I accepted the offer at the end of last year to join a start up. Maybe it was the new year bug of needing a change but I swear I put a decent amount of logical evaluation in it. That's actually why I want to write this out: to act as a time-capsule for the rationale of my decision, considering that I am taking a considerable pay-cut from it (well I do have 20% base increase but all those swish FAANG stock now changed to paper options).

To get it out of the way, fortunately no I was not laid-off nor PIP/Focus. So far, I only rotated out of job when I am around my peak performance, which is usually equate to one of the top performers in the org. Additionally, I vibe well with most of my teams and my immediate managers too. Some of them had come to my house more than once and tried my mom's signature nem and phở. As a matter of fact, I feel comfortable leaving because I have build a safety net to return as needed.

So why leave? First and foremost, I have the startup itch for a while now. FAANG can expose you to complex problems or solving issue at scale but at the end of the day, it is almost always just a variable-sized cog in a complicated machine. I noticed a lot of inertia in order to make any changes. Sometimes it is reasonable but some other times, it just feel sluggish. Startup offer an unique opportunity for me to design the machine nearly from scratch, given that I am willing to go beyond just engineering and capable of wearing multiple hats. If the machine works, it means that I am capable. If it doesn't, it means I will learn how not to do thing. Either way, I think both are much more valuable than the regret of not trying it at all.

This is also a career strategic decision too. If I stay where I am, it would take 5-8 years to get to principal/director level, subject to a lot of factor I do not have control (data based on tenured high level folks at Amzn). On the other hand, a boomerang only takes 2-5 years. I suspect this is because the politics nature of promotion versus a low-context interview process. In parallel, it is also connected to my first point above where an individual outside of FAANG probably exposed to more things at different angles.

So why now? I got couple of offers over the years (highly recommend to interview often to know your market value btw) and vetted them carefully to pick this one (may do a separate post on this). Stock vest schedule at FAANG is also a big factor as you should be fiscally responsible. One other somewhat crucial factor is my frustration at Amzn executive leadership. It really rubbed me the wrong way when J***y get on stage and lie to our face that 90% is happy with RTO5. I don't mind the policy itself but the way it was enacted feels distrustful and frankly it's harder for me to continue to pour my heart and soul to the success of the company at that point.

Another factor more personal is branding or rather ego check. I've been lurking in different tech forums and often time, FAANG engineer words/advices tend to be treated as gospel, even though from my experience lots of sde at least in Amzn can't even exit Vim. Don't get me wrong, I abused the heck out of that fame too to get some dopamine hit (and some side income). However, looking at a macro level, it feels superficial, as if I am afraid of sharing my opinion without hiding behind a brand name. The job should be part of my experience instead of my identity. If I am famous, I want to be known for things I built, not where I am from. Some might say I am too prideful and I would say they are correct!

So that seems to sum it up. I was fortunate enough that this wasn't an emotional decision nor I am bounded by immigration constraints. I don't know what start up has in store for me. There are scenarios where in couple months/years I would just come back. Ideal scenario is a company of my own after. All I know is I am ready to fail and minimizing regrets. So to close it out: I'm sorry but I will stop taking Amazon referral indefinitely 🫡

Quitting FAANG

About a year ago, I stumbled upon an opportunity offered by one of my old skips to work on calculating bills for AWS. It didn't sound too fancy on paper, but I was promised scale and cool teammates so, among other reasons, I made the jump. Looking back, I can't appreciate him enough for it. Without a doubt, this has been the model team for me among all the teams I've traversed through.

I joined with the same average amount of impostor syndrome as the next person. Sitting in my first meeting, I heard all these made-up words: Isengard, Kadabra, Hailstone, Floatzel, etc. My onboarding buddy was the first person I interacted with, followed by a random person from a sister team who noticed my confusion and promptly shared an abbreviation list they had found. To this day, I am still so moved by the amount of patience they had in dealing with my hundreds of dumb/repeated questions. With their help, I became equipped in record time and naturally integrated into the team, expanding the number of familiar faces.

My teams has a weird setup. My manager concurrently runs 2 functionally different teams so although the sister team worked on things further outside our scope, we are still pretty close. Obviously it also create some sort of rivalry (although it is clear that my team is better). Most people are really cool though, and some are definitely cooler than others. Whether intentional or not, they were all highly intelligent, unbelievably hardworking, and incredibly humble, which resulted in down-to-earth folks that I am excited to see every week.

"You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards." This quote didn't fully click with me until here. If I try to examine any single interaction with my teammates, it's difficult to grow much appreciation from it. On the contrary, the feelings are usually pessimistic - uncomfortable, confused, or intimidated, sometimes even frustrated. However, evaluating interactions over the past year as a whole makes things clear. I realized I was never bored or indifferent. From work shenanigans to casual lunch chats, they struck a delicate balance between challenging me out of my comfort zone and providing enough support/inclusivity for me to not feel ostracized. Again, it wasn't a single moment. It was a culmination of (1) all the walks to grab lunch, (2) all the coincidentally overlapping walks back home, (3) the growing desire to learn chess and make my food less disgusting, (4) the invitations to Pilates class that I say I'll join next time, (5) the learning journey and innovation of gen z slang, (6) the campaign to frame a "bully" a bully, and (7) the nutrition concerns surrounding water chicken and asparagus.

When I came up with the title, I wondered how one would imagine what it looks like. After all, we each have our own reasons to be at our job: money, fame, influence, passion, etc. These reasons often shape our ideal work environment, which becomes the rarely-ending quest throughout our careers. This has been my ideal environment so far. Don't get me wrong, the experiences weren't all pretty and flowery all the time. But when you have a team where you can joke around while holding respect for each other, the stress tends to dissipate while the fun tends to linger. It made me mind less if I got paged at 4AM or worked a little extra throughout the week, as long as the team was better off from it somehow.

If you haven't noticed by now, this entire post is a head fake. I am leaving the team soon, and I want to write a elaborate thank you note to a handful of special colleagues that I've been so lucky to work with (they will know who they are). I learned so much from them and, although most don't know it, they helped me through many tough times this past year. The title is dedicated to them and I hope we will meet again!

Thoughts on my most recent team at Amazon

The Perfect Team @ Amazon

Frequent testing for https://t.co/4lpK3opCqJ

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Towards the end of each year, I usually write a self-reflection. It primarily focuses on what I have done, my personal preferences, and what I would like to replicate. My years mainly revolve around my career, video games, and tinkering projects, all of which are tech-related. Even most of my close friends are engineers. Sometimes, I worry that this might make me narrow-minded as I grow older.

In an effort to broaden my horizons and become more interesting outside of my usual circle, I try to explore new things as much as possible. Initially, it feels like a way to escape from bugs or, more broadly, to distract myself from stress. However, I soon realized that these experiences greatly shape my thinking and nudge me towards a better path, whether it is tech-related or not.

I guess this post is my attempt to articulate the profound impact that these interests and experiences have on me. Another reason is to engage more people in these fanbases, so that I can make more friends.

### One Piece

If I haven't made it clear, I am a big fan of One Piece (although I really hope I won't regret it when the series ends). On the surface, it is a story about a stretchy boy who wants to become a famous pirate, but the storytelling is truly something else. The emotional investment in the characters, even the side ones, in a lore-filled world is incredible. I won't spoil too many details, but I have genuinely shed tears from reading it at least three times. 🥺

From manga, you typically learn generic traits like hard work and never giving up, and all of these are beautifully presented in One Piece. For me, it does an exceptional job of depicting how your life is shaped not by where you come from, but by what you decide to do with it. Additionally, it shows the importance of having people who support your crazy dreams and how much energy that support can give you.

### Scrubs

I started watching Scrubs while recovering from some health issues. It's a show about life in a hospital, seen through the lens of an ENFP. It has a perfect balance of comedy and drama that makes it light to watch, but heavy when necessary.

I believe Scrubs accurately portrays the different archetypes you encounter in the workplace, where you realize that people, regardless of the impression they give off, are dealing with their own complex problems. It taught me to be more empathetic in situations where work seems to be against me. Also, given that I share the same personality type as the main character, it has given me ideas on how to cope with certain toxic and stressful environments.

