Starting at the FTTA

After 3 years of working at Amazon, with much prayer and consideration, I decided to leave my job and study at the Full-Time Training in Anaheim (FTTA). I’ll cover my testimony leading to the decision and reflect on my time working at Amazon.

I’ve been a Christian my whole life, and since I was young, I thought it was certain that I was going to the FTTA after I graduated college (the vast majority of students are in this category). However, I was unsure when it came time to actually consider the next step in my life (before the beginning of senior year). When fellowshipping with the brothers (a name for male believers since we all received God the Father's life), each of them asked me if I was considering attending. Each time they asked, I had no feeling from the Lord to go. With this, I resolved in my heart that if I didn't go, I probably would never go, and I started to consider other options.

During the summer, I had completed an internship at Amazon (remotely due to COVID) and received a return offer for a full-time role that expired in early November. However, every time I thought about accepting the offer, I was nerve-wracked: did I want to accept this job because it is prestigious and will allow me to earn a lot of money? Is this what the Lord wanted me to do? Around the same time, I was listening to an announcement about gospel work in America (GTCA for those who know), and one of the cities mentioned stuck with me: Minneapolis. To this day, I'm not sure if it was the Lord putting the city in my heart, but I started to apply only to jobs in Minneapolis. However, as the months went by with multiple applications, there was no success. I told the Lord that I wasn't sure about going to Seattle, so if You don't want me to go, You should open another door. In the end, He did not. I still remember the first home meeting (a gathering with the other believers at a home) after I accepted the return offer. I was sitting on the floor as the news slowly disseminated and everyone came up to me to congratulate me. Inwardly, however, I was truly not sure if this was the right move.

The next summer, I moved to Seattle without ever visiting before. Distinctly, there was a heat wave at the time when I arrived, and that's how I learned there is no AC in most Seattle homes. When I got to the house I would be staying at, it was not what I expected. However, over time, the Lord was faithful to build up relationships in the house (four working brothers and four students), and we really just pursued the Lord together and were knitted together too. The experiences from here to when I left Seattle have only become more rich and more full of Christ's life. From moving out with working brothers to having dinner meetings every week, I was truly blessed: I knew that the Lord sovereignly placed me there.

Throughout all of this, I loved my work (I'll go more into detail about this in the next section). From my first team that I returned to, to the next team where I grew up as an engineer, my team and projects were awesome. However, given my lifestyle, I felt that I was not able to fully enjoy the Lord in the function that I should have been. Everything outwardly was great, but inwardly there was a feeling of dissatisfaction. Despite this, I continued to live the same way, not expecting anything to change.

During the North America College Training (a training is a dedicated time with regulation to focus on pursing the Lord) in July 2023, I helped serve (volunteer) to help care for the college students through small group times and enjoying the spiritual material outside of the main messages (similar to sermons). After one of these meetings, a video presentation on the FTTA played, and something touched me inwardly. I had a feeling the Lord was telling me to go to the FTTA next fall. To me, a person who dismissed the FTTA two years ago, this feeling seemed incredulous. I thought it might be a feeling of excitement due to the uplifted atmosphere of the training.

Either way, I did not ignore this feeling. Over several months, I met up with others who had completed the FTTA and asked them what it was like. I started to fellowship with the leading brothers at my church. Finally, I talked to my parents about my thoughts. With both outward fellowship and inward consideration, this nagging feeling became a decision in my heart around December that year, and I would start to plan for it. Over the final few months, I started to finish up my work projects (to my coworkers reading, sorry I could not get everything done completely) and settle my housing situation. By the end of June, I received an acceptance letter to the FTTA.

Between my acceptance letter and getting to the FTTA, I went to Taiwan. After I came back, I checked with my ENT about an existing health condition. Per his recommendation, I needed a small surgery to deal with the issue, and I was set back three weeks for recovery, and in the end, I was one week late to the FTTA (physically at least, attending online when possible). Thanks to the care from my surgeon and the prayer of the saints, I was able to recover well and started my drive down to Anaheim from Seattle, arriving on August 20th.

