Tom Drozdowski

1. Gradle Inc. Gradle is like a magic builder for your software projects. Think of building a house - you need to assemble bricks, wood, and other materials. Gradle does this for software. It takes your code, puts all the pieces together, and turns it into a working app or software. It's super fast and can handle big projects with ease, making sure everything is in the right place. 2. Phabricator Phabricator is like an all-in-one project hub for software development. Think of it as a digital workshop where your team can plan, build, and manage projects together. It helps you track tasks, review code, and collaborate in one place. This makes sure everyone stays on the same page, work moves smoothly, and projects are completed efficiently. 3. Gitea Gitea is like a digital storage locker for your code, but with teamwork in mind. Imagine working on a project with friends. You all need to keep track of who did what and make sure you're not messing up each other's work. Gitea helps you do that by letting you save your code, track changes, and collaborate seamlessly. Plus, it’s lightweight and super easy to set up! 4. Huginn Huginn is like your personal internet assistant. Imagine having a smart robot that watches the internet for you and takes action when something happens. Huginn can send you alerts, gather information, and even perform tasks automatically. Whether it’s monitoring news, tracking emails, or managing social media, Huginn makes your online life easier by doing the repetitive work for you. 5. Tabnine TabNine is like an intelligent assistant for coding. Let's say you’re writing a long essay, and someone whispers the next sentence to you. That’s what TabNine does for coding. It predicts what you’re about to type next and offers suggestions, helping you code faster and with fewer mistakes. It’s like having a smart friend who knows exactly what you need. 6. Ansible by Red Hat Ansible is like a remote control for your IT tasks. Imagine having to cook dinner for 100 people in different kitchens. Ansible helps you control all the stoves from one place. It automates tasks like setting up servers, deploying apps, or managing systems, so you don’t have to do it manually. It’s super efficient, reliable, and saves a ton of time. Follow For More 🤖

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Did you know there are no "roles" (SDE, SDET, TPM, …) when you get to L8 IC (Senior Principal) at Amazon? It’s one of Amazon’s peculiarities. [Side note: in general, Amazon SDEs tend to be "jack of all trades" where we pragmatically do whatever is necessary to make our organization successful at that given moment (within reason). In fact, I believe being well-rounded and able and willing to wear a number of hats is one of the things that makes me valuable to an employer. We don’t over-index on "that’s not part of my role doc." Other companies where I worked (eg Google) have very clear swimming lanes and people stick to them pretty religiously, eg. "oh no I don’t talk to customers, I’m an SDE and talking to customers is for TPMs." Whereas at Amazon I never once had a manager tell me, "what you did (although impactful, important and necessary) was not really your job." ] My little side note about this critical piece of amazon culture explains why as you get to L8 the concept of a "role" no longer really makes sense. The boundaries between roles get fuzzier and fuzzier as you go from Senior Engineer (L6) to Principal Engineer (L7), and they become unimportant when you get to L8. We’re all just “Senior Principals” - whether you came via the SDE path, the TPM path, or in my snowflake case, the SDET path. In fact I think most L8s are snowflakes in that their path to L8 was unique and the value they bring to the company is also unique. In phonetool (our amazon directory) you can have whatever unofficial title you want (also within reason...), so I chose to keep the "SDET" title to reflect my background and passion for testing, engineering and operational excellence, and developer tools. I also hope that by keeping the title, others in my (old?) role can see that SDETs at Amazon do not have a "ceiling" in their career. And lastly, it's a fun conversational piece ("you're an L8 SDET???") (The image here is "Peccy" - a beloved little icon that has represented Amazon's Peculiar Ways for years) [Edit: Strictly speaking there are a few L8 IC roles that do have a different job code, like PMT or Scientist - but I think we generally view all L8 ICs in the same lens]