### The Last Lecture

I read this book when I started college, arguably at the lowest point in my life financially. The author, a professor at CMU, talks about his life and the lessons he learned from it.

One thing that really stuck with me is his way of storytelling. Aside from that, the book instills a lot of positivity, motivation, and aspiration. A few things that have stayed with me are the importance of converting your passion into purpose, taking risks, and being willing to find the best in people. Every now and then, I still go back and reread the book.

---

I know the group name is Viet Tech, so talking about these things might seem off-topic. I sometimes feel guilty about spending time on these interests too, because there's always the question of "Why don't you spend your time training on leet code or reading algorithms books instead?" Maybe it's just mental gymnastics, an excuse for me to slack off. But at least I enjoy it. 😅

Drawing inspiration from non-tech artifacts

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 Annual International trip to Italy and Switzerland 🇮🇹🇨🇭!

It was a challenging year so it feels nice to wind down with the right companies 🥹

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I was inspired by a recent substack DITL of a senior manager at Amazon so I want to do something similar. This is an experience of an L5 SDE

Disclaimer: none of the name/project mentioned here exist irl

## 7:30AM - 1 Code Review (CR)

It's time to feed my pet bunny! I instinctively grabbed my phone on bedside to check for DMs and emails. It's not a good habit but it eases my anxiety, knowing our team also work with both Pacific and India time zone. Plus we just deployed an important fix to Prod yesterday and India team has a history of reverting without consulting.

Phew! No reverting notification. Just a code review request coming from Jay. He must have done this late last night as I am sure I clean out my code feedback before I signed off yesterday. Poor guy, AJ our manager must have pushed some arbitrary deadline on him again. Anyway, I will review ‘em later, too early for any review 

Since I am up anyway, yesterday during dinner I came up with a quick enhancement for our monitoring system. Might take the opportunity of the quiet early morning to get it out. 

Give my SO one final hug before get up from bed and head to my wfh desk

## 9:00AM - 1 CR, 3 DMs

Yes! My enhancement is indeed quick and works. And I only went over by 50% of my initial estimated time for it (1.5 hr instead of 1). I cleaned up my commit and raise a CR, tagging few people from my pod.

DM from Shaun (our sister’s team Sr SDE) - “[scheduled msg] Hey Dat, trying to implement X to automate Y in Z. Since you spinned up Z in NA, any doc you can recommend me with?”

DM from AJ - “GM Dat, can you send me a list of priorities for operational excellence (OE) in Q3 by EOD?”

DM from Vishnu (my skip)  “Hey, what are your plan for OE? Seems like we are spiking in tickets…”

…Ah right. I “volunteered” to be OE champion recently. Still, feels like some of these DM can be better coordinated 😮‍💨

I shared my list of doc references to Shaun then drop a message to a group chat between me, AJ, and Vishnu

“Yes, I have already cleaned up our Jira backlog few days ago, you should be able to visit link Z and apply q3 label to view it”

I accidentally clicked on that group chat about 10 minutes later and found a thumb up and an “ack” reaction.

## 10:30AM - 2 CR

It's the weekly sync with the India team today. This time slotseems to be the only time that works between IST, EST, and PST. Naturally because of that, I see like 5 meeting happen on the same time. Do feel nice i can pick with mtg to go to

Normally, i would just jump in the call and tune out but today, I need to ask some question to the India team

Me - “Hello! I am making some change to system Z. What is the safest way to test and deploy it?”

India team - “you need to write integration test and validate in Beta”

Me - “can you provide an example/doc or code reference?”

India team - “We don't have any reliable testing and no doc. you can deploy to Beta but no dependency is working there (no mock neither)” 

I screamed internally. “Fk it” - i thought to myself. This has been back and forth for weeks now. At this point I will just secretly deploy my change to Gamma while they asleep so I can do some validation myself

## 11:30pm 2 CR / 1 DM

DM from Jim - “got a minute?” 

After a “yee” from me, Jim started a Huddle

Jim - “just want to let you know but I am rotating to another org”

Jim is my work bestie ever since he joined the team. Back then, we were in a same team (along with Shaun and few others), which has an amazing dynamic (and arguably best performing too). Recently, our director decided to re-org, dismantle our team and scattered us among others team. Jim unfortunately got put into a very bad team. Since the re-org, he has gotten more and more frustrated

Hearing the news about Jim’s departure, I am 100% happy for him but can't help but being sad. Not because he left but because he left before me…

I told Jim exactly that, along with keep in touch. We then proceeded to chat for half an hour about how this org is setup for failures

## 12:00pm 3 CR

It's org all hand meeting today for 2 hours! Yay, this usually means I can finally get some work done since all other meeting has to cancel in favor of this. I joined the call but then tune out to work on some design (and heat up some hot pockets for lunch).

Every now and then, I hear words like attrition, org health focus, etc, from the director. I shake my head and sigh. He didn't even told us about re-org or layoff when it happen. We all know via second channel. And he has the guts to say he focus on org health.

Eh… outside my control. At least what I am building next is technically fun

## 1:42pm - 5 CR / 2 DM

A Sev 2 ticket! I saw the title in the corner of my eyes and know it comes from my monitoring system. Probably an external issue. Eh.. let's the oncall handle it

15 minutes later…

DM from Zhao (current oncall) - “hey! I think your monitoring system is wrong from this sev 2 ticket”

DM from AJ - “hey Dat! Can you take a look at the monitoring system you built. Zhao said the data is wrong”

I dropped my doc and start investigating. It was just as I predicted that it is a seller issue. I looked into Zhao’s notes and he interpreted the data completely wrong, which leads to incorrect assessment. Unsure if it is malicious and incompetent. I updated the ticket and route to the partner success team

Few hours later, I received an email it has been resolved, with the root cause is due to seller not restarted their system

## 2:00pm - 5 CR

Zhao setup a design review meeting for a new anomaly detection engine. Its vision range from being single anomaly source of truth to what seems like to also even do your taxes… well, I exaggerated but this has going on for the past half year and it is still stuck at design phase.

I read through the doc and while the technical details are unclear, its purpose is to replace the monitoring system I built. Things started to make sense to me now.

Reading time over, I raise my concern and confusion, to which Zhao said the system is going to also depend on my monitoring system, but it is going to be better. They could not explain how is it better. I then asked why do they try to replace what is already working and not enhance it. Before I got a satisfied answer, we ran out of time

Later AJ said he noticed some friction (codeword for tension) between me and Zhao

## 3:00pm - 5 CR

It’s daily standup time for my project. As usual, Ken (our PM) and Kelly (our TPM) and Jay shows up. AJ knows my ability enough so he decided to be absence from this unless specifically summoned

Me - “we are blocked because of testing with India team service. Working on a workaround but unsure it will work”

Kelly - “does it impact out timeline?”

Me - “i don’t know yet, there are many unknown”

Kelly - “if we know the unknown, do you know how long it will take?”

Me - “… we can launch without testing if you want to take that risk”

After a while, Kelly finally let me get away with not providing any definite date, although I can feel the unhappiness coming from Ken.

After the updates, Jay pinged me on the side

Jay - “I am very stressed out because I don't think I can complete abc for the feature by this date”

Me - “just do the best you can. We will be fine as long as we deliver high quality”

Jay joined us straight out of college couple months ago. I can tell they were really pressured by the managers to rush deadline. They are a great engineer and I really want to nurture that. Thus, i will do my best to protect them from all the timeline shenanigans

Before my next meeting, I find sometime to review couple CR. Most looks good with minor feedback. I tend to approve them anyway

## 4:00pm - 2 CR

It is now my design meeting on a new feature for our sellers. The team is invited along with the PE and some Sr SDE across team. They always joins late though.

It is always uneventful and minimal comment until the PE came. Not sure if I am a great doc writer or so bad that folks just give up.

