AWS Distinguished Eng: Learning From 3000 Incidents And How Engineering Is Changing | Marc Brooker

In this episode, I talked to Marc Brooker, a distinguished engineer at AWS who started there as a new grad and rose through the ranks. We discussed technical learnings from 3,000+ cloud system postmortems, how software engineering is changing with AI, how to find impactful problems and much more.🔶 My keyboard Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:• YouTube: https://youtu.be/u3GjIXP9N0s• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1qX2GfpbzxzGpGvDZVINdO?si=wsDGZo9PTbCNalKVybFVnA• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/aws-distinguished-eng-learnings-from𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:• Post we discussed on hobbies and apparent expertise: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2023/04/20/hobbies.html• Post on software engineering changing: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2026/02/07/you-are-here.html• Post about Senior engineers and AI: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2026/03/20/ic-leadership.html• Post on Junior engineers and AI: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2026/03/25/ic-junior.html𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:0:00 - Intro1:27 - Finding problems that matter11:42 - Learnings from 3000 postmortems23:58 - Why caches are bad29:37 - How AI will change software engineering36:49 - Advice for junior engineers given AI44:02 - Thoughts for senior engineers49:59 - Why engineers should write57:51 - Visibility and apparent expertise1:04:23 - AWS engineers he admires1:06:53 - Technical book recommendations1:09:06 - Advice for his younger self1:10:37 - Outro𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-brooker-b431772b/• Twitter/X: https://x.com/MarcJBrooker• Personal Blog: https://brooker.co.za/blog/𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman