah I have no work experience you know I it's like that's a big risk for a company to take I guess so but things have been going well and yeah I went through that one I went through a promotion cycle in May and the ones said no basically said we need to see more um and I had only get I'd only get in I'd only done one engineering design and that was that was a big one just because I hadn't been given the opportunity like I only did one design and now when I go for next I should have three maybe four okay so yeah when you do a promotion at you know megacorp I get a big company often times you know you won't get through but the whole point of these processes that they engineer are that that you get the feedback that you need right and so it is a broken process if people just give you a binary response they're just basically like hey you you didn't get it right and then you just kind of like walk away you know tail between your legs and then you're like you try again you didn't get any feedback but the the the the sacred uh law that these you know that this process has to produce is actionable feedback for you right so we we no longer just say no go like go and figure it out right and so if you're not getting and so we said no to like a ton of folks like this this last cycle and so like I'm like hey we said no but we have to just be like give them a a ton of feedback with actionable things right like you need more I'm just pulling some out of my mess like you need more um like cross-team impact and influence you know it might be something and then we would have to be like what does that mean for this person's situation oh very specific yeah like yeah that's more specific than Square yeah so it really like well that's what I'm pushing for because I I went through this process like four or five times and it was like it was like demoralizing yeah because you don't know you throw your hands up in the air basically you're like what the do I do I don't know yeah exactly exactly and so here's the thing you and your manager if you're not getting that direct and actionable feedback it's incumbent on like your manager at least from my perspective you just be like hey remember that that stuff that we got back in May and June or whatever and it says like I needed to do more design documents or designs uh you know there's probably other feedback as well like you know you know it might be design documents it might be some soft skill stuff it might be literally my feedback was design do more designs we need to see more and more uh and mentorship yeah so so here's here's what you do right so for the four for the four times that I went through that I didn't get through I I literally wrote a postmortem document it had three sections it had like I received feedback here are the positive bits of feedback I'm doing well with coding I'm doing well with design on my team Steve has bias for Action whatever the it is and then it's just like then there's like the the feedback and so it was basically like you know um seasonies has more like cross-team influence he needs to design bigger things you know he needs to earn the trust of like VP level people whatever it was and then I had a third section which is basically like here's my plan for the next six months because actually six months is like no time at all yeah I know it just flies you know and so it's it's literally like okay cool it's six months like Christmas time is gonna be here like you might have a baby like um like people actually have to like go and fetch all of the information there's this whole time where they like actually have to you know get into the enclave and vote for you which means you have like three months or whatever it is if you like work backwards from that date you have three months to demonstrate that you're working at the next level which is like no time if you have to do like two designs or whatever right yeah which means like hey what are my two like so you have to come up with a concrete plan and so then I took that I took that post-mortem document and then I shopped it around I took it to my manager I took it to the people that I knew were on the committee I took it to the people that were all involved in the process I took it to my um some like senior principles that I like were mentoring me at the time and I'm like hey did I receive the feedback correctly and then like does this plan if I were able to execute on this concrete plan would that push me over the edge like when I finally got my you know when when I when I when I did that when I got like super systematic about it right that's when that's a good idea I only got to the next you know I got to one level like right before and there were still some things and so like when you receive feedback and I'm thinking about right making a video on this and you like receiving critical feedback is like one of the hardest thing things that you can do like that's a skill that is like is so difficult to do right and so you when somebody's giving you feedback your first instinct is to get like defensive yeah right of course you gotta you gotta fight that off you gotta like take it in and be like okay I know this feeling you just can't get rid of that then then you're like oh then you get like all depressed and because they're like they're like they're like like they're they're just like you know telling you about your flaws and stuff like that right yeah the the the critical thing is to like listen to actively listen and to not respond to the feedback but receive it right and then in the Moment Like process it a little bit and then when you ask questions you want to clarify specifically what that what that feedback was so that you actually understand what it is yeah because actually people don't hear it sometimes yeah or they hear it and then like because you're emotional you don't clarify the things that need to be clarified like that because it's they'll give you feedback ensure it's specific-ish but then you you need to think about it implementation wise and like yes ask the questions to get the feedback so you can act on it yes and so that was so there's there's the um clarification on that feedback that can happen in the