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What does it feel like to be an engineering manager at Amazon: Since the RTO announcement it became popular to write shit about Amazon, but it's still one of the best companies around the world. A few weeks ago, Gilad Naor shared with the 'Leading Developers' readers 3 lessons from his time as an engineering manager at Amazon. Here is the first one, read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/dHBxv2Ha 𝟭. 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺𝘀 My first meeting at Amazon was baffling. I entered a room with about a dozen Software Development Managers (SDMs) and Product Managers (PMs). Everyone sat in silence and looked at their laptops or the printed papers they had before them. It was my second day at Amazon, and I picked up one of the extra sheets and started reading. After those first ten awkward minutes, everyone finished reading and the meeting began. Why do Amazon meetings always start this way? This is a specific example of how Amazon approaches problem-solving. It is the "Good Intentions Don't Matter" approach. In a famous internal video, Jeff Bezos talks about why good intentions are irrelevant. When things don't work, it does not matter what people wanted. All that matters is fixing the problems with mechanisms. For example, many busy managers come to meetings without first reading the prep material. They all intended to read the 6-Pager before the meeting. They just got sidetracked by the latest emergency. Scolding the managers won't solve the problem. A mechanism will. This is why all Amazon meetings start with a study period. The remaining meeting time is then spent on high-quality decision-making. Meta solves the same problem by creating cultural norms. I can't count the number of times that I heard a senior leader cut off the presenter: "Stop, assume that everyone here already read the slides. Let's get to the point." This is a culture-first approach. I have seen this work well in some teams, and not work at all in other teams. At Amazon, the solution is part of the company's "operating system". ------------------------- Anton here - by now everyone is familiar with the 6-pager concept, but that "operating system" thinking can be used almost anywhere. Think about something annoying that your developers do, and how can you solve it. For example, I remember being annoyed that people don’t update the Jira tickets. Finally, after requesting multiple times, now we just take 20 seconds from the standup to update them.

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Over the past couple of years, I've really enjoyed learning Gradle and moving our build from Maven to Gradle has provided a massive improvement to our build times - from 90 minutes to 20 minutes. If you are new to Gradle, I've put together a series of blog posts on core Gradle topics: https://lnkd.in/e6qcD3mG

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It’s absolutely this - good management makes great engineers into rockstars. Not because of anything technical or mythical, but because management brings alignment and drives actual, measurable impact to the business. A rockstar engineer isn’t someone who churns out miles of code or solves thorny algorithmic problems - it’s one who can make significant impact to the bottom line.

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Amazon-to-Google-to-Amazon #a2g2a thought of the day: Company meetings. Yesterday I attended the Amazon Company Meeting. My first one was 15 years ago. I attended many Company Meetings before, while at Microsoft. Back in the nineties, they would bus tens of thousands of microsofties across Lake Washington and we would descend upon the Kingdome (a stadium long defunct) to lovingly hear Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Steve put on quite a show. He was sweaty, agitated, and passionately scream about how we needed to destroy the competition. “We gotta destroy Sun!”, he’d yell. Woooohoooo, we would respond. “We gotta destroy Netscape!”, he’d continue. Woooohoooo! I was young, dumb and full of testosterone, so his competitive nature resonated with me. Steve always ended with a standing ovation.   And so in 2009, I curiously joined my first Amazon Company Meeting, half-expecting Jeff Bezos to get up there all sweaty and scream at me. Instead, Jeff was down to earth, white shirt, jeans, sneakers, took questions from the audience candidly, and spoke about “the customer” a lot. I turned to the guy next to me. “When is he going to talk about who we need to destroy?” I asked impatiently. I learned that day Amazon Works Backwards from the Customer, not Competitors.   Throughout the years I never once missed an Amazon Company Meeting. The most memorable was 2013 when Jeff gave me a Just Do It Award in front of thousands of amazonians, and I got to hang out backstage with him. It was only a few minutes but the 1:1 with Jeff made a huge impact to my entire career. Still got that shoe.   And so in 2020, when I joined Google, I was equally curious about the Company Meetings, so I attended all of them as well. Maybe it’s an unfair comparison because Google today isn’t Google 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, and you can’t have the same level of candor when 120k engineers are listening to every word you say (and a few of those are leaking every single word you say which then affects your stock price…), but the entire thing felt rehearsed and inauthentic. I found Sundar to be a thoughtful and calm leader, but also not relatable, and lacking pizzazz, conviction and courage. He was cautious and reserved. I didn’t learn anything from him. I did not feel inspired by a vision. The VPs that got up on stage were very rehearsed, inauthentic and peppered their speeches with weasel words and platitudes. My low point was the All-Hands after the 12k-people layoffs. Sundar and Ruth (Porat) botched the entire thing. I’ve literally never seen two leaders more out of touch with the people they were supposed to be leading in my entire life. I loved the googlers I worked with, but not senior leaders.   Yesterday I was wondering: Would Amazon be what I remembered? The all-hands felt surprisingly familiar. Sure, it was a bit more polished, and if I was presenting to 100k people live I’d probably rehearse a few times. But it was quirky, peculiar, and still very amazonian at its core.

