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-done
𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 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-from
𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 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.html
𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:
0:00 - Intro
1:27 - Finding problems that matter
11:42 - Learnings from 3000 postmortems
23:58 - Why caches are bad
29:37 - How AI will change software engineering
36:49 - Advice for junior engineers given AI
44:02 - Thoughts for senior engineers
49:59 - Why engineers should write
57:51 - Visibility and apparent expertise
1:04:23 - AWS engineers he admires
1:06:53 - Technical book recommendations
1:09:06 - Advice for his younger self
1:10:37 - Outro
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 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:
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• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
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