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The Amazon Builders' Library

aws.amazon.com

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Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#31

Post by giaour »

dint wrote: post #26
rkochman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon really emphasizes hiring and developing writing ability. I’m convinced it’s a major reason they’ve been so successful. (I worked there 2006-2016)

Can you talk at all about what they do to develop writing skill? > I'm convinced it's a major reason they've been so successful. I'd be interested to hear why you think this. One guess I've got is that a high standard for writing is a filter for bad ideas - if you can't justify your idea in a tight, well-written document, then it's probably not worth trying out.

They have classes and workshops for employees who want to get better at writing, but primarily they just expect you to get better with practice. I wrote a few one pagers every month as an engineer, and managers produced an order of magnitude more.

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#32

Post by colmmacc »

t0mas88 wrote: post #23
azinman2 wrote: post #6

Wow. I haven’t gone through most of the content but shuffle sharding not only is a great idea but their write up is quite clear: https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/workload-isolation-u... Impressive stuff!

Yes, that's a great one. But now I have a brain teaser stuck in my head: Imagine you have a multi-tenant system like they describe, but for each customer A, B, C they have users A1, A2, A3, B1 etc. You need ordered delivery of messages, but only at user level (if all messages needed to be ordered you could not do this sharding type setup). Is there a way to apply shuffle sharding while maintaining user-level ordering…

Yes! we do recursive, nested, shuffle sharding in these cases. Our Open Source infima library doesn't quite include direct support for this, but you can get a sense of how we put it all together:

https://github.com/awslabs/route53-infima

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#33

Post by hartzell »

social_quotient wrote: post #12
kevan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has a very strong written culture (search for 1 pagers and 6 pagers). To be effective at higher levels in any role you need to be good at it.

Any tips on how to get better at this?

Write more and find ways to get feedback on your writing. It's important to get outside input to help you see the things that don't work and experienced readers/editors/friends/coworkers can often provide suggestions on how you can fix it.

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#34

Post by shpongled »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #28
ignoramous wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't abt [0] a generally accepted abbrv for about [1]? [0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/abt-?s=t [1] https://www.abbreviations.com/ABT

It's understandable, but very rare in most text. It's the sort of thing you'd expect in a telegram, not a modern forum comment.

Especially when they take the time to write "management", instead of "mgmt".

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#35

Post by sokoloff »

hartzell wrote: post #33
social_quotient wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tips on how to get better at this?

Write more and find ways to get feedback on your writing. It's important to get outside input to help you see the things that don't work and experienced readers/editors/friends/coworkers can often provide suggestions on how you can fix it.

This. and: It really helps if you work in a culture that values critical feedback on thinking and writing. Too many readers will pass on an opportunity to offer critical feedback, either because they don’t want to offend or because they didn’t read it carefully and critically enough. Having someone read a doc and tell you it’s good feels good, but in general doesn’t help you improve (and is actively harmful if the document is mediocre).

One way to encourage this helpful criticism is for authors to accept feedback gracefully and have a policy to ask questions only for clarification of the feedback (to understand the feedback better) and never to engage in the debate response of explaining why what they wrote is good enough.

(The minute you debate them on the first of seven points they have, they’re going to deprive you of much of the value of their feedback on the next six because you’re seeming defensive at worst or exhausting at the least.)

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#36

Post by zaptheimpaler »

packetslave wrote: post #22
ignoramous wrote: post #18

Disclaimer: ex-AWS Wowzer. Amazon, and in particular AWS, sits on a treasure trove of hard-earned lessons abt designing, building, operating, maintaining systems at scale. I'm glad they have began to share some of that know-how with the external world. I wrote abt longing for AWS to do this some 6 months back [0] as I dearly missed access to those docs and videos that helped me understand so much abt the underpinning…

why do you keep typing 'abt' instead of 'about'? what are you planning to do with all the time saved?

This is peak HN right here.

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#37

Post by bjornjaja »

social_quotient wrote: post #12
kevan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has a very strong written culture (search for 1 pagers and 6 pagers). To be effective at higher levels in any role you need to be good at it.

Any tips on how to get better at this?

Another possibility to take a writing class at a local community college. A lot of it is common writing strategies like how to organize thoughts (spatially, conceptually, temporally, etc). And as others say, practice. The classroom is nice because it forces one to practice and gets feedback from the instructor or writing lab (most schools I’ve been to have them)

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#38

Post by [deleted] »

ignoramous wrote: post #18

Disclaimer: ex-AWS Wowzer. Amazon, and in particular AWS, sits on a treasure trove of hard-earned lessons abt designing, building, operating, maintaining systems at scale. I'm glad they have began to share some of that know-how with the external world. I wrote abt longing for AWS to do this some 6 months back [0] as I dearly missed access to those docs and videos that helped me understand so much abt the underpinning…

[deleted]

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#39

Post by cuddlybacon »

packetslave wrote: post #22
ignoramous wrote: post #18

Disclaimer: ex-AWS Wowzer. Amazon, and in particular AWS, sits on a treasure trove of hard-earned lessons abt designing, building, operating, maintaining systems at scale. I'm glad they have began to share some of that know-how with the external world. I wrote abt longing for AWS to do this some 6 months back [0] as I dearly missed access to those docs and videos that helped me understand so much abt the underpinning…

why do you keep typing 'abt' instead of 'about'? what are you planning to do with all the time saved?

Thanks. I thought abt was some technology I hadn't heard of.

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#40

Post by jrauser »

dint wrote: post #26
rkochman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon really emphasizes hiring and developing writing ability. I’m convinced it’s a major reason they’ve been so successful. (I worked there 2006-2016)

Can you talk at all about what they do to develop writing skill? > I'm convinced it's a major reason they've been so successful. I'd be interested to hear why you think this. One guess I've got is that a high standard for writing is a filter for bad ideas - if you can't justify your idea in a tight, well-written document, then it's probably not worth trying out.

You've got it more or less. The way I say it is that bad ideas can't hide in writing. You can fool yourself and others with a powerpoint or a spoken argument. But clear writing demands clear thinking. Poorly constructed arguments are (usually) obvious as such when put into writing.
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