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While there are certainly individual variations in skill and experience when discussing modern software development the story is much more nuanced than pure individual effort.  * software development is a team sport -- individual performance is heavily impacted by the system in which they are asked to operate in.  * we pair skill and experience to this model of understanding performance by expecting people to be able to influence and adapt in direct proportion to their seniority, aka the more senior you are the more responsible you are for the outcomes of your work, the less senior you are the more your manager and management chain are responsible.  * humans want to succeed, we're social animals who derive purpose from demonstrating skill, and working collectively. All of which is to say there is no way you have over 1000 people underperforming at your company without senior leadership deeply implicated in.  If nearly 10% of your company is failing, versus just having the market move against you, you need to fire the CEO.

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Amazon-to-Google-to-Amazon #a2g2a thought of the day: Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit This is a core Leadership Principle at Amazon and it is defined as “Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.” You may feel amazonians give you jarringly direct feedback at times. At the beginning, back in 2009, I found it borderline rude and off-putting, and downright terrifying when coming from a Principal or Director. But I came to appreciate this aspect of the culture - and miss it terribly once I left Amazon. Once I understood it was not personal, I always knew where I stood with people, and I knew I was always going to get honest feedback about my ideas - even the terrible ones. I was reminded of that a couple of weeks ago. I had to write an endorsement for a promotion. I was happy to do it but I was in a rush, so my writeup was subpar. The manager sent it right back to me and asked me to rewrite it.  He was absolutely right - I was thankful that he had the Backbone (incidentally that’s also Insist on the Highest Standards). My second version was much better. On the other hand, Google places a disproportionate amount of emphasis on being "nice" to each other which is a lovely sentiment but it ends up incorrectly translating to "don’t say anything that might offend somebody or hurt somebody’s feelings, at all cost." And so in the pursuit of “googlyness” the culture sacrifices directness, honesty and candid feedback. There were so many instances where I found myself wondering, "What is this person actually saying to me right now? Do they agree or not? Please, for the love of God, stop beating around the bush and just get to the point!” My low point came when one of my managers at Google shared that a co-worker had provided pretty negative feedback about me. The feedback was fair, but I was frustrated because I had been meeting with that individual every other week for a year and they had not once said any of those things to my face. I wish they had - we could have had a much deeper, meaningful, relationship and I could have acted upon those things earlier. Another example: My Google leadership hired an expensive outside speaker to conduct a full day workshop on Radical Candor - yet a month later everybody had reverted to their old behaviors. Again: what you bake into the DNA of the company really, really matters. Unless the culture enshrines it, it’s hard to go against the current. Amazon enshrined that this a critical part of its DNA. I did learn from my time at Google though. I believe it’s possible to be both "direct" and "nice." In the past, I was more worried with being direct than with being nice. I think Google made me a better human being, but without having lost my Amazon directness. I hope :)

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Most companies struggle to hire killer senior engineers. So what should the ideal interview process for finding this talent look like? Whenever I advise early-stage tech startups, I tell them to include the following questions and steps in their interview process for senior engineers: 1. Have them interact with stakeholders in the company You need proof that a senior engineer can work well with stakeholders. They must be able to delegate and empower engineers to make various decisions. Any engineer who can communicate well and work with stakeholders is a solid hire. 2. Have them speak to a designer or product manager Senior engineers will be speaking to designers and product managers frequently. If you can get a designer or product manager involved in the interview process, you want your colleague to assess whether that engineer is someone they can work with. Some questions they can think about include: - Can I have a conversation about what’s valuable to the business with this engineer? - Can this engineer communicate well? Do they complicate things? Do they oversimplify? - How do they react if there’s an ask from design or marketing? What is their thought process? 3. Figure out their attitude toward junior engineers A senior engineer’s attitude toward junior engineers is a good bellwether of their attitude toward communication and documentation. One sign of a poor senior engineer is someone who can’t explain their work — or doesn’t feel like they have to. They feel no need to document what they’re doing and they assume everyone around them, like their junior engineers, will just get it. If you ask an engineer, “How do you communicate your work to others?”, and they say “I don’t really see the value in that,” that’s not someone you want to hire. It’s incredibly important to an early-stage organization to prioritize clear documentation and communication. I’ve advised too many companies that did this too late and had to waste time parsing the code of engineers who didn’t bother to document anything. Any startup can avoid this fate by hiring good senior engineers who explain their work every step of the way. 4. Figure out how they plan for the future Developing a good product isn’t just about good design or code. It’s also about future-proofing your code. I think a big thing about seniority is balancing making good decisions quickly while not shooting yourself in the foot. It means seeing beyond the future and recognizing the implications of their decisions, such as: - Is this code future-proofed or not? Am I creating technical debt? - Has this particular solution created any new problems for the team? Who knows how to solve them? Am I the only one who knows? You especially don’t want your company to deal with technical problems that can only be solved and documented by one person on the team. That can lead to a crisis if that person ends up leaving. cont. 👇