Our PE has a reputation of roasting designs. Some is reasonable while others seem more like setting examples. For this one, while I do got some feedback to add more diagram, overall he has no problem with the approach, even appreciate the length I took to disambiguate things. Looks like we got the PE approval early this time

## 5:30pm - 0 CR

I ensure to clean out my CR review by EOD, except for long ones. Also, was able to get enough approval (Zhao did review but he did not approve) to merge and auto deploy my change from the morning. Not a bad way to end the day

… so it seems…

## 8:00pm - 0 CR / 5+ DMs

“How do we debug system x?”

“Hello…”

“Can you help me understand x y z further?”

…

Most of them I leave till next day. If it urgent enough they would page me already. When that happen I would just make a big groan before dragging myself back to the desk. Maybe I should start setting up boundaries

Day in the life of a SWE at Amazon

 Life in a picture (finally was able to do some new year cleaning 😅)

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For a detailed deep dive on each pattern, check out [https://microservices.io/patterns/monolithic.html](https://microservices.io/patterns/monolithic.html) and [https://martinfowler.com/bliki/DomainDrivenDesign.html](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/DomainDrivenDesign.html).

If you have been involved in software engineering for the past couple of years, you have probably heard of these concepts, along with microservices architecture. Recently, my team faced a challenge to reinvent our operations platform, and many of us, myself included, rose to the challenge and proposed a new system redesign. When I presented my solution, I received some pushback due to the perception that it was monolithic, which I strongly disagreed with.

While I can't disclose the details of the design (due to confidentiality and whatnot), I think this might be a good time to reflect on my understanding of these designs. There isn't one pattern that fits all, and they all come with trade-offs. For example:

- If you need to focus on development and deployment speed, a monolithic design can be useful. However, a failure might bring the entire system down.
- To focus on reducing the blast radius in failure scenarios, microservices can come to the rescue. However, if not structured carefully, you may lose a great amount of traceability or fall into the trap of a pseudo-monolith via a complex dependency model (check out this post [https://sheepcode.substack.com/p/devlife-5-microservice-hell](https://sheepcode.substack.com/p/devlife-5-microservice-hell)).
- A good balance of both might be domain-driven design. However, this requires us to have a good understanding of the business context before we can pursue it.

The contention point here is separating between monolithic and domain-driven architecture. Often times, folks tend to identify monolithic system by the amount of responsibility/scope it manages (good place to plug the SOLID principle [https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/solid-principles-single-responsibility-principle-explained/](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/solid-principles-single-responsibility-principle-explained/)). This is a flawed approach as it does not take into account the core nature of the two designs

- Monolithic relies on coupling: component irresponsibly dependent on each other and communicate without a well defined interface. A consequence of this is when you introduce an extension feature, you often find yourself changing things in multiple places
- Domain-driven relies on cohesivity: components are independent but works closely with each other. Contrast to microservices, components focus less on re-usability but more toward a specific problem scope.

To get better at identifying these architectures, I suggest to find answer to these few questions below

- On deploying change, does the entire system need to be updated?
- When extending features, can you look at the high level design and have some sense of what system needs to be updated?
- Do components communicate through a well-defined interface, or are they just recklessly call each other

The reason my design was called out as monolithic was because it took the complete scope of 3 different workstream and 2 different teams within my org. This is what good domain-driven design supposed to do: less people can do more stuff. In the end, I was able to rally engineers, my manager, and my skips. My proposal was able to triumph and it actually one of the key projects for my promo. I guess another hidden lesson here is to understand and manage the political game as well.

It's important to keep in mind that implementing any of these design patterns requires a significant amount of planning and consideration. It's not as simple as just choosing a pattern and applying it to your project. You'll need to carefully consider factors such as scalability, maintainability, and fault tolerance, as well as the specific needs of your organization and your development team. With that said, if you take the time to carefully evaluate your options and choose the right design pattern for your project, you'll be well on your way to building a successful and effective system.

Just some thoughts on some software architecture

Monolithic and Domain Driven (and Microservices) designs

Achievements unlocked: got on Vietnamese national newspaper https://t.co/NvD3Ukm6Ud

7e1c0ff4-d79b-400c-8d7b-3a457fb932ed Twitter Tweet

The general consensus of my website is it is too complicated and I have committed over-engineer sin. What if I told you there is a super tool (free to use) that you can spin it up similar infrastructure just as well in no time, with minimal maintenance. Today, I want to share about Amplify, a CLI and UI tool that can bootstrap your infrastructure. ***Disclaimer**: Amazon did not pay me for this (at least not yet)*

## 100000-ft Context

Generally, a software application’s core consisted of an interface with user (front-end), logic/tasks (back-end), and some kind of storage for related data (databases), all integrated with each other. Then you would need best practice’s components, such as security (authentication/authorization), or distribution (hosting). Finally, there are specialized components, tailored for distinct use cases (ML, PubSub)

On top of delivering functional requirements of your application, you also needs constant effort to manage physical hardware, scaling, etc. This is where AWS capitalize in: providing managed resources (along with permission gating), allowing you to focus just on application logic.

There are now over 100 types of resources in AWS, some of them have overlap use cases on the surface. This makes it very powerful but also raises the barrier to entry and increase probability of picking the wrong tool for the jobs

## Enter Amplify

Amplify encapsulates common use-cases and automatically generates required resources on AWS for you via CloudFormation - a JSON/YAML definition document. Amplify is Front-end agnostic, and will allow any application to interface with its generated back-end infrastructure by exposing a file called `aws-exports.json`. The core functionality includes

- **Authentication & Authorization**: based on Cognito, allow you to do log-in/sign-up and role based access control
- **Storage:** file based with S3, similar to having a google drive in your application
- **API:** Back-end interface either via REST (API Gateway) or GraphQL (AppSync) which hooks into DynamoDB for document storage. Also can provide add-ons like real-time/offline capabilities
- **Functions:** allow stateless and serverless task to be declared and executed whether on-demand or scheduled. Backed by Lambda
- **Hosting**: Distribute your application to the world via S3 and CloudFront content deliver network

Amplify can also synergize between each of its core functionality. For example, if you setup auth, you can permission gate your other resources such as your functions, API, etc. What makes it even more powerful is for advanced and/or custom use-cases, you can modify the Cloudformation template directly to create/config any AWS resources you wanted.

Amplify is free and open-source. You only pay for AWS Resources you use (most of them also have free tier). They also have SDK for various languages as well

## In Practice?

I started using Amplify with my React frontend since 2 years ago and haven't looked back since. Need to add data model? Define Graphql schema and deploy, will have pub/sub included as well. Need to do a quick request to a Google map/calendar? A lambda will do the trick. Keeping track of your presence online? API Gateway —> SQS —> SNS.

For those who are interested, check out how it structure in VietTech webapp GitHub ([https://github.com/bdatdo0601/project-chiron](https://github.com/bdatdo0601/project-chiron)), or checkout its starter doc ([https://docs.amplify.aws/start/](https://docs.amplify.aws/start/)). Try it for your next project 😅

Just a quick docs in my own understanding of AWS Amplify

Quick Intro to AWS Amplify

 Trying to start the (lunar) new year right in Japan and Vietnam 😊

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 This kind of news always made my day and I got two today 😊.

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This is one project I am particularly proud of, as part of my overall website (which I have shown my overall architecture before). You can check it our live as [blogs.datbdo.com](http://blogs.datbdo.com) or [https://datbdo.com/blogs](https://datbdo.com/blogs) . In this post though, I just want to run through my history of building (as well as what I want to do next)

## 1. Data modelling to infrastructure

**Motivation**

I know from the start that my website will need a blogging feature so I can improve my ngữ văn skill.

**Requirements**

- Markdown-based content with some arbitrary associated metadata
- Role based access control (author can edit/publish/etc, others can only view)
- On the fly editor, can paste image and usable on mobile

**Implementation**

AWS Amplify + React simplify a lot of the infrastructure here. I used GraphQL schema (attached) to define the Post object looks like and Amplify handle the rest (IAM Cognito roles, DynamoDB and API endpoints). Final piece is to slap a front end markdown editor, markdown renderer and some logic to CRUD

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/f49b9ff2-4fe1-401e-81a7-c52210c62b0b-Images/1e19b37b-80d7-4d24-987b-5c725c45bf2b-image.png)

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/f49b9ff2-4fe1-401e-81a7-c52210c62b0b-Images/d6752dae-0bb6-4a8b-9c61-cc3f73e93121-image.png)

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/f49b9ff2-4fe1-401e-81a7-c52210c62b0b-Images/d9778779-5414-446f-aac3-0c27f68e81f1-image.png)

## 2. Introduce and integrate variants

**Motivation**

While the editor was nice, it was not too mobile friendly, which is what I have with me majority of the time I want to write blog (offline on the subway, before going to bed, etc)

Furthermore, I wanted to accept smaller form of content such as random thoughts and maybe an image or two.

