My Realistic 9–5 as a Software Engineer at Amazon

Hi, I'm Sarah, and welcome back to my channel. And today I'm taking you for another day in the life as a software engineer. And this time I'm on call. I just got paged today at 4 a.m. So I have a lot of stuff to do. Let's get started. We need some sort of distraction. Anything new on YouTube? Alright, I'm in the office and I just started my on-call shift yesterday. Unfortunately, I already got paged eight times within this one day. So I have a lot of stuff to do. First off, I have my stand-up where I need to give my team updates about these tickets, make sure that there's a root cause, and there's action items for the next steps on how to fix it. And then I also have my one-on-one meeting with my manager because I still need to give him project updates and make sure everything is on track for deadlines. I think I have my stand-up soon. Let's go to it. So yesterday, I was just on call. So I'll just go over this. I have two tickets at the end. I'm back at the Amazon rainforest and it's another rainy day in Vancouver. Days like this weirdly make me feel productive. I actually love working when it's raining. So grab a tea and join me for this super cozy vlog. I'll dive into what it's like being on call and also my thoughts on the layoffs and the role AI has to play. Okay, so I'm just taking some notes on the on-call tickets that I got. I have to write an on-call report at the end of every shift. This is because at the end of every on-call shift, you usually have to come to the team and have a meeting with them and share your findings in this report. I want to update the ticket with the root cause, the action items I took, and any key findings so I can share with the team. All right, so I'm just going to continue taking some notes and investigating some of these tickets. Being on call still stresses me out. I still run into problems I've never seen before on basically every shift. And I keep catching myself thinking, I should already know this. But those thoughts never help. What actually helps is treating every new alert like a category I'm learning. I don't need to know everything. I just need to know one more thing than I knew yesterday. So I've been writing down what I've tried, what's failed, and what finally worked when I'm investigating tickets. I keep these notes in a drawer beside my desk. And for me, writing with pen and paper makes it stick way more. Typing it out just doesn't stick in my brain the same. Oh, my God, you have good handwriting. Thank you. Did not get that from me. You're fabulous, Claire. You got it from me. All right, so quick update. I've wrapped up on one of the tickets that I'm working on. I can't get into, obviously, too much about what these tickets are. But basically, I found the root cause and issue behind it. And then I've updated the ticket with my findings. I'm getting a little bit hungry now, too, also. So I think I'm going to go head to lunch with a friend and then pick up on this stuff later. I'm coming out. Out of what? Out to society. I'm sure we'll begin. Guess I'm still waiting for something to hit. I think the reason that on-call is extra terrible lately is because there's also a lot of uncertainty in the air. When you're feeling stressed, anything that feels unstable at work feels a lot louder. And because of that, I've been thinking a lot more about my long-term health. This past year at work, I've honestly been neglecting it a lot. I've been having late nights, eating so many office snacks and then just coming back home from long days just to rot in bed. In my third year of university, I was so stressed out and so unhealthy that it started to actually manifest in my body. There was this one week where I completely lost my voice and I couldn't even speak during my interviews. So lately, I've been trying to eat better, get back into shape and actually talk to a doctor about the things I've been ignoring. The part that always stops me is the hassle. I'm always procrastinating trying to find a good doctor because it takes a lot of time and sometimes you don't know if they're the right fit. That's why today's video is sponsored by ZocTalk. ZocTalk is a free website where you can find and book high quality doctors so you can find someone you love. You can book your appointments with more than 150,000 providers across all 50 states. Whether you need a dentist, an eye doctor, primary care doctor or anything else, you can search for what you need on ZocTalk by specialty or symptoms and read the patient reviews so you find the perfect fit for you. I recently just moved to a new area, so I'm going to use ZocTalk to find a doctor nearby. What's cool is that I can choose from seeing the doctor in person or doing a video visit. When I'm ready, I can see the availability and book instantly. And appointments usually happen within 24 to 72 hours. Book an appointment with a top rated doctor today using my link ZocTalk.com slash Sarah Lee. Oh, man, I'm so completely stressed. My cousin is actually about to start university. They had always wanted to major in STEM, but not anymore because the job prospects feel a lot scarier with AI. And I get it. I totally understand the fear. I think if I was starting now, I would reconsider my own degree. There's a lot of uncertainty and who knows how these tech companies will respond. But I also don't think the conclusion is to avoid STEM. I think we should learn the tools and then build the parts AI can't reliably do yet. I think the gap between people who understand how to use these AI tools and the people who reject them and don't want to use it will become very large over the next few years. And this will be the deciding factor between hiring someone and not. It is how well they use AI. I know the market is scary and the future is scary, too. The one thing we can control is how we choose to highlight our own skills and stand out. And I'm having my one on one meeting with my manager right now, so let's go. Hi, how are you? Anyways, I'm on call right now, so I haven't been able to work on the project, but I've updated the work stream document with what I've already done. OK, I just had my one on one with my manager and I gave him like my project updates and what will happen like when I go on vacation and what's happening now when I'm on call. I feel like it's kind of nice to be like the leader of a project. I get to tell and direct people like what they should be doing and what's left. And then I feel like more like ownership over the project, which is nice. It's also around 3 p.m. right now, and I'm getting pretty tired. Like I'm so sleepy around this time every single day. And I also feel like 3 p.m. is when the time is passing so slow. Like I'm waiting for it to be five so I can go home. I'm going to be heading to this like new coffee shop. It just opened really recently. I'm going to see if they have like a yummy hojicha latte and get some caffeine in me so I'm not so sleepy. What