I'm thankful that the Lord has led me to the FTTA. It's not that I might never code professionally anymore or that it's a crazy career change. I love the Lord, and to have this opportunity to give two years to just pursue truth, life, gospel, and service with others who love the Lord the same way is a great privilege.

As apprehensive as I was about joining Amazon, my experience there was awesome. Most computer science graduates are aware of Amazon's negative reputation for engineering work-life balance. The horror stories include constant pages in the middle of the night, notorious PIP processes, and an overall competitive political nature. I was fortunate not to have encountered any of these to an extreme degree, and instead was able to learn and grow with exceptional teammates that knew how to design, build, and ship products end-to-end.

The first team I worked on was the team I interned at: MOX (Merchant Orders Experience), a team that owned the full-stack experience for the "Manage Your Orders" page on the Seller Central website for third-party sellers. Working on this team opened my eyes to Amazon technology and the scale that Amazon operates at. Although it seems like the scope is a simple frontend and backend, the scope of the services was actually much larger. The backend services stored order information related to fulfillment and were used by hundreds of internal services for over a decade. This meant availability and scalability were key, as this critical dependency was needed in many of Amazon's different merchant experiences. Although the frontend was scoped to "Manage Your Orders" for third-party sellers, the backend was scoped for all orders shipped at Amazon (with a few exceptions). Through Prime Day, Cyber Monday, and Black Friday, even the number of hosts provisioned to anticipate the millions of orders during each event was a huge task. Being able to maintain and build upon legacy services with new technology at Amazon's complexity was a massive learning experience. Instead of theoretical knowledge, the practicality of each design with business speed was awesome. However, the main highlight was the team I worked with. We were a team of relatively young engineers, ranging in domain expertise, and were open to help, teach, and learn from one another. Each time there was an operational issue or an outage, we were able to diagnose, document, and converse without any recourse. The manager at the time had recently switched from being an engineer to a manager, and I believe this was a big factor in the atmosphere we were able to work in. From the strangest edge cases to credential mismatches, I felt that the young engineers on the team gained much experience from trial and error, as well as a sense of camaraderie. Even today, I touch base with the teammates I worked with, although we are mostly not in MOX anymore (unfortunately getting laid off, switching teams, etc.).

The second team I worked on is the Smithy team, which owns the Smithy open-source toolchain for API definitions and SDK code-generation externally and internal tooling to use the open-source technology and conversion to existing internal formats. Working on this team was different than MOX. Every single engineer I talked to was essentially more tenured than me. The team itself had seasoned SDE IIs (mid-level engineers), many SDE IIIs (senior engineers), and even its own principal engineer that was hands-on with coding. Besides the team itself, there was the treasure trove of working with the AWS SDK teams that were language experts for their corresponding SDKs, and access to conversations about developer tools that would affect the entire company, teams that included even more seniors and principals who had been in the company for over a decade. I never had so much information to absorb, and never had access to so much impact. As I joined, I was fortunate enough to find my foothold in SDK code-generation, and was able to work with the JavaScript, Go, and Swift teams on the official AWS SDKs. More than that, the autonomy and respect I was given as an owner for the products were awesome. Yes, there were business goals that needed to be reached, but when it came down to implementation, there were mostly no blockers for any given engineer after the design was completed. Teamwise, it was awesome to learn from engineers with more experience and impressive technical histories. I learned to take in opinions from these engineers to form my own, and I'm still convinced the best way to run a team is to give autonomy to experienced engineers that are just right 99.99999% of the time. My manager on this team also understood this, and the team was incredibly productive despite the complexity in each project. I stayed on this team for two years and grew from an SDE I (an entry-level engineer) to an SDE II capable of leading cross-SDK and company-impacting initiatives. I personally believe this team advanced my experience by at least five years.

My experience at Amazon was awesome. My coworkers were all driven, smart, and practical. There were no lofty towers or bureaucracy in my experience (or my managers truly shielded these things from the engineers). To me, my job was growing technically, learning to work with others, and building trust every day. It's bittersweet to leave something that you invest a lot of time into and also enjoy doing, but I believe that the timing to leave Amazon was right. To any coworkers reading, it was great working with you all, and if possible, hope to have a chance to work with you all in the future.