**Requirements**

- A way to accept multiple data sources into blog pages
- Display content accordingly based on source and length

**Implementation**

I did not want to handle any data migration so I make sure to keep my data model and work backwards from there. Luckily, past me was quite big brain to make `data` attributes a JSON. This means for my site blog data, I can just dump markdown text string. For others with different attributes, I just have to dump all the necessary info in enough for the front end to know what to render.

After locking down the data model and display strategy, the next step was to ingest data sources. I quickly realized short content can be populated with tweets and Instagram posts while Notion can be a pretty good blog post too since it has a great editor. With these data sources in mind, I come up with an ingress - transform - egress & notification model (see attached)

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/f49b9ff2-4fe1-401e-81a7-c52210c62b0b-Images/e654f6b0-11e4-4035-9567-56295280a40b-image.png)

This seems to be quite extensible. It can support both pull (cron lambda) and push (webhook, IFTTT) type of data sources. On the other end, because of the transformer, the store/egress does not even need to care where the data is from (only the front end do for rendering). Plus, I was able to have a different lambda to consume the egress to make a CRUD notification system within my website.

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/f49b9ff2-4fe1-401e-81a7-c52210c62b0b-Images/cbf063f1-d95f-4c42-a681-b34ca40fb5dc-image.png)

## 3. From runtime heavy to build time heavy

**Motivation**

On a random day I tried to search my stuff on Google and to my surprise, nothing show up, no matter what keywords/terms I put in. Took me almost no time to realize since my blog was part of Single Page Web App (SPA), it crippled my search engine optimization (subsequently load time as well)

**Requirements**

- Make the page load faster and content more searchable over the internet

**Implementation**

The best way to easily do this is to pre-generate all visual aspect for the blog’s front end content, making them static, instead of calculating and requesting content per site visitor’s request. I opted in to use GatsbyJS, a static site generator that allow you to bring your own content management. Luckily, my content is all stored nicely formatted in a DynamoDB, which can be easily accessed with right role and provided plugin.

The next challenge is the blog site will now be build and re-deploy on new content generated (vs my main website which is only deploy on code push). I decided to refactor the blog separately into its own sub-project then deploy it via Vercel.app. With Vercel’s build cache and deploy trigger webhook, I can control when to re-generate the content and keep the deployment process for blog fast (<15 seconds between publish content vs it being visible)

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/f49b9ff2-4fe1-401e-81a7-c52210c62b0b-Images/f8f8c599-ebbf-45e4-80ad-4858b447b65b-image.png)

Technically my main website and my blog now separated into 2 sites. However, with the magic of Iframe, with some 2 way binding to sync routes, I managed to make the blog behave naturally within my main site as well.

## 4. TODO: Notify to the world

**Motivation** 

I don't have a way to tell people who has visited I posted something new

**Current thought process**

Technically I can just consume from egress then hook it up to SES or something but I want to manage the subscriber’s list the right way 🤔. Maybe MailChimp or ConvertKit could do the trick

## 5. TODO: Enable comments

**Motivation**

I do like feedback and a way to see if my contents are well received

**Current thought process**

My current data model already included comments capabilities. Front end isn't a problem neither. The challenge is to filter out in a automatic/semi-automatic way toxic issue. Also who would be allowed to comment, under what identity 🤔

=== 

That's pretty much it. Is it overkill? Maybe but it feels good to have a consolidated pages for people to guess what kind of person I am 😅

In this post though, I want to run through my history of building (as well as what I want to do next)

Creating an "Over-engineer"-ed personal blog

At the comic con #onepieceisreal #ONEPIECE #toeianimenycc https://t.co/CLLtlVwilu

ff1e3494-e7e1-4baf-933a-16027391c892 Twitter Tweet

> “Nah I want to be strictly technical. As long as my outputs are sound/logical/correct, that is how I deliver, go up, and get promoted”. 

> Vietnamese version: ”Nói phải củ cải cũng phải nghe”

I believe the above mindset is one of the most common misconceptions among entry level engineers, which can severely hinders growth. In parallel with your area of expertise, office politics, or I would like to call it social engineering, usually plays an equally if not more important role in the current state of any software position. This is why most folks complain about environments such as Amazon (and maybe why they continue to be stuck at low to mid level, or worse, getting burned out).

So who am I to give y’all advice about this? My current team to say the least is very intense, with a higher than average attrition rate compared to the company (I went from the 14th engineer hired to the 4th most tenured engineer with the project in the team of ~120 people). In the span of 1.7 years, I went through multiple org changes + 4 different managers. From the perspective of the project itself, we have to work with and face pressure from multiple teams across the retail tech stack. Nevertheless, I managed to thrive in the environment, align couple designs/implementation and currently lead a few high impact work-streams.

Back to the topic, in real world engineering, there is almost always more than one solution to a problem you are trying to solve, directly proportional to its ambiguity and complexity. Most of us probably assume an individual engineer’s responsibility is to evaluate (i.e weighing pros and cons), execute, and provide maintenance strategy. That however is only <50% of the battle. For the other 50%, maybe even higher at larger companies, to put it simply is the ability to rally people behind you (some might equate this to being a *leader*).

The idea of rallying might seem straightforward at first, but when unpack it can require multiple aspects such as trust, communication, capability, confidence, and emotion. Humans are complicated so I don’t think it is possible for a one size fit all or step by step instruction. So in lieu of a direct path, Here is the list of guidelines/north star that I consciously choose to follow:

- **Embrace your empathy/sympathy:** We are all human and we have limits. This applies to your teammates and your partner team as well. A lot of time you will find yourself wondering why there are so many push backs on things that are seemingly simple and logical. Having the drive to understand the context (but not necessarily accept the situation) can help you alleviate the stress and build a better case to sway folks in your opinion
- **Connect with your team, build a coalition**: Your team/company is your family is obvious BS but that should not stop you from connecting on an individual level. Be willingly honest about yourself and in parallel, get your colleague/manager to talk about themselves and their achievements/frustrations. Chances are you will learn about a lot of thing earlier and faster
- **Index toward assertiveness, but never be stubborn**: your confidence directly correlates to your influence, but wield it responsibility. My rule of thumb is I trust my decision unless someone knows better tell me otherwise (and I will actively find them).
- **Accept the unknown:** more often than not, you will not have all the data required to make the perfect decision (there might not even be a perfect decision). Make yourself comfortable to move forward knowing only 60-70%

As an engineer, dealing with subjective topics is undoubtedly frustrating. These topics rarely appear on your job description but nevertheless create a profound impact on you, your work life, and your ability to build and innovate. Obviously an alternative to my situation is to also jump ship, which is 100% a solid choice given that I do have options. However, where is the thrill in that 😂? Plus, I think the extra set of skills of political maneuvering is much more valuable and rare compared to something that is as objective as technical competencies.

**Full disclaimer**: there is a good chance I am an outlier since both my previous and current companies are politics heavy. Take this with a grain of salt

My take on dealing with people and conflict in company

Navigate Company Politics as a SWE

 After 7 years, I picked up one of my old retro projects and put some scrap together to build this arcade tabletop. Any game suggestions are greatly appreciated and come play with me if you are in NYC 😅

99f8273d-58a8-447a-82b0-c5a563ea0224 Instgram Post

I got featured on https://t.co/hffIizRpxT stories! Please check it out and also all other great stories around too. Thanks @namtranxn for putting it all together.

https://t.co/o4shSoOQxW

5aa63e1e-8273-4eb3-92c8-db469f015be8 Twitter Tweet

I just discussed with my manager recently about strength and growth area, goals and career progression. I put some thoughts (and self evaluation) into this and I want to share some of my “analysis” on this topic, as it is directly related to my weaknesses.

