Amazon engineer Annie Chen attributes her rapid career growth to using AI tools, which she claims help her write about 95% of her code. While this AI-first approach led to quick promotions, she stresses that developers are 100% responsible for understanding and validating any AI-generated code.
CALIFORNIA: In today's world, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a common tool for software engineers. But just how much are they using it? For one Amazon engineer, Annie Chen, AI plays a much bigger role than most people think. She recently revealed that AI tools help her write about 95% of her code. According to a report by India Today, citing Business Insider, Chen says AI is the secret behind her rapid career growth.
What Annie Chen says about AI?
Chen joined Amazon back in 2022 as an entry-level Software Engineer Grade I. She was part of the team that develops recommendation systems which give customers product suggestions. This was right when generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude AI were becoming popular worldwide. She started experimenting with these tools, and it completely changed her workflow.
What started as small experiments soon became a core part of her job. At first, she only used AI when she was stuck or had questions. But soon, she started every task by asking AI for help first. Chen says this didn't just make coding faster. The most important part, she points out, is that AI's suggestions could be turned into real, working products. “AI helped write the code. But more importantly, it helped turn them into real products,” Annie Chen said.
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AI's role at Amazon
This AI-first approach had a huge impact on her career. She got a promotion to Software Engineer II from the recommendation team. Later, after moving to a new AI-focused team, she was promoted again to Senior Engineer. Now, Annie Chen focuses on building production systems that use large language models (LLMs). Her team's main job is to create personalised generative AI experiences on