moment when they you know uh deliver it to you verbally there's the clarification of the feedback if it's written right and then there's a clarification of the feedback after you've actually had time to digest all of that stuff and I was like hey I was thinking about it it I've received it like there's maybe a finer and subtle Point like what exactly are you saying right and so like there's these three layers of of actually receiving the feedback then only after that point can you be like okay I have reversed engineered this process I understand what the bar is I understand what they're saying about me it's all true most of the time it's like completely true that there is a situation where they don't have visibility on something that you've done you know so there's an edge case there and so when you come up with that plan right so it sounds like hey you know it I will I will I will I will sort of map it to your world I needed to do two more designs so I did you know I needed to do more designs I had done like 0.75 designs and so I you know I need to I need to kill it there here are the two designs that I'm planning on doing that is a half measure so that's a half step what you need to do is you need to go find somebody at that next level and just be like is if you haven't done this already and just be like are these designs of high quality is is the scope right is this something that you would expect to come from an L5 Square engineer like that is the the that is what you need to go and do right now and that you can do if you haven't done that like you should be going to do that right now like I'm sure you there's peers uh or or people just like at the L5 or L6 level over at Square where you can be like hey here's my design there's this other process where we actually talk about you know whether this is a good design or not and talk about the constraints and assumptions and all that the the there's this other type of meta feedback that you can do which is like does this feel like something an L5 engineer would produce that you would just be like yeah I should probably write this down uh yeah that's a good idea uh yeah you can get ahead of this like you just like run ahead of it and so when when you know it's September right now you're getting near the end of like when you can actually change direction on this ship so just be like you know I'm sure you have some friends there and if you don't that's a different problem we should probably I got lots of people I could ask yeah so just be like hey read this document not for the technical content necessarily but they should have you know I mean I've already I've already got the people on my team who are above me um like my my most senior person on my team who's who read it approved it they already know it in detail I just didn't ask the question is this the scope and quality of an L5 to them yes so that's all I need to do really yeah and and this literally be like if not don't so yeah I think you understand what I'm saying here but don't just go and change the document to you know respond in kind to the the feedback but you need to ask yourself why didn't I know to add this you know to the document why didn't I understand that the scope was too big or too narrow right there's like a meta thing there where it's basically like people at this level like instinctively understand you know and can reason and can make about a judgment about these documents what about my process or like was there some assumption or or like baked in piece of knowledge was there some bias on my side you know or is it you know was were you ignorant of it or like what is the reason that I didn't just do the thing that they're giving me feedback on like that that meta analysis is the most critical piece yeah why yeah why why didn't I think that why didn't I it's like it's like there's 10 ways to do a problem I solve a problem why did all of the seniors choose method B yeah why did I go C or halfway you know it's like I need to have thought that way why didn't I think that way and so yeah when when people are L3 like getting promoted to L4 they are in that same boat too they're like well like here's my implementation well why is it that everybody that's L5 and L6 like like stays away from the implementation that I had like they they all immediately go to the same Branch right and they still and like everybody like just solves it this way like why didn't I just immediately go and walk down that path too right so same thing at your level recursively it's it it's also true when you want to get from L5 to L6 it's going to be the same thing if somebody from L6 got demoted to L5 they would be like oh my God this is a vacation like hey I have to do some designs but these designs aren't like of the scale and complexity that like my day-to-day is and so when you get to like La it's the same thing you know actually I'm I'm not it yeah I guess levels to FYI says L8 is the same as close sales anyway so there's overlap when you get to L8 you're just gonna be like oh my God it'd be a freaking vacation if I was in you know that previous one and so you just need to be like hey what's that Delta in terms of like skills uh intuition judgment or whatever right from that everybody seems to have at that next level that I for some reason don't have right now that Delta is hard to find but usually it's going to be a really simple thing that you can like summarize in like two sentences yeah probably it'll be like some it'll be like oh we we because if you do it that way you're gonna run into like these set of problems or or we've tried that before and that was bad so yeah and then they'll be able to express it in like two sentences and you'll be like oh cool now I have that knowledge right and then you're just like but like how long did it take you to even formulate a question right that would uncover that thing that you weren't seeing right that's like the hard part right yeah that's like the classic example I always like so I do some interviews like I review take-home projects and things like that and like one of the biggest like red flags it always stands out to me is like because it's oh you're you can do a take-home project fed