I will be honest: I do believe I have somewhat of a big ego combined with over confidence. I hope it doesn’t came out as much in the form of bragging, i.e externally, but I know it impacts me in more than one way internally. Here’s an example scenario: whenever I see some folks who had achieved more than I did, whether it was going to a better school, having a higher title at jobs, or even having the time to travel and experience places I haven’t been, my defense mechanism always immediately kick in. Consciously or sub-consciously, I spiraled my thoughts into all the gap between me and them, and what I would need to do to get there. Of course, as a side effect, there is a feeling jealousy (or more commonly known as GATO) toward them as well.

For the longest time, I mistook this as the source to my motivation, credited it to many of my achievements. Along with it, I artificially gave myself a constant sense of anxiety and pressure, which make me generally feel dissatisfied and subsequently, feeling unfulfilled with my life. Maybe I do thrive under pressure and anxiousness, but here are also other things to consider:

- ***Is it a really fair comparison between the two of you?*** Often times, people usually understate the impact of things they mostly can’t control (i.e their family heritages, personal trauma, etc). Most of the time, no matter how similar it looks, like you went to the same school or you are the same age, you are most likely to compare apple to maybe oranges or even a rabbit
- ***Are you implying you have nothing to learn from someone did not get to where you are or take longer time to get to where you are?*** My current manager was an engineering director in a well known bank and he took a paycut to become a SDM (by choice) with the same org level with me. From hindsight, this looks like a demotion but from what I can tell, he is very happy with it along with all the challenges he has faced thus far with our project (and as you can tell, I do learn a lot of his experience)

I think all of this stem from two underlying root causes: (1) The long lasting impact of my parents’ “con nhà người ta” philosophy and (2) A general public’s unhealthy favor of result-driven personality. Here is the kicker: maybe this did help me in the past but now, it caused more harm that help, and I think I might have spent too much time agonizing over it rather than give brain space to actually improving myself in a more meaningful and effective way.

Unlike other posts, I don’t have a solution to solve this struggle yet. I don’t think it will be an immediate flip a switch and solve neither. This is one of my key weaknesses and I want to put it down somewhere so every now and then, I can go back and evaluate. I guess the first step of fixing something is to be aware of it first.

I think this is my internal struggle and one of my biggest weakness

Achievement & Anxiety

 I listened to one of his recorded orchestral way back when. His music got me through hours of homework in college. So glad to listen to him in person #joehisaishi #ghibli #radiocitymusichall

50f219b5-d3d2-4613-9017-d1a4083be7c4 Instgram Post

62304be6-ebab-4825-a052-e59e3c78d082 Instgram Post

I don't like Leet code and I hate grinding them. My problem with it is how rigid, boring, and dry theory-driven it is, which most of the time does not correlate with the day-to-day work of SWE. So what if we have an alternative that is a bit more practicality driven? Per title, I want to share my alternative to LC for both interview prep and technical growth

## The concept

### The high level is simple: Building projects. 

I start with something I am personally interested in, whether I find it cool, a minor inconvenience, or maybe prototyping a concept that might be worth a startup. For me, this step is to build up the gratification and incentive to commit to a project. I recall some folks were struggling with selecting ideas that you can tie with their area of focus. For me, I found the most breakthrough usually come from outside of my own comfort zone (take this with a grain of salt though)

### As always, the devil is in the details. 

There are certain “north stars” that I follow to get the most out of things I work on:

- Model before execution: “I came up with 100% idea, prototype 80% then maintain 10%” - Me on GitHub. Coming up with an idea is relatively easy, and so is writing code, well, spaghetti code, which yields minimal learning. A large portion of my old projects suffered from this, and now I refuse to look back at them, no matter how cool the result was. I find it so important to strategize, even just in the form of day dreaming.

- Iteration over perfectionism: This is more of a mindset acceptance. Not to say you should gloss over quality but sometimes, suboptimal is ok. If it really matters, I would go back and fix it later, usually with a clearer mind (or better tools are available)

- Depth and patience over result: intentionally a bit conflicting with my previous point, just so you realize there will always be tension and trade-off. The point of this is to allow me to sit and soak in the problem. If it doesn't work then why. If there is an existing solution can I replicate it? What's the gap?

- Overkill is encouraged: I like to imagine my project and code will be used by millions of people. Is my code understandable? Can it scale? Can I stop malicious intent? In reality, none of my projects get to hundreds but the thought exercises is worth the implementation

- Failing is learning: kinda given, but just another way of saying don't stop doing things. If I was not able to build a feature, I now learn why it is hard and at least one way it doesn't work.

- Retrospectives: I reflect back on my development early and often. The hope is the next one should be better than the previous, whether in quality, experience, etc

## The Example

I started my first project back in 2010 (7th -8th grade) but did not conceptualize these purposes until way later in college. Some of my highlighted projects (see attached picture) includes a retro game player, voice assistant module, smart mirrors, VR-enabled RC car, and most recently, an over-engineered personal website application.

I was quite surprised when I started taking them seriously with my a-layer-deeper approach. Turns out lots of CS were just hiding in plain sight: organizing images with different aspect ratio into a nice square? That's the partitioning problem. Highly connected data causing high delay in retrieving them? Graph database, graph traversal concept. One time I was dealing with streams and came up with an idea to sacrifice accuracy to save sacrifice speed. I then learned this was a common approach and CS was not just space-time trade-off but space-time-accuracy trade off (Redis Hyperloglog did this for years)

## The Pros

I touched on it a little bit above but here are the bullet points:

- You naturally accumulate competency and whatever you learn always stays in the back of your mind for a long time

- You gain the ability to solve any problem incrementally, especially unfamiliar and ambiguous ones

- Cool portfolio && cool stories

- It is always more fun and exciting to solve these problems as they are important to you

## The Cons

- Probably takes longer than traditional LC training

- Not quantifiable: some projects can leap you to the moon while others feel like just doing what you are told with tutorials

- Sometimes you don't know if it is just difficult or unsolvable to get to an optimal solution

## Wrap it up

I recently encountered a few folks that love to determine your/one's level of competency by the amount of LC you/he did, which is what motivates me to put this together. I think my main point is there are many parts to get to where you want to be technically, whether for interview practice or to grow as an engineer in general. This was my way and I wanted to share but I hope you will take a look at this and other input to develop your own 😅

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/8b7c97b5-7918-4155-955b-1710c5402001-Images/0d9021a8-561d-4bc2-b730-af1d1c718735-image.png)

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/8b7c97b5-7918-4155-955b-1710c5402001-Images/7e7bbd24-2bf7-42e6-b7b1-dd63d8bfbd87-image.png)

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/8b7c97b5-7918-4155-955b-1710c5402001-Images/dd019702-2876-4433-82af-c41299a8a13c-image.png)

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/8b7c97b5-7918-4155-955b-1710c5402001-Images/b0f60f6b-2377-4f7d-998c-8d34f15aaf79-image.png)







My method for interview training and technical growth

Practical Programming 

So happy to finally be able to say publicly what I have been working on at #amazon

I am super proud to be a part of the launch (but was under no surprise we made this happen given our very cool team). So far, I have learned a whole lot about both custome…https://t.co/xXLpmnhloN

2c0ae9e8-2afb-42e7-b984-9986d99a214c Twitter Tweet

# Context
I just moved into this apartment building in the Upper (*5) west side of NYC (Pic for reference)
![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/32e727c7-1438-4d28-9f4b-cf95ed195b2f-Images/c69631b2-f9a0-4aaf-9538-7f3a9b428f88-image.png)

In order to get into a building, you need to have a key fob like so and tag it to the reader station. The building management only give me 3 of them, also the fob utility sucks. It's an ugly rubber wristband, which is an extra thing I have to remember before I left the house.

Thus begin my quest to make some copy myself (and hopefully in a better shape)

# My naivete
Initially, I thought this should just be a NFC tag, which you should be able to clone using any NFC reader/writer, including my phone.