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Software agents change coding. AI agents will build the same feature 10 times and select the best version. No limits, no guesswork—just optimized innovation. This is a radical new mindset: iterative, faster than ever, and powered by AI. 🚀 Nikita Shamgunov, CEO of Neon, is focused on the architecture of the future and creating for these next wave of agentic and code-gen applications powered by LLMs. A world where cost, infrastructure, and time barriers are tackled and AI agent development unleashes innovation at scale. The future of software development is parallel, not linear! And we'll need GenAI Friendly serverless database like Neon to make it possible. Watch the full episode to discover: - How serverless Postgres is enabling the next wave of AI-powered apps - Why "breadcrumbs" are crucial for AI agent systems - The architecture behind instant database branching 

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Here are the slides for my GopherCon.EU talk: How to Win Frames and Influence Pointers https://lnkd.in/d7byRQfu #gopherconEU #golang

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How do tooling and promotions work at Google, and what are tactics to become a more influential engineer? Ex-Google engineer Irina Stanescu shares insights in the latest The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast episode. Watch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/e3m-VejA A special thanks to the fantastic sponsors of the podcast: • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. Check it out at https://workos.com/ • Sonar — Trust your developers – verify your AI-generated code. Learn more at https://lnkd.in/ekMzUJxY In the episode, dive into these following topics:  • An inside look at Google’s unique working processes • How to build credibility as a new engineer • Tactical tips for getting promoted  • The importance of having a career plan and guidance in designing one • Having influence vs. influencing—and how to become more influential  • Essential leadership skills to develop • And so much more Check it out, and thank you to Irina for the insightful and honest chat! Irina also writes the newsletter The Caring Techie, and you can read it here: https://lnkd.in/emB4dpeT (If your company is interested in sponsoring the podcast, you can reach out at [email protected]. 2024 is fully booked, but there are open spaces for the start of 2025).

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💡 [TIP] How do you handle unexpected news as an Engineering Manager? In day-to-day work, you and your teams sometimes receive unexpected news that can shake the team's motivation. As Engineering Manager, how are you handling this? Here is how I’m approaching these situations in case it helps you reinforce your own mindset: 1️⃣ Understand this reality: companies evolve. One day, your best teammate might leave. Another day, you might decide to move on. And on another day, the company might make changes. That’s just how it works. 2️⃣ So, I ask myself this question: What opportunities can my teams and I find in this situation? 3️⃣ If you're following step number 3️⃣ , I can ensure you that you'll find at least 1 opportunity to grow. 4️⃣ Communicate this to your teams and remain open to deeply listening to their thoughts and proposals. 5️⃣ Create your own plan to seize the opportunity. The ideal world doesn’t exist. And perhaps it doesn’t because “ideal” means something different to everyone. 🙂 This may sound obvious, but when we receive unexpected news, we tend to ask ourselves why and try to understand it, investing energy in something that probably isn’t up to us. This leads to frustration and exhaustion when it’s unnecessary. I choose to keep fighting to protect my #energy and #motivation. What about you? More content related to engineering management at https://lnkd.in/dNePvQJV #team #growth #engineeringmanager #manager #productivity

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My Journey to Securing 7 Offers for Management and IC Roles Across FAANG and Startups I’ve been considering opportunities beyond Amazon since 2020, but I was fortunate to be offered enriching experiences year after year, which kept me from making the leap. By early 2024, after laying the foundations for AWS App Studio, I decided to explore other roles within #Amazon. However, I realized that Amazon’s presence in the Bay Area was shrinking, and with its #RTO policies, the management opportunities in #bayarea were limited to just a few roles, none of which aligned with my interests and goals. A combination of limited internal opportunities, and changes in Amazon culture and policies, motivated me to explore external options. Initially, I had two interviews with a FAANG company and a startup, but I failed them miserably. Securing new interviews proved difficult due to factors like scarce roles, high competition, and increasing expectations in both technical and people-management skills. I quickly realized I needed to make every interview count by preparing more methodically and strategically. In a future post, I’ll dive into how I: a) Adjusted my job search to land new interviews consistently b) Staggered my interview timeline to maximize preparedness and increase the likelihood of receiving multiple offers c) Prepped for technical skills, as many companies now expect managers to be as technically competent as senior engineers I also decided to interview for individual contributor (IC) roles for several reasons: a) I’m still hands-on with my side projects b) Companies are reducing management layers c) I enjoy both IC and management roles d) Compensation for ICs at some companies can be higher than for managers at others e) Since I was preparing for technical interviews anyway, I figured I might as well explore IC opportunities too I segmented my job search into four categories: Startup/FAANG and IC/Management, staggering my applications to focus on startups first and then #FAANG. This approach created an avalanche effect: I started receiving IC and management offers from startups, followed by multiple FAANG offers across both IC and management roles. Here are the benefits of this approach: a) I was able to fairly evaluate startup opportunities without bias toward cash components. One startup came close to winning me over, but by that point, I had FAANG offers and ultimately decided to pursue those. b) I gave myself a chance to objectively reconsider an IC role, as I’m still mid-career c) I ensured that for any managerial role I considered, the company culture and its policies aligned well with my values. d) This approach helped me negotiate effectively and secure a top-of-market compensation package. e) I was at my best in the final interviews (both FAANG and startups) after having multiple real-world practice sessions with other companies.

