tj-teej

(Disclosure: I was at AMZN for 10 years, left at the start of this year)

The writing culture is very real, and when done correctly is fantastic. But it worked because it is harder to write than it is to get up in front of bullet points and waffle out a one hour presentation.

Writing is hard because it really forces you to think. Clearly articulating thoughts means clearly thinking to begin with.

I suspect the lower level doc reviews are going to be filled with a lot of AI slop, but I would expect that presenting a sloppy document to an exec would be met with a "what is this" a swift exit from the room just as it always has.

  Location: San Francisco, CA
  Remote: Open, prefer hybrid
  Willing to relocate: No, but very flexible on travel. US/UK dual citizen, no sponsorship needed.
  Technologies: Java, Python, AWS, LLMs, AI agents, distributed systems, search, voice interfaces, AI-assisted development
  Resume/CV: https://thomasjjohnston.github.io/
  Email: thomasjohnstonjames [at] gmail.com

Engineering leader, 12+ years, 10 at Amazon across Alexa and Fire TV search. Managed a 10-person team for 2.5 years (grew it from 5, promoted two to Senior), then went back to hands-on engineering to learn AI-native development for real. Since then I've run AI agents as a complete software org (product docs, roadmap, 200+ reviewed PRs) to ship a production-ready app in weeks, and built a voice-first iOS app on on-device models. Looking for EM or senior/staff IC roles at companies building new things.

How many providers do you have to pay for to watch your favorite teams play in all their competitions now vs 20 years ago?

How different is the experience booking an economy flight today vs 20 years ago?

"Truly capable engineers are able to achieve more business outcomes with less code / fewer moving parts"

I'd simplify to "Truly capable engineers are able to achieve more positive outcomes" - half of what makes a capable, dependable engineer is knowing what outcomes are needed and making them happen.

I've been screenshotting twitter since 2016 when Brexit happened and with the goal of one day putting together some kind of art piece.

The world and our discourse around it has changed so much over the past ten years and now with this kind of technology I'm so excited to be able to classify these images from my iCloud and start on the project.

The most interesting point here is to look at Women's Soccer.

Soccer has always included lots of psuedo-nationalist reasons why different countries are better (or why the dive, why they play conservative defense, etc).

But when you look at the success of the US Women's team it's very clear that the main thing is investment in building talent. The rest of the world does it for mens soccer (football) because that's what they do. When Title 9 went into effect America put a huge amount of money (relative to other countries) into womens soccer and the US Womens team has been one of the best in the world every since.

I think the better analogy is "you could give me an afternoon in the studio with Jimi Hendrix's sound engineer and the record we create would sound very different from Jimi's albums."

After Snowden's leaks don't we know the levels of spying that's already happening today? That was a decade ago, what has changed?

And (with a heavy dose of purposeful suspension of disbelief), if ICE does deport those people they've determined are "illegal", does anyone believe that the agency will scale down and stop? There will be new "enemies of the state"

Isn't this the intent of a prediction markets?

IIRC the original prediction markets existed to try and get as close as possible to finding the true answer to open questions. Someone willing to bet a lot of money on an outcome (because they have an edge/are very sure of an outcome) is the point, they're putting their money where their mouth is...

A missed aspect of "are right, a lot" LP is that the great leaders are able to quickly realize when they're wrong and get on the right side of the argument.

It's not "are right from the start, a lot", it's "are right, a lot", kind of works in hand with the Disagree and Commit LP

It's actually very straight-forward. UBI still means that most people's money eventually flows to the rent-seekers (Billionaires). Socialism (and I know this is not the Socialism Mamdani is proposing), means that most people own the means of production and rent-seeking isn't possible.

I toured Stanford Bridge in the middle 2010s, they actually found uncomfortable away dressing rooms weren't the most effective as it either got the other team to go out and start warming up or riled them up.

When Mourinho started he brought in a sports psychologist who made the dressing rooms slightly heated with light pink walls and a comforting atmosphere. They ended up going 2+ years without a loss at home after that.