Square to as apply and you have to add unit tests to it for Android and if if they don't add unit tests this is like it's it's so and it's so easy but it's such a big red flag no he's just like you're just like no hard hard pass it is because because no if you didn't write a unit test that doesn't just tell me you don't know how to write unit tests that tells me that you don't know why in unit tests are important yeah I've never thought about how you should write your code so that it's unit testable it's like such a it's like this little thing that just bubbles into this massive thing yeah it's like I already know I don't want to work with you right like I'm like and it's not going to be because of the lack of unit tests there's a whole class of things yeah like I don't care about your access they're easy to write it's not or they should be and it's it's the other things that it means yeah yeah yeah exactly and so there there is a class of that for you getting to that next level and then the next level after that right and here's the thing about it that I think is um difficult to bottle and which is why like every YouTuber that's successful they typically gravitate around the things that are objective so like coding or leak code or you know interviews for entry-level stuff or whatever is that the next level after entry level and mid-level is completely like environmental and like specific to that situation right and so like you getting to L5 is is there's a square context there right that's specific to square the way that you guys do designs at square there's there's a way like there's a there's a politics there there's an organizational structure there there's a culture there yeah right and so that doesn't transport to Amazon or to Google and in fact within Amazon that doesn't transport there are so many different pockets of culture you know and so like in my comment section it's terrible they're like oh you have no soul you work for Amazon like you pee in a bottle or whatever no and I'm just like I support the workers in these warehouses like I would never work on a team where I'm like crying at my desk because they're like you know pushing me to work 100 hours in a week like I'm in a really awesome place but the thing is like I'm sure it exists because if we're any population you know it's like think about a town that has a hundred thousand people in it yeah can you say anything about that town other than like the highest level true of like generic things where something is true like no yeah there's there's no pockets of all kinds of that you'd never think yes you know and so here's the thing like the the advice that I would give you like it absolutely like but it's like it's it's so personal to Mitch and square and the situation that you're in right I can I can talk about generic ass things you know what I mean and then see if it maybe fits you or whatever right um but that's that's kind of that is a that's a that's a that's a difficult art um it's so much easier to talk about like how you can grind lead code questions right and and then get into a big like you know Tech firm or whatever because that like that's the equivalent of like like a lead code problems like hey I write it did I did it go through you have unit tests it's objective or whatever right when you try to get into like this mentorship game this career growth game within Tech there's like nobody it's like real cool were the first ones really yeah you know they didn't exist it kind of was convenient for me because I just started working it's like great hey look guys started making videos on this stuff perfect but yeah there's nobody like that I know of other than yeah Tech lead but he's he's more like a meme than anything yeah I love the way you use like you just call him a meme he is a meme what do you mean oh my God he knows he's a meme so I yeah there's nobody in this space and so like I think I'll occupy the the thing is like not not the not of piece of space and good advice yeah no the advice for a mid to high like career software Engineers like there's just nothing out there yeah there's lots of entry level entry level makes money that's why um you know like beginner courses make money lead code questions make money it's just because everybody's desperate to get the job but yeah there's there's nothing for the you know people who have jobs who want to move up that was it I hope you enjoyed it my chat with Steve Wynn there's a bunch of other Clips I want to add too um we talked for like an hour and a half so this is just a bunch a bunch of stuff that I pulled out of the chat but I hope that we actually do go through this sort of mentorship and mentee thing that he was talking about throughout the video I think I'd be great for it you know I actually have a job so I would take in his advice try to implement it at the at my workplace and then hopefully get get some results and if I don't get results then of course it's Steve's fault it's not my fault because he gave me the advice shouldn't give me bad advice Steve thanks for watching as always remember if you want to learn how to become an Android engineer a professional Android developer in the industry go to codingwithmich.com watch the best Android courses in the world some of them are free some are paid free doesn't necessarily mean it's worse than paid but I just I know I had to make money somehow so summer free summer paid thank you Steve again um and I hope we can uh do a podcast again soon oh and don't forget your engagement if you like this kind of content if you want to see Steve mentoring me watch my hopeful I hopefully my career growth at Square um go uh you know hit the like button leave a comment down below leave some kind of Engagement any comment at all hello Mitch I like the video Mitch Mitch your hair is stupid whatever you want some kind of comment I'll see you in the next video

Channel: CodingWithMitch

Views: 11,921

Keywords: software engineering, software engineer promotion, steve huynh, steve huynh amazon, software engineer career advice, software engineer career advancement

Id: THYGsHVrUC4

Length: 22min 45sec (1365 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 19 2022