Turns out, the process is a bit more complicated. There are multiple variants of NFC tag out there (popular ones are Mifare 1K, Mifare 4k, Proximity, etc). Not only that but they can also operate in a few different frequency, and have couple of strategies to prevent cloning or content reading, for security purposes (you can learn more from [this stackexchange question]( https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/131638/how-can-rfid-nfc-tags-not-be-cloned-when-they-are-passive-technology))

Does this mean it is impossible? nope. There are just a few step to successfully cloning them

# The Actual Process
## Requirement
- [A Proxmark3 RDV3](https://proxmark.com/)
- The original Key Fob
- An NFC tag of the same variant with the original and interchangeable UID

## Procedure
- Clone the Proxmark3 software repo, this will also retrieve latest standard [NFC decryption keys](https://github.com/Proxmark/proxmark3/blob/master/client/default_keys.dic)
```bash
$ git clone https://github.com/Proxmark/proxmark3
```
- Compile them in to executable
```bash
$ cd Proxmark3/
$ make clean && make all
```
- Flash the device to latest firmware
```bash
$ cd Proxmark3/
$ client/flasher /dev/cu.usbmodem11201 -b bootrom/obj/bootrom.elf armsrc/obj/fullimage.elf
```
- Find the usb port of the device and bind them to the program
```bash
$ ls /dev/cu.usbmodem*
# should be the something like /dev/cu.usbmodem<random_number>
$ client/Proxmark3 /dev/cu.usbmodem11201
proxmark3>
```
- place the original tag up and retrieve info
```bash
proxmark3> hf search

 UID : 1b 1c 8f 22
ATQA : 00 04
 SAK : 08 [2]
TYPE : NXP MIFARE CLASSIC 1k | Plus 2k SL1
proprietary non iso14443-4 card found, RATS not supported
No chinese magic backdoor command detected
Prng detection: HARDENED (hardnested)

Valid ISO14443A Tag Found - Quiting Search
```
- NFC tag is broken up into multiple sector, each might have its own encryption keys. we need to find those keys in order to copy them successfully. Luckily, most manufacturer simply use one of the default keys, which we can brute force to figure out using this tool
```
proxmark3> hf mf chk *1 ? d # this will check each sector against they public keys list file. If they are all good, it will dump a encrypt key into a nice table

--chk keys. sectors:16, block no:  0, key type:?, eml:n, dmp=y checktimeout=471 us
No key specified, trying default keys
chk default key[ 0] ffffffffffff
chk default key[ 1] 000000000000
chk default key[ 2] a0a1a2a3a4a5
chk default key[ 3] b0b1b2b3b4b5
chk default key[ 4] aabbccddeeff
chk default key[ 5] 1a2b3c4d5e6f
chk default key[ 6] 123456789abc
chk default key[ 7] 010203040506
chk default key[ 8] 123456abcdef
chk default key[ 9] abcdef123456
chk default key[10] 4d3a99c351dd
chk default key[11] 1a982c7e459a
chk default key[12] d3f7d3f7d3f7
chk default key[13] 714c5c886e97
chk default key[14] 587ee5f9350f
chk default key[15] a0478cc39091
chk default key[16] 533cb6c723f6
chk default key[17] 8fd0a4f256e9

To cancel this operation press the button on the proxmark...
--o
|---|----------------|----------------|
|sec|key A           |key B           |
|---|----------------|----------------|
|000|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|001|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|002|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|003|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|004|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|005|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|006|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|007|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|008|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|009|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|010|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|011|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|012|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|013|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|014|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|015|  ffffffffffff  |  ffffffffffff  |
|---|----------------|----------------|
Found keys have been dumped to file dumpkeys.bin. 0xffffffffffff has been inserted for unknown keys.
```
- If you see this, your tag can be fully copied. You can dump all the data out for cloning
```
proxmark3> hf mf dump
|-----------------------------------------|
|------ Reading sector access bits...-----|
|-----------------------------------------|
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
#db# READ BLOCK FINISHED
...
```
- Get the new blank NFC tag and you can copy the content over
```
proxmark3> hf search

 UID : 89 6c bb 3b
ATQA : 00 04
 SAK : 08 [2]
TYPE : NXP MIFARE CLASSIC 1k | Plus 2k SL1
proprietary non iso14443-4 card found, RATS not supported
Chinese magic backdoor commands (GEN 1a) detected
Prng detection: WEAK

Valid ISO14443A Tag Found - Quiting Search

proxmark3> hf mf restore
Restoring dumpdata.bin to card
Writing to block   0: 1b 1c 8f 22 aa 88 04 00 c8 18 00 20 00 00 00 14
#db# Cmd Error: 04
#db# Write block error
#db# WRITE BLOCK FINISHED
isOk:00
Writing to block   1: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
#db# WRITE BLOCK FINISHED
```
- Some reader system also check for UID of the tag, which is usually a read-only section for NFC tag. This is why you need an interchangable UID tag in order to fully clone other NFC. Check the UID of the original fob (mine was `1b 1c 8f 22`) and you can write it to the cloned one like so
```
proxmark3> hf mf csetuid 1b1c8f22
uid:1b 1c 8f 22
Chinese magic backdoor commands (GEN 1a) detected
old block 0:  89 6c bb 3b 65 08 04 00 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69
new block 0:  1b 1c 8f 22 aa 08 04 00 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69
old UID:89 6c bb 3b
new UID:1b 1c 8f 22
```

And that's it! Below are some pictures of the fob and devices for references
![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/32e727c7-1438-4d28-9f4b-cf95ed195b2f-Images/4c6ae58f-0ae6-480a-b707-50f62df13a32-image.png)
![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/32e727c7-1438-4d28-9f4b-cf95ed195b2f-Images/94743e0f-85d3-4524-aeb9-10fab4164faa-image.png)

A quick intro into understanding how NFC works

Weekend Project: Duplicating My Apartment Key Fob

I have been referring to roadmap.sh for folks who want to get into tech, but to be honest, that is not really how I did it. Following up on my personal story, I want to share how I progressed from a kid who tried to cheat to a somewhat competent SDE.
My thoughts here are all over the place so please bear with me here

## PHASE 0: EXPOSURE
First thing I ever touched was cheat-engine and art-money, which wasn't really programming, but I started to know AA is greater than 11 and it means dealing more damage. This kinda introduce a bit about variables definitions
Around 8th grade, I got introduced to Pascal. While the curriculum was pretty bad/not focused, I found it pretty efficient to explain concrete logic in an structured way
## PHASE 1: EXPERIMENTATION
Started (and abandoned) thousands of "projects"
Attempted to install Linux (arch out of all things), failed, try again, succeeded but don't know what I did differently. Reinstall back to Windows really quick cause I don't even know how to use command line to access folder (also got yelled at for wiping all the family data)
Got into HTMl/CSS so I went crazy with all these different text sizes, sparkles, backgrounds, etc.
## PHASE 2: GOOGLE EARLY, GOOGLE OFTEN
I got really comfortable with Googling answers. Would say this is the peak of my Dunning Kruger chart timeline
Built an entire IOS game (my arts and all) from following random tutorials and published to the App Store. This was before Swift so it was Objective C (the name is Epic Fallin' if anyone want to dig it up. I recall it crashes half of the time but playable)
Got a raspberry pi and built some object detection, retro games OS, entertainment center, etc
## PHASE 3: IN-DEPTH UNDERSTANDING
This was when I started my CS degree and started to see how much math and all other things I don't know about the fields
Started to learn about core concepts, algorithm, memory, trade-off, and maths
Volunteered into professors' research program, learned about academic writing, building scientific evidences, etc
Founded CS clubs, ran Hackathons, expanded my network so I can learn from more talented peers
One of the key piece I realized was every languages, frameworks, libraries are fundamentally the same at the core so as long as you have the foundation, you would feel comfortable at any of them (given some ramp up time)
## PHASE 4: ROUGHLY PUTTING THINGS TOGETHER
In parallel with college, which gives the depth, I chose to expand my breadth through tech news and hackathon
Learned about data scraping, request response, API
Got introduced to git to store code. Know push/pull and freak out whenever there is a merge conflicts
Put together couple of proper web application, then struggle with maintaining them
## PHASE 5: ACCUMULATE BEST PRACTICES
This starts around the time of internship and my first entry job, where I am comfortable enough with implementing software
Started looking at tech gospels (12factor.net, design data intensive application, clean architecture, refactoring)
Familiar with proper Git etiquette (merge/rebase, atomic, conventional commit, etc)
Went back and refactor old codes into better structure and proper interfacing
Realized the importance and the difference of multiple kind of software tests (unit, integration, e2e, tdd, etc)
## PHASE 6: ZOOMING OUT TO THE BIG PICTURE
Once there are some confidence with my apps/components' structure and reliability, my next step was to take a step back and fit things into the big picture, both in term of aligning with real-world/business requirements (i.e not over engineering) and in terms of system and pipeline
Orchestrated fleets of couple thousands sensors without directly interact with each of them (OTA + Greengrass)
Automated deployment (CI/CD) and defined multiple development stages for projects
Clear clean high level to low level design, address trade-off, operational capability
Knowledge sharing and organization, capturing the right details and keeping them "timeless"
## PHASE 7: BEYOND YOUR COMFORT ZONE
I'm not here yet but I think this is where I am headed next. I don't think a great software engineer should just stay with software. I wanted to get into electrical engineering to understand the PWM or Verilog, or business to understand workplace political navigation, so on and so forth.
This is how I think my brain can connect the dot and come up with cool idea


