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…
The Amazon Builders' Library
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Re: The Amazon Builders' Library
#42Does anyone know why Amazon engineers always seem to write so well? Any time I read technical content from Amazon, I am struck by how clear and concise it is.
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.
Re: The Amazon Builders' Library
#43Earlier 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?
1. Make sure your first paragraph or executive summary answers the questions: Why does this doc exist? Who is the expected audience? What actions or decisions does the author expect from the audience after reading the doc?
2. Run things through an analyzer like Hemingway[1]. It'll point out obvious things to fix.
3. Do a reverse-thesaurus editing pass. Remove adjectives and flowery language where possible. Challenge yourself to lower the reading level. Even if your audience has PhDs they'll read and comprehend simple language faster.
4. Do an editing pass for missing numbers. Vague language, unsupported assertions, and missing quantities make arguments easy to refute. Look for words like "many", "most", "a lot", "major" "severe" "large" and replace them with hard numbers where possible.
5. Do an editing pass for "So, what?" and remove anything that isn't necessary to support your core argument or purpose. Assume your audience is smart but has very little time. Too much detail will make them start to skim and miss things. Appendixes are your friend here. Leave links to appendixes for readers that have questions or want more detail.
6. Nothing beats a human reviewer. Professional writers have editors too.
Re: The Amazon Builders' Library
#44Earlier 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?
When I started at amazon I was encouraged to pitch a project or feature once a month. More importantly I was encourage to write up things I disagreed with or try to sell stuff that was very half assed, and work on getting it to a real idea.
As I did this I got better and better. I can write up 3-5 page design docs in about 1-2 hours now and these can bootstrap others into your thinking very easy. I've found that they also just ground an argument when everyone is arguing about totally different things. Even if they are now all arguing AGAINST your idea, you've made progress.
It's just a muscle you have to exercise. And iterate with feedback. Learn from where people have trouble understanding your document. If they don't understand it, take it as feedback that you are not clear enough.
TLDR Write Write Write
Re: The Amazon Builders' Library
#45Earlier 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.
Re: The Amazon Builders' Library
#46Does anyone know why Amazon engineers always seem to write so well? Any time I read technical content from Amazon, I am struck by how clear and concise it is.
Re: The Amazon Builders' Library
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any tips on how to get better at this?
Write more. Read more. Seriously. It just takes practice. https://ceklog.kindel.com/2018/04/24/be-a-great-reader/
I wonder if this is simply because human brains are just create specialized neural pathways for special tasks that occur more frequently. So it takes a lot of effort for someone who has never driven a car to drive but after they learn driving it’s automatic (same for language and any other skill)