Amazon Discover Spring Technology Insight Event Participant Review

half the day was interactive workshops in small groups working through programming problems and the other half was talks and presentations about amazon and software engineering. no specific languages were required and you could generally choose what you wanted to work in. the talks included panels, recruitment processes and talks about the culture. there were comfort breaks and lunch in the middle and the day generally started at nine am and finished a bit before five pm

We were very much learning about the specific role of a software developer due to this being an event with spring technology, however, there was great emphasis put on the easy ability to network and branch out and explore different areas within the software teams by personal interests and as technology develops. We did not learn too much about the different teams or technologies specifically however we met a range of software engineers from different teams

skills I learned and developed include:
pair programming through the workshops, python and java through the challenges. Communication whilst coding again via the workshops, technical interview knowledge and how to prepare and practice, online assessment skills and skills for competency and behavioural interviews. I was able to learn greatly from my workshop group mentor about good code practice as well as receive help from people within my group with perhaps more experience than I have

Being remote, it isn't easy to interpret the culture since we were never really interacting around more than one amazon engineer however a large emphasis was put on amazon's leadership principles which were present in all the amazon staff we met and we did observe a bit with multiple people in the large group meeting room. my small group mentor was very friendly and helpful which gave a nice atmosphere to work in

I greatly enjoyed the programming.
I thought all panels and big group sessions were also very interesting and useful, none of them felt like a waste. I found the API coding activity considerably harder than the rest of the challenges we were programming, which on one hand led me to read about APIs and learn more about them however I think this discouraged people in later coding sessions. I particularly liked the pair programming since I felt like I was able to learn from the other participants

Yes