**Quick note**: The phases here doesn't necessarily mean one completion leads to another (in fact I have not completed any of these). The way I see it, each phase can help prepare you for the next but all in all any of them will be an on-going growth
Lmk your thoughts

Identify different growing phase in my technical growth

Growing technically as an engineer

## MY STORIES (BACKGROUND)

I have hinted some bits here and there but let me pieces them together for ya: I came from a "nhà có điều kiện" family, which gives me an opportunity to study abroad from 10th grade. Due to a chronic brain-related issue that is susceptible to stress, my parents insisted I should go to a more relaxed school (VAS Hanoi & St Anthony's anyone?). In parallel, I lived under a huge shadow - my older sister. I'm talking about an Ams-er, always top class, who went to LSE then Yale and beyond. One more thing I should add, my family, as a heavy business oriented, have tried to push me to the business side every step of the way.
I accidentally got into programming from a bad intention. In 8th grade, I modded a fighting game so my character can hit a bit harder compared to my friends. I love the tinkering part of it and start coming up with side projects from then on. (Funny enough this was the time when school started teaching Pascal, which came quite natural to me)

Around the time to pick college in my HS senior year, my family's business went bankrupt and my parents told me they would not be able to support me. My grade did not qualify me for any full scholarships so I was faced with the pressure to return to Vietnam. To overcome this, I made a series of rational decisions: pick the cheapest college with the most scholarships and loaded myself with any part time jobs I found available. At one point I juggled 4 jobs, 5 classes with extracurricular.

College was both the best and the worst of time coming in with the above plan. Obviously I picked CS and met great professors, whose passion got into me. In order to be allowed to pay the tuition in parts, I literally had to cry and beg the financial office. I met life-long friends with similar interests. Due to the inconsistent part time jobs, I regularly missed rent and had to skip meals. I met my now-waifu from organizing hackathons. The brain-related issue came back a dozen times when I needed to pull an all-nighter. I secured two great internships at Shell TechWorks, which let me work on actual end to end production solutions. I got rejected by hundreds of companies, some even refused to look at my resume. I finished college in 3 years with a bit more stable income.

Before graduation, I landed a return offer with Shell along with a dozen offers from all kinds of companies: Startups, Big Tech, Big Non-Tech, and Hybrid (Big non tech's incubator). I created a manual scoring model, weighted on various dimensions such as brand, team culture, comp, etc (can go into details in a later post). I ended up joining Shell based on its score. While it did not have the best pay (sub 90k) or brand, the culture and the varieties of project topics surely made up for it. Within 1.5 years there, I had the opportunities to work on cutting-edge technology, learned about best practices in software development, had 1 pending patent, and even got to explore electrical and mechanical engineering works. Combined with great teammates and manager, I was always learning and feeling supported even when I jump into the next career move.

Before Amazon, there were others tempting offers here and there. While they paid a lot more, I just don't feel the click and it doesn't pass my scoring model. On the other hand, Amazon was something else: I get to wear many different hats, my impact is on a larger scale, which results as a bump in my title. Fun fact: my entire interview lasted within a week, from initial recruiter call to the offer (which was extended 30 minutes after the final round).

I've been at Amazon for about 2 year now. While I cannot deny the intensity, I have a lot of fun.

## WHAT I THINK GOT ME HERE (LEARNING/RETROSPECT)
- Luck! I had a lot of opportunities but the most fortunate thing was that my passion happened to be in demand.
- Tons of support behind the scenes from my sister, my wife, and my friends. I could not have made it here without them.- Expand my options and optimize on happiness in the long run. You are missing out a lot if you just aim for FAANG as your goal.
- If something is not the way you like, don't wait for change, be the change. Ask, beg, find loopholes, etc exhaust all the options before giving up.
- Make your own path. Be open to advice and guidance but apply them only if you think it is best. There are more than one way to success.
- "Looking back, my life has been nothing but failure" - I mentioned this before. I failed a lot and at first it was taxing but once you get to a numbing point, you look at it with a different perspective and it becomes a valuable experience

## FINAL THOUGHTS
I think mentorship is the next skill I want to develop, which is why I am quite involved here. With that being said, hmu, introduce yourself, grab a coffee if you are in NYC. I'm in VTS TechSphere as well if that's easier for you (pls don't post the link though).

My Journey to Tech

Updated my personal website from CRA to Vite, reduced the build time by half 😮

73871419-ebb0-4545-8060-913c9be1b651 Twitter Tweet

Created https://t.co/p9IRsVYnRk to store random urls handy :) https://t.co/vgkeAaUopn

ec33e2a1-10e5-43d6-913d-b5ecb593fe66 Twitter Tweet

# Context

This week marks the end of my week 1 at Amazon. It flew by quick but I think I did well: I was able to understand a lot more context, I started to vibe with co-workers, and I formed a pretty clear picture of how my workload is going to look like going forward (**Spoiler**: Lots of fun and challenges for sure). As I slowly realizing the scope that I will be working with, I hope that I will continue to keep my passion and curiosity at software and technology as my progress my way through this company, despite all the down-point and hardship that I will come across.

That's pretty much all I will say my new job in this post. I am sure there are so many people out there have shared their experiences at Amazon, both positive and negative. It is too early for me to say anything, and I don't think I would add any useful information to anyone. From my perspective, this moment is the start of a new year and my new job. That is why I would like to use this to have a quick look back on the past few years: what I have done and what I wish I have done. Since I am bad at writing a stories (as it will definitely be long and boring), I will use the retrospective format from Agile so that at the end, I might be able to setup a list of action items for the next 5 years.

# 2015 - 2020 Retrospectives

This is quite a time span to think about. There was so many different life moments that have happened. I went from being fresh high school grad kid to a young adult with stable income. Obviously I can't list out everything I have done. What I can do though is to list out things that I believe making the biggest impact to my life, either changing my perspective or fostered my growth. These things might be a one-off event or a gradual process over time.

Some stuff down here might not strictly related to career but rather more personal. I think it is worth it to put here since I think a good harmony between the two is the key to happiness in life. I will try my best to explain why I put it in 😅

## What I have done

### 1. Frugal Travel Trip

During the Summer of 2015, my sister and I did a road trip from East coast to West coast of the United States solely by Greyhound buses for 2 months. We travelled through the Mid West, stayed in some cities in between and learned a whole lot about its history and culture (mostly through museums). The journey was on a very limited budget, as we both were just graduated (me from high school and my sister from MBA)

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/9792fefb-0ce4-40d4-9a63-a20e212421d6-Images/4aa20598-61ec-4650-b2cd-7b4067a8533c-image.png)

During the trip, in order to keep our budget manageable, we made a spreadsheet to keep track of our spending, within every meal, activities, and lodging. We don't want to miss out on any cultural experience (deep dish pizza in Chicago left a strong print for me) but outside of that, making our own meal is so much cheaper and more often healthier than grabbing it in a random store.

