Archive - Coffee Is Not A Strategy

4 Stories - that's all you need for your Amazon loop.

Your loop is on Thursday and there are 16 Leadership Principles. You don't need 16 stories. You need 4 good ones that stretch.

Feb 8 • _coffee

How to answer - tell me about a time you failed

You gave an honest answer to "tell me about a time you failed" and the debrief said "weak signal on scope." Turns out honesty is only of the five things…

Feb 1 • _coffee

January 2026

To: leadership-has-decided@amazon.com

New series - Emails I’ll Never Send. Post #1

Jan 28 • _coffee

Why your interviews don’t sound like senior-level work (even if your job is)

You led a cross-org migration and the debrief calibrated you at L5. Your level was set in the first two minutes of your answer, not by what you actually…

Jan 25 • _coffee

Start Here: Behavioral Interviews (for EMs, Senior/Staff Engineers, PMs)

You're good at the job but you haven't practiced explaining it to a stranger with a rubric. This is the reading order.

Jan 24 • _coffee

Behavioral Interview Mistakes That Get You Down-Leveled (or Rejected) - Part 1

Technical rounds are a minimum qualification now. It's the behavioral rounds decide your offer and your level.

Jan 23 • _coffee

I spent $1,500 on mock interviews for FAANG offers. 80% was useless.

I did nine paid mock sessions across two platforms, landing Meta, Netflix, and Airbnb offers. Most of them were a waste, and three changed my outcomes…

Jan 17 • _coffee

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