11 months as a Software Engineer @Amazon

I've been a software engineer with Amazon for a little bit over 11 months now and everyone thinks that being a software engineer is just about writing code, building crazy apps, typing super fast like some kind of hacker, like you just know everything and solve problems instantly. But in reality, being a software engineer is mostly about fixing code that was written years ago by engineers who came before you. So instead of building something new all day, you're spending most of your time trying to understand a massive code base and how even the smallest change might break five other systems you didn't even know existed. And honestly, sometimes you'll be spending hours trying to find a bug, going line by line just to realize it was one missing semicolon. But now with AI, finding these bugs has become a little bit more easier. But still, the job isn't really about knowing everything, it's about being patient enough to sit through the confusion and figure things out step by step.