AWS re:Invent 2021, Session Difficulty and the Importance of How You Ask Questions from a Junior Engineer's Perspective

Eunji Lee, a data engineer on Banksalad's Data Platform team, shared a junior engineer's perspective based on her experience attending AWS re:Invent 2021. The event was held in person in Las Vegas, USA, from November 29 to December 5, 2021, and included AWS technology introductions and use cases, CEO/CTO keynotes, and hands-on sessions.

Session Selection and a Reversal in Difficulty

Initially, as a junior, she intended to sign up only for sessions with difficulty level 100–200, but on her teammates' advice, she also attended sessions across difficulty level 300–400 evenly. In fact, the session 'Accelerate your smart building strategy with AWS Quick Starts,' known to be attended mostly by juniors, turned out to have a difficulty level of 300, while 'Modernizing VMware workloads with native AWS Services,' a session attended mostly by seniors, was rated 400. This experience suggests that juniors need not be intimidated by difficulty level and can take on the challenge.

Quality of Questions and Communication Cost

During the sessions, a clear difference emerged between how juniors and seniors approached problem-solving. Juniors tended to ask vague questions like "It's not working" or "I don't know," whereas seniors provided specific information: the current step, methods already tried, error messages, and the solutions they had devised (A, B, C) along with the results. The seniors' way of asking questions reduced Communication Cost and made it easier for colleagues to grasp the situation, cutting problem-solving time by more than half.

Growth of Junior Engineers and Organizational Culture

The author emphasizes that self-doubt—"Why can I only do this much?" or "Is this really the right path for me?"—is a common concern not just for engineers but for anyone starting something new. Reflecting on times when she felt discouraged by comparing herself to seniors in the present without considering the hardships they had gone through in the past, she came to realize that taking one step at a time, even with uncertain footing, ultimately leads to growth. Banksalad encouraged its junior engineer to attend AWS re:Invent, backed by an organizational culture that offers opportunities based on individual capability regardless of years of experience.