#startup-culture

#startup-culture

At Amazon, I was on the Amazon Q Developer team, building their AI coding assistant. You'd think being at the center of Amazon's AI developer tools would be exciting, but it was actually deeply frustrating. It was apparent to anyone outside the Amazon bubble that we were losing the AI game badly. The leadership was constantly playing catch-up because there was very little true product vision. They kept saying they wanted to move like a startup, but then had the risk tolerance of IBM.

I love work. I love working late nights, hacking on things. This week I didn't go to sleep before midnight once. And yet... I also love my wife and kids. I love long walks, contemplating life over good coffee, and deep, meaningful conversations. None of this would be possible if my life was defined by 12 hour days, six days a week. More importantly, a successful company is not a sprint, it's a marathon.

My goal wasn't to create a 30-page matrix filled with boxes and jargon. I wanted to create something actionable, flexible, and grounded in reality.

I’ve been a software engineer for 25-ish years. My current company is called Warp, which is an AI-powered developer tool that reimagines the command line terminal.

Calvin French-Owen described OpenAI's rapid growth, stating that the company expanded from 1,000 to 3,000 employees in just one year, prompting significant chaos in communication and structure.

"It's that 'if I take care of you, you'll take care of us' kind of mentality," Abdul said.

Dr. David H. Rosmarin will lead a session at TechCrunch All Stage 2025 on transforming anxiety from a liability into a strategic advantage for startup founders.

"I've always been a student of the game. We're constantly shuffling and on our feet."

Tech conferences have become modern revival meetings. Founders take the stage to share their "moment of revelation," conveniently forgetting the three years of mundane iteration that preceded it.

As a backend engineer, you will develop the platform layer of our AI-powered product and work with a small, talented team.

I was managing a 500-person team, working on amazing tooling for developers... but I was working in a work environment that did not make me happy.