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Reminder: I'm doing a webinar today at 5pm PST on creating and succeeding in high-performance teams. I'll share the tips and tricks I've learned to make my team in the top-25th percentile of all Amazon teams across key dimensions like Manager Satisfaction, Job Satisfaction, Team Culture, and others, as measured by our internal polling, while still delivering large-scale projects within 5% of target dates and driving key value for the IMDb organization. Register here: https://lnkd.in/ezEQiwsJ #TeamCulture #Career #Leadership

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Interesting take on Engineering Management.. requesting all EMs in my connection to share their views ..

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I strongly agree with the sentiment. The technical challenges have become much more manageable while the social challenges of building software products have remained largely consistent over the past half century of commerical software engineering. Progress & successful models in the social space are harder to duplicate in part because people are stubbornly individualistic. Even knowing "what works" in one team is no guarantee of success in another. I have hope in more recent approaches to incorporate data driven decision making to organization structure. it's taken decades, but some of the most recent work on the subject seems to be taking a much more holistic and humanistic view of people & culture factors rather than hyper-focusing on tech stacks and devops maturity.

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#SoftwareEngineeringLeaders have been hit disproportionally hard in the last 2 years ... Even the best are struggling to land interviews. An individual I think VERY highly of asked me these 3 REALLY good, pointed questions about his confidential search⬇️ 1.What job do you think I could get immediately? 2.What job do you think is a stretch, but I might be able to get? 3.What job do you think is out of my league, and I should rule out? I shared some insights with him that might apply to other #DevLeaders here too. He's currently a #DirectorOfEngieering over team of 10 for context. Hope it helps :) 1.What job do you think I could get immediately? "[Current Tech Stack] Architect, Principal Engineer to Manager (key is this is going to be but 30%+ hands on) ... this is the "Sweet spot, most difficult to find person ... and always has been for the last 7 years while I have been in the business. A cynical person will say this is 2 jobs in 1, and it probably is ... but make no mistake, the hybrid technical lead and hands on "tackle the toughest engineering challenge in the room" while still mentoring the team, empowering them, setting the roadmap, guiding technical direction, sometimes pairing, sometimes working with product, and even still sometimes working with the C-suite ... That type of person is ALWAYS the hardest person to find, and among the most sought after by most any company ... and thus most hireable." 2.What job do you think is a stretch, but I might be able to get? "Director of Engineering, leading teams of 5-20: In other words a role that focuses on your leadership skills first and does not bring into play your technical abilities. I say this not because of your lack of leadership abilities ... I know you are damn good leader. Problem is there is a FLOOD of TOP leaders in the market RN (and shi**y ones too) but the TRUE "eng leadership" roles, hands off are very very highly sought after. Yes, you can 100% get this job ... And once you get the interview you will be a finalist more times than not. However getting the interview in a SEA ... litterall sea of applicants ... will be the hardest part. Example: If I post any tech leadership job at all ... on LinkedIn, ANY leadership title, despite the function in the description, I usually get about 1000 applicants, 100 personal messages/emails, 15 personal calls ... all in 8 hours. This is partly the down market, partly AI ... But it's REALLY HARD for EngLeaders RN to get in even for the first step, and even when you do, you WILL have others who are similar to you and also interview very well who also are very good at empowering teams. 3.What job do you think is out of my league, and I should rule out? "CTO or any role leading a team of 40+ ... Again, this is a role I think you CAN do, but 199 times of 200 you will be automatically disqualified by the recruiter and ultimately the CEO because you have not led teams that big in the past." Hope this helps :) #DevRecruiter

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