Engineer Rewrites Perfectly Good Microservice in Go Just for Amazon Promotion

Description

A screenshot of a tweet from pdawg (@prathamgrv) captioned 'software engineering in one paragraph' sharing a confession-style post titled 'Rewrote a perfectly good microservice just for my SDE3 promotion at Amazon.' The post describes how a legacy Java service ran fine for 5 years with zero latency issues and minimal maintenance, but the author needed 'Scope' and 'Complexity' to justify moving from L5 to L6. They wrote a 20-page design doc arguing to 'modernize the stack' by rewriting everything in Go with a complex microservices architecture. The rewrite wasted 4 quarters of engineering time and 3 other engineers' lives. The new system is actually slower and costs 2x more in compute, but the launch email looked 'strategic' enough to get the promotion packet approved. The author got the promo, then accepted an internal transfer to a 'chill Core Infra team,' noting the memory leak in the new service 'usually hits around 2 AM' and wishing 'Good luck to the new grad taking over. TC $550k.'

Common Tags

Microservices CareerGrowth OverEngineering TechnicalDebt FAANGCompanies CorporateLife MicroserviceArchitecture Java Golang MemoryLeaks

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick The real microservice architecture is the career moves we made along the way. One monolithic promotion packet, distributed pain across 3 engineers, and eventual consistency between your salary and your conscience

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

The real microservice architecture is the career moves we made along the way. One monolithic promotion packet, distributed pain across 3 engineers, and eventual consistency between your salary and your conscience
@tema3210 7mo

How to do a good job exe
@egorvoron 7mo

Bro's just evil
1. @RiedleroD 7mo
  
  more like bro just wants money
  
  @SamsonovAnton 7mo
  
  Money is the root of all evil.
  
  @RiedleroD 7mo
  
  …no
@NaNmber 7mo

Look at him being demoted/fired in the next week when 4ch picks this up 😌
1. @tema3210 7mo
  
  Maybe yes, maybe no, depends on how lucky he is)
  
  @arseny_chebyshev 7mo
  
  good luck, bad luck, who knows
@maks_mikh 7mo

Is it true for big companies like Amazon?
1. @hafijuldev 7mo
  
  very true for big companies. :) Larger the scale, harder it gets to precisely track an individual's efforts
  
  @ketter256 7mo
  
  But it can be optimized and rewritten again in rust now, securing next big promotion for his buddy
  
  @hafijuldev 7mo
  
  yeah will cost 8 quarters of engineering effort
  
  @ketter256 7mo
  
  Make it 12, options get unlocked after 3 years, I believe
@H3R3T1C 7mo

hummmmmmmmmmmm hummmmmmmmmmm... i dont known rick.... sems false
@H3R3T1C 7mo

Amazon wasting money on their own infrastructure???? maybe if the cost is traspassed to the client can be hehehehe