Jiawei Wang’s Post
Jiawei Wang
Software Development Engineer at Amazon Alexa
Hi LinkedIn connections! I am ready for my next journey with your company! After I received an offer from Alexa AI, I expressed my intention for an internal transfer to my manager at my current AWS team. Since it is performance review season at Amazon, he quickly sent me into a dev plan (PIP) and blackmailed to my future manager and their supervisor. He has PIP quotas to fill and luckily, dead people can't talk! Yay! So now I am open to work! Recruiters, if you have a job opening that needs a software engineer with solid programming skills, send me a DM! Setting delivery deadline for Monday morning on Friday afternoon? Easy! Paging at 2AM on Saturday? No problem! Being oncall every 4 weeks for a team that lost 50% developers over one year? Piece of cake! I only have one humble request, if I put work over my personal life to meet the deadlines so you can "make the delivery to the principals", do not call me a "Least Effective". Recruiters from Amazon are not welcome, your understanding is much appreciated. (Since I was warned to take down this post, so here is a disclaimer: This LinkedIn account serves my personal purpose to establish effective social interaction with professionals throughout the industry, all my statements are purely based on my personal experience and not indicating any individual or team, all my words can be true, and they can be biased, please have your own judgment) (I didn't expect this post to go on trend, thank you everyone for reaching out to me to provide help. Repost/share is ok, but do not add your own imagination or try to be a story teller. I am already aware of cyberbullying, you are not helping me by hurting more people, and I really DO NOT appreciate social media influencers making story of me to harvest attention and followers.)
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Jiawei Wang
Software Development Engineer at Amazon Alexa
Tod Bookless, PMP
Senior Technical Project Manager at Disney
After leaving Amazon 7 years ago, I have been recruited almost weekly with offers to return. I always respond, no thank you, I found the workplace toxic, etc. Usually, that is the end of it. Lately, I have noticed a shift and it is Dev Managers and Sr Dev Managers that are contacting me. I can only guess why the job is no longer given to recruiters, but last night, at midnight on a Sunday, a local dev manager at Amazon sent me a recruiting message on LinkedIn, and I gave my standard response. She replied at 1:30 AM to tell me, without irony, that Amazon has a new leadership principle: "Strive to be world's best employer." Let's evaluate the progress towards that goal, shall we? - Dev manager has to take over the job of the recruiters. - Dev manager has to work in the middle of the night on a Sunday to complete a non-emergency task (not a site outage, for example). - Dev Manager has no respect for the personal time of someone that she wants to recruit. - Dev Manager was put in the position of having to use a slogan instead of responding directly to Amazon's policy of stack ranking and terminating employees every year. One night, when I was a dev manager at Amazon, another dev manager in Seattle sent me a 20-page design document at 11:30 pm and told me that he wanted me to get him feedback by 5:30 am the next day. Well, I was asleep when he sent the document, and I was sleeping away when the deadline passed. This total lack of empathy for fellow employees is probably one of Amazon's greatest weaknesses. Based on my most recent recruiting experience, it seems like they still have a long way to go. I do feel bad for what the dev managers at Amazon have to go through - but I will gently remind all of them: you have a choice. You can leave. You don't have to perpetuate that culture. Good luck. Update 1 day after the initial post: When I posted a story about my experience with Amazon, I never expected that 700,000 people would view it in the first 24 hours. I have received quite a lot of feedback from current and former Amazonians. Please keep in mind that one of the Amazon Leadership Principles is "Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit" - Amazon leaders are encouraged to speak up and think critically. In other words, it is not only OK to speak your mind, you are expected to do so. The feedback from Amazonians generally falls into four categories: 1. I personally have never seen any of this. 1a. I am an individual contributor with one year of experience at Amazon. 1b. I have not seen it so it is not true. 2. I left Amazon because and all of these things are consistent with my experience. 3. I am currently at Amazon and all of this is still happening. 4. Thank you for speaking up. The vast majority of responses are in categories 2 through 4. Responses have crossed many Amazon divisions in several countries. To the people in category 1: Empathy. To everyone else: It isn't you, and you are not alone.
Jiawei Wang
Software Development Engineer at Amazon Alexa
I wonder what my colleagues are working on... #aws #amazon
Jiawei Wang
Software Development Engineer at Amazon Alexa
This guy made my day. #truestory #definitelynottrolling
Will Ye
Engineering @ Cohere (cohere.io)
Back when I worked at Amazon as a software engineer, the CRAZIEST thing happened to me. Here’s the story… I was working from home with my girlfriend (at the time), when suddenly I get an urgent ping from my coworker: “Our service is experiencing a SEV 2! We need all hands on deck!” Uh oh, our team’s application has gone down! However, as I scrambled to figure out how to fix the issue, I smelled something burning from another room and heard a fire alarm go off. “Will! There’s a fire! Help!” I heard my girlfriend shout. Now I was stuck in a conundrum — restore a critical Amazon service, or put out the fire in my apartment? It was at that time I remembered Amazon’s famous leadership principle “Customer Obsession”. There are customers who depend on my team’s application — I can’t let them down! So I ignored the fire and my girlfriend’s pleas, and started debugging the production issue. But all of a sudden, the smoke in my apartment cleared and the fire alarm fell silent. My girlfriend walked into the room, and to my astonishment, peeled off a wig and revealed herself to be Jeff Bezos himself! “I’m proud of you for being obsessed with our customers,” he said, and gave me a $5 Amazon gift card. He then leaped out of my window and hopped into a waiting Amazon Prime delivery van that quickly peeled away. Even though I no longer work at Amazon, I’m so grateful for these experiences that taught me lessons I’ll never forget. Agree? —— I now work at Cohere (cohere.io)! Give it a spin 😎
Jiawei Wang
Software Development Engineer at Amazon Alexa
I am delighted to announce that I will join Amazon as a software engineer next spring after graduating from Tufts University School of Engineering. 2020 has been both a challenging and a rewarding year for me. This offer would not have been possible without the help and support of many people. I am grateful to all those who have helped and encouraged and supported me. Thank you to the faculty and staff of Tufts University’s Department of Computer Science, for teaching me excellent programming skills and giving me a big vision for the industry. Thanks to Amazon's campus recruiters for creating such a smooth interview process. Special thanks to Mr. David Heckendorn, my spiritual mentor and helping friend, for providing continuous mental and spiritual support through this tough job hunting season. Last but most important, a huge thank you to my family and friends. Without your support throughout my academic career, I would not be who I am today. I am eager to meet new people, make new friends, and explore new learning opportunities in this next chapter of my life. Cheers! #amazon #tufts #thankyou #2020challenge #earlycareer #softwareengineer #backenddeveloper #faang
Jiawei Wang
Software Development Engineer at Amazon Alexa
LETS GO!!!
GradGab
692 followers
Meet our amazing Summer #Team for 2020! https://lnkd.in/ghy5WWw cc: Ashley Johnson, Charles Ross, Jiawei Wang, Akash Jyothish, Aram Ebrahimi, Cate Desler, Dayana Chumburidze, Michelle Nguyen, Sarah Toms, Bryan DelloRusso, Carter Prince, Zech Francis