Aaron Lam

It was 11:10 PM on a Wednesday when I got the message that production had broken down at Amazon… At the time, I was working at Amazon, and one of our new engineers had been leading a project that was critical for our team. He had carefully mapped out the system architecture, worked through every dependency, and earned the trust of everyone involved. From the outside, everything looked smooth. But halfway through the project, something went wrong. An unexpected edge case came up and broke his momentum. Instead of reaching out, he decided to keep pushing on his own, hoping he could fix it before anyone noticed. He didn’t want to seem incapable or like he was making excuses for a tough problem. The hours went by, and there were no updates from his side. No one realized how stuck he was. By the time his manager finally checked the project tracker, it became clear that the task had slipped past the deadline. Suddenly, stakeholders were asking questions the team wasn’t prepared to answer, and we all found ourselves scrambling to pull in extra hands and rearrange our priorities to get things back on track. In the end, the project was delivered, but the trust in our process took a hit. The problem wasn’t the delay itself, it was the fact that no one saw it coming. The silence made everything harder. That night changed how I look at leadership on engineering teams. I realized that people don’t usually hold back out of carelessness. They hold back because they’re hoping to fix things themselves, to avoid troubling others or looking like they can’t handle the pressure. But the truth is, leadership is not being the hero who solves every problem alone. It’s about being honest, early, and open enough to let others help you put out the fire before it spreads. Now, whenever I onboard a new engineer, I always share this lesson. If you’re blocked, speak up as soon as possible. If something doesn’t look right, flag it. You don’t need to have all the answers, just keep the loop open so the team can support you. In software engineering, trust doesn’t break because a system fails or a deadline is missed.  Trust breaks when someone stays quiet and lets the rest of the team get blindsided. The best teams I’ve worked with don’t cover up problems, they face them together and talk honestly about what went wrong afterward. That’s the biggest lesson I took from my years at Amazon, and it continues to shape the way I lead teams today. So yeah, sometimes, what breaks us isn’t the problem itself… but how long we carry it alone :)

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How Google Is Shifting AI From the Cloud to Your Browser The Google Web AI summit was held earlier this month as an invite-only event in Sunnyvale, Calif. After the event, I caught up with the organizer, Jason Mayes, who leads Web AI initiatives at Google. The last time I’d interviewed Mayes was February 2023, when our main topic of conversation was TensorFlow.js — a JavaScript library for machine learning (ML). At that time, just a couple of months after the launch of ChatGPT, the term Mayes used was Web ML. But now the term du jour is “Web AI.” I asked Mayes when that switch happened. “Yeah, so I pivoted when I realized web developers were searching the term ‘Web AI’ because they don’t know the [term] machine learning,” he chuckled. In his view, Web ML is more technically correct, but the entire industry has chosen to use “AI” over “ML.” Stay connected for industry’s latest content – Follow Deepthi Talasila #DevSecOps #ApplicationSecurity #AgenticAI #CloudSecurity #CyberSecurity #AIinSecurity #SecureDevOps #AppSec #AIandSecurity #CloudComputing #SecurityEngineering #ZeroTrust #MLSecurity #AICompliance #SecurityAutomation #SecureCoding #linkedin #InfoSec #SecurityByDesign #AIThreatDetection #CloudNativeSecurity #ShiftLeftSecurity #SecureAI #AIinDevSecOps #SecurityOps #CyberResilience #DataSecurity #SecurityInnovation #SecurityArchitecture #TrustworthyAI #AIinCloudSecurity #NextGenSecurity https://lnkd.in/gixhXn9u

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Since I was unable to comment, my recomnendation is to look at Robert Webber's content - including other options. Noah Pilkington

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Death, taxes, Microsoft layoffs. Another 305 staff look set to be cut in Washington just weeks after the company announced plans to lay off nearly 2,000 workers in its home state. Software engineering roles are once again among those worst affected.

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Hardware engineers right now: business as usual. Software engineers right now: refreshing LinkedIn every 30 minutes. AI can generate code. AI can't manufacture chips. The irony: the people building AI infrastructure have job security. The people using AI tools to be more productive are getting cut. Physical constraints protect jobs. Digital abundance doesn't. The market is telling you where to invest your skills. Visibility matters. Relationships matter. Having options before you need them matters most. Source: https://lnkd.in/gahzATXv

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In 2022, we announced #NVIDIADGX systems built with NVIDIA Hopper GPUs. Rewatch our CEO Jensen Huang break down the system specs and talk about how it's the blueprint for customers building AI infrastructure worldwide. #DecadeOfDGX At #NVIDIAGTC, see what’s next for AI. Add DGX sessions to your GTC calendar: https://bit.ly/4lpPalj

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