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Ex-Amazon employee explains why senior engineers earn more: 'I solved this problem twice before'
An ex-Amazon employee shared an interesting lesson on why companies value experienced engineers.
A former Amazon employee has shared a career lesson that resonated with many professionals online. In a post on X, he recalled how a newly hired Principal Engineer impressed the team within weeks by identifying a problem and presenting a strong solution. What surprised everyone was not just the speed, but the reason behind it.
What did the former Amazon employee say?
The post was shared by X user Arpit Bhayani, who recalled an incident from his time at Amazon.
He wrote, "When I was at Amazon, a new Principal Engineer joined us and, within a few weeks, came up with a problem statement and a pretty robust design that solved it. During an all hands meeting, we asked him how he came up with the problem statement and design in such a short time. His answer was interesting."
According to Bhayani, the engineer replied that he had "solved this exact problem twice before" at his previous jobs and that this was the third time he was working on it.
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Bhayani said that was when his team realised an important lesson. At senior leadership levels, companies hire people not only for their ability to think through problems, but also for the experience of having solved similar challenges before.
He added that from a company's perspective, hiring someone who has already tackled a problem means they are more likely to solve it again with fewer mistakes and much greater speed.
He concluded, "Instead of looking for a new problem to solve every time, if you are comfortable solving one hard problem several times, there is a lot of money to be made. Hope this helps."
Take a look:
Internet reacts
One user asked, "What was the problem, though? If you could explain, it would help."
Another wrote, "I am at a very early stage of learning system design, but I would love to understand what kind of problem it was and how it was solved."
Some also wondered how the engineer had developed the solution in the first place. "Did you ask how he came up with the solution in his previous job?" one person commented.
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Others related the story to their own careers. One user wrote, "This is so true. I have fixed the exact same compiler bug in three different versions of LLVM over the span of 12 years."
Another added that while deep expertise is valuable, the right balance between breadth and depth depends on the company, product and role.
(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)