are you doing? I need coffee. It's five in the morning. Make coffee at your own house. I did. I drank it all. All right. It's the dreaded week of every engineer's life, an on-call week. I normally don't really mind being on call. It's kind of like fun to me to like solve problems. But this week, like I really especially do not want to be on call. First of all, I was making a lot of progress on my project. So now that I'm on call, I kind of had to put all that work on hold, even though there's like a lot of deadlines coming up. So it's just like I feel like I'm kind of wasting time instead of like going with the momentum and finishing my project. This morning, I got paged at 4 a.m. and I didn't even realize it. I think I got woken up during REM sleep and then I like checked into the ticket and then went back to sleep and then I completely erased it from my memory so that when I had to stand up this morning, look to the ticket queue, I was like, oh, wait, there is this ticket that I missed and it's going to page me in like four hours because I didn't really even look at it. It's kind of a mess right now and it's a bit stressful, but I think I'm getting a handle of it. A lot of these tickets I haven't seen before, but with the AI tools that we have at Amazon, they've like really helped me figure out what's going on. I heard this on Spotify and I think it's like super funny because I really relate to it. But it's like Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now by The Smiths. One of the lyrics is like, I was looking for a job and I found a job. Heaven knows I'm miserable now. Anyways, just pretty hilarious. You know, it's really embarrassing when you're on call is when your pager goes off in public. And that's why when I'm on call, I try not to go out because I don't want that to happen to me. But yesterday I was hanging out with one of my friends. And first of all, super annoying. I had to carry my laptop around with me. But then we were just talking and getting to like a really good flow state. My pager goes off and they're like, what is that? And then I had to like whip out my laptop and be like, hold your thought. Let me just check in. Make sure like no services are down. Sometimes also when I'm in the office, I'll hear other people's pagers go off. And when it does, like my cortisol literally spikes. And I'm just like, oh, my God. Like, thank God that's not me. All right. I probably should get back to work because my manager is like messaging me. Like, did you update the ticket yet? And so I need to do that investigation. It's no secret that layoffs are no fun. They're simply the worst part of working in corporate. And it really makes me start to feel like a replaceable cog in the wheel. I actually talked to my mom a lot about the layoffs because she's been working in tech for 30 years now, and she's seen her fair share of layoffs. She told me that everyone that got laid off at her company all went to work at bigger and better places. She even reconnected with someone who said that in hindsight, they were really happy it happened. Sometimes people just need a little push and know that there are more amazing opportunities out there. Oftentimes when change does happen for me, it's because of an external factor. And I think that since I'm in my mid-20s, like I really need to be comfortable with change and learning to accept it. Talking to my mom really helped me because I started to think about my life a little bit differently. I started to shift from thinking that I was living in scarcity, that there was no opportunities out there for me, that the market was bad, and to one that was more of abundance, that my life is filled with opportunities and I just have to go out there and find it. And I hope this is helpful to anyone who might be feeling a little anxious about the layoffs like myself. If you have any other advice, leave it in the comments down below. I'd love to read them. I reply to every single comment on my YouTube. The office has been pretty quiet lately because everyone's going home for the holidays. A lot of my friends have left, like they're not from here. All my friends I've ever met at Amazon have been from the East Coast, and so has my friend Marlene, so she's going home very soon. So we decided to do our gift exchange today. I'm really excited to give her my present because I think she'll like it. It's so cute. And she says the present she got me is something that I've been really wanting, so I'm excited to see what that is. Okay, you go first. I barely know what it is. You already know what this is? I feel like I do. Okay, you go first. Okay, thanks. It's a white box! It's a gift in a box. I'm so nervous. Yeah, don't look, don't look. It's the little angel! What? Oh, ----. Oh, no, no, no. Because it came in two pieces. There's only two that... Yo, this one's really cool. Right? Darn, I thought you didn't get... No, but this is one of my favorites, though. Okay, yeah, that one's really cool. I feel like everyone's going to like this. I'm so excited. Oh, no! Oh, my gosh. It's my dog. What the hell? Oh, it's the kitty one! Yes! This one's so pretty. Bye. Thank you. Merry Christmas! I love it. I am. Okay, Merry Christmas. Okay, so I'm just wrapping up the rest of my day today. It's getting dark outside. I just have, like, one thing left to do because I did a lot of my on-call duties. And it's that time of the year we have our annual reviews where we need to request reviews from our peers and then also do our individual assessments. Eight people have requested my review, which is, like, my whole team. Basically, like, you're getting a report card and it makes me really anxious. These annual reviews are so your manager can summarize, like, what you've delivered on over the year and how well you've performed against your overall expectations. And this process will affect your performance rating. So then it will go towards, like, if you're going to get a raise or you're going to get a promotion or you're, like, on track to getting a promotion or something like that. Stressful things like that. Bureaucratic things like that. Anyways, it's a little challenging to write reviews for other people, especially because I've been working on my own for, like, this whole year. I don't know what other people are really doing besides, like, a very high level. Let me just start with, like, four people today, see how much I can get done, and then I'll do, like, another four the rest of the week. Let's do this. What do you say we call it a night and get some beauty sleep? Okay, I'm going now. All right, it's getting dark outside. I've done most of my peer reviews and I've looked through all the tickets in the ticket queue today, so I'm really happy about that. I didn't get paid throughout the day, which is really nice, and hopefully I don't get paid during the week, but I'm going to head home now, get a really good dinner. I don't know, I kind of want, like, Asian food right now, so let's go. ♪♪♪