[JCM9]

There was a time when the L7+ principal IC at Amazon/AWS were rockstars in our industry that represented the pinnacle of one’s career.

It’s been sad to watch the talent exodus there on my LinkedIn these last 12+ months as these folks flee the ship for elsewhere. So much experience and knowledge just gone and the bar for L7+ with those left has tumbled off a cliff.

[rr808]

Right, now I see Amazon experience as probably a negative - its not a sign of strength.

[joshdavham]

Why's that?

[googlywoogly]

Meh, when I worked at AWS a few years ago, I found to average L7 to be more of a political animal than a very knowledgeable engineer. Many interactions with various L7s where they didn't understand how their own services or common software like browsers worked.

[CaptainOfCoit]

> There was a time when the L7+ principal IC at Amazon/AWS were rockstars in our industry that represented the pinnacle of one’s career.

I dunno, maybe in Silicon Valley or the US in general, but I think most places outside of that took a much more balanced view of those people even back then, they're just humans after all.

Many people experienced working with those "rockstar" engineers outside of Amazon, "rockstars" who still tried to work as if they were still at Amazon, and the obvious effect of that was that it created a lot of needless friction between the people who saw themselves as "I'm the best engineer because I was L7 at AWS" and the rest of the company.

[JCM9]

Well “there was a time” when it was more true. Now so not really. With the exodus the bar at Amazon/AWS for taken has fallen quite a bit and in many areas a leading L7+ at Amazon is maybe a B-lister at best elsewhere. Especially in competitive areas like AI and ML where Amazon can no longer attract and retain the best in the market.

See recent press on leaked internal doc about folks at AWS whining that they struggle to secure speaking spots for their folks at AI conferences because nobody sees AWS as having recognized leaders in this space.

[CaptainOfCoit]

I'm not sure, just last year a company I contracted for had the same issue, but this time with a person from Google who were trying their hardest to employ "Google-like" processes onto something that really shouldn't have been so complicated.

I think every company that has a "strong culture", no matter what direction, tends to impact people deeply enough that they try to take that with them when they join new places, often creating lots of friction and adding complexity where there shouldn't be any.

[a_bonobo]

Nicely written up in this recent Register article: https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/aws_outage_amazon_bra...

>Amazon brain drain finally sent AWS down the spout

[cmiles8]

Well anecdotally it now looks like the bar has been lowered from “rockstars of our industry” to folks writing self-aggrandizing slop for LinkedIn