Looking back, the trip made me understand about financial responsibility. Early on in your career, this is something that is crucial because it can help you prioritize gaining experience over aiming for high salary. As an extra benefits, it's a good story to tell when you want to connect with people.

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/9792fefb-0ce4-40d4-9a63-a20e212421d6-Images/e2db0c01-523e-475d-af6c-fc3574b542da-image.png)

### 2. Being a mentor

I learned a lot of different things during my 3 years in college, but perhaps one thing stands out that I did not pay for is mentorship. After my first semester, I was nominated to be a tutor for math (and eventually CS) at Wentworth. Initially, I was just doing it for that swish swish cash 💸🤑.

As I started to tutor and review class materials to other students, I was able review a lot of insights for myself. Furthermore, I think it is the best way to communicate and explain your understanding outside of your mind. When you are able to teach a subject well and simplify it for others, that means you truly have grasped the core concept of it. This is a unique skill that you can only learn from mentorship. Over the course of my career, I definitely can recall many time I had applied this in order to help my team move forward.

### 3. Foster a passionate community

During my 2nd year in college, around the time when I got some more knowledge in CS, I wanted to find some people that I can bounce CS related idea with. I decided to form a student organization for it and eventually planned a Hackathon so I could even reach people outside of my school. I have never been a leader before but for some reason, planning all of this feel pretty natural to me. It was not entirely smooth sailing but I guess as we let our passion take the main seat, things tend to resolve itself as that's what draw us in in the first place.

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/9792fefb-0ce4-40d4-9a63-a20e212421d6-Images/77bd63fc-2b8e-46bd-a36b-8b0e48408b49-image.png)

I know passionate CS community is good but I did not know it would be this good. I appreciate meeting everyone here and learn about them as we building up a great event. To this day, we still keep in touch and chat about all things in life. If I have to give a single most important advice to anyone, I think joining a community like this for your hobby/career/passion would probably be my top choice (if there is none around you then take the initiative to build one 😉)

### 4. Working in startup culture

When I was searching for my co-op/internship for some early work experience, my eyes were fixated on big/well-established software names. After all, it is normal to think those company will teach you much more than others on the market, right? Well based on my current experience, I would not fully agree with that statement. After a bunch of rejections and offers from different companies, I ended up joining TechWorks, a startup innovative organization of Shell (yes the large energy company).

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/9792fefb-0ce4-40d4-9a63-a20e212421d6-Images/e265512e-9bd9-43a9-9faa-395342c171ce-image.png)

I become part of a small software team that tackles various interesting project, from cost optimization to safety critical applications. We get to apply cutting-edge technologies and taking some aspect of technical ownership of different projects. When you get a high degree of freedom in your work, combined with a decent amount of responsibility, for me, it was the perfect opportunity for me to learn about being a Software Engineer. The culture at TechWorks are extremely fast-paced but also very rewarding and meaningful. Everyone across different disciplinary in the organization will alwaysbe there to help and guide you along the way. I was fascinated by the amount of learnings here and that is why I decided to continue working there right after I graduated. From a career growth perspective, I don't think there are many experience out there that could top TechWorks.

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/9792fefb-0ce4-40d4-9a63-a20e212421d6-Images/28b3d389-f254-4b10-8598-f09e1b46f289-image.png)

#### 4.1. Extra Point @ STW: Bring Ideation to Production

One good thing I was able to do in TechWorks' startup culture was bringing a project from a whiteboard to a complete application that can be used by our customers within 1 year and 1 month. Throughout the process, I got introduced to many different stages of software development, both from the technical side (full-stack, infrastructure, continuous delivery/integration, etc.) and the program side (Agile, user security, design sprints, etc.). I wouldn't say I am an expert as any of those things but the exposure definitely helped me to figure out which area I would be deeply interested in in the future.

### 5. Stay curious

This was something I expected to lose after I graduated but for I guess it plays a bigger role in my day-to-day life that I have anticipated. I still actively build random stuff. The other day I came up with an idea to mod a RC car and put a camera with some sensor on it. Then I figured out the best way to stream the feed directly into a VR headset with lowest possible latency (to avoid nausea). It was a fun concept on its own but I have learned a lot about data streaming because of that. Here are some pics of my tech workspaces. 

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/9792fefb-0ce4-40d4-9a63-a20e212421d6-Images/fb6ddb41-8c31-4387-aa20-56ae3233522a-image.png)

![image.png](https://bigboicontent-bucketdev-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/public/9792fefb-0ce4-40d4-9a63-a20e212421d6-Images/28b6deab-4a9a-4116-95dc-425606fe57e7-image.png)

Lots of fun stories were created from here (and also lots of failed experiments as well). The good thing is you always learn something out of it for sure.

## What I wish I have done (What I haven't done)

### 1. Doing More Academic Research

I always have an itch to be at the edge of the next technology. Up until this point, I have done a lot of project, both personally and professionally, but none has been *first of its kind* nor *state of the art*. I have tried to be involved on this in college but was not fully commit to it as much as I wish to. Maybe this is why there is some part of me wanting to do even higher education (Master/PhD)

### 2. Being a good Mentee

I have come across so many bright individual. Each time I was able to learn a little bit from them and grow but I have never make a good effort to keep that connection for a longer period of time, especially when it was something outside my main area of expertise. I think if I can be a better mentee, I would be able to learn as a much faster rate than right now.

### 3. Stay fit

When I was a kid I climbed then fell down from a tree and heal within minutes. Now if I just slept in the wrong position my neck hurts for the rest of the week. Being physically healthy is something that is truly crucial but I have been overlooked for a while. On paper, it sounds so simple: healthy diet + daily exercise routine. In practice, my brain always find a reason to eat junk food and skip the workout. As I completed other career task, I hope I will bring this goal in a higher priority going forward.

### 4. Staying aware of Mental Health

This was something I didn't know existed until I reached my 20s. Being able to aware of it and understand the impact of it to other people around (and close) to you was something I should have done a long time ago (initially I always thought it was either being ~~normal~~ or being ~~psychopathic~~). I wanted to make an effort to learn more about the mental health spectrum and help people affected by it the right way.

## Thoughts

- One section I excluded was the mistakes I have made during these years. Maybe I might included it at some point once I have materialize those thoughts more fluently
- I hope someone can look and learn something either about me or from me to improve themselves better.

## Action Item(s)

As I reflected on these items, I have created a list of 30 things to do before I turn 30. You can check it out [HERE (https://www.notion.so/datdo/30-Before-30s-4062ff779b684f4badafa2d63e0e6ef1)](https://www.notion.so/datdo/30-Before-30s-4062ff779b684f4badafa2d63e0e6ef1). Hopefully as I completed each checklist it will move me to a better direction.

It's the beginning of 2021, I want to look back at the past 5 years of progress I have made to prepare for the next 5 years

2015 - 2020 Retrospective: Dat's Progression

I am working on some pet projects and have recently discover https://t.co/hUEOgexKek and https://t.co/SrK6fAKLY1

201038fb-9cd9-44c6-bdad-1462f9f1106d Twitter Tweet

Note to self to checkout things on here

https://t.co/QDLjrpHLo7

4926f936-591e-4158-813a-1ad06014e570 Twitter Tweet

TIL there is a column items stacking style called masonry and there are different approaches on implementing it on web https://t.co/3BKzGCjpYp

19aa5dab-a8cd-432d-af27-23a3cff70b94 Twitter Tweet

Happy Holidays/Thanksgiving!

I will start tweeting more since things here will now be connected to my blog stream (https://t.co/CzInUtgf3N)

To start, here are set of books I refer to (and cry to) day to day https://t.co/re5AEHdToe

72d5c0f1-979b-4220-833c-18eabca65310 Twitter Tweet

Tweeting to website

https://t.co/CzInUtxQsn