From Gaming to Coding: Engineer’s Journey At Microsoft, Uber, Apple and Amazon

In today's episode we have Osman Masood, a software development manager at Amazon. Osman has over a decade of experience in the industry, starting his career at Microsoft before moving on to work at startups, Apple, and Uber before joining Amazon. Follow Culture of Code ➡️ Twitter - https://twitter.com/FelixThea ➡️ Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/culture-of-code-podcast/id1563271780 ➡️ Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0fqIsZcqFeB6NTdKaHSJtP Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:46 Osman's journey from playing games as a child to becoming interested in software engineering. 01:53 Osman's motivation for learning software engineering and how he continued to keep going when things got tough. 03:50 They discuss the rewarding feeling of seeing someone use something you've built and how that can be more accessible when working on smaller projects compared to larger companies like Apple, Uber, and Amazon. 05:30 The accessibility of impact for infrastructure engineers versus product engineers and how the end customer isn't always the only customer. 06:39 The big lessons he learned from working at Microsoft, Apple, Uber, and Amazon 09:14 How recognition plays a key role in promotions and career growth 12:13 The challenges of balancing becoming a better engineer with marketing your work and how to reconcile these seemingly different skillsets. 17:51 Is it worth it to join a top tech company like Microsoft or Apple 19:27 What advice he would give to someone who wants to provide upwards feedback to their manager. 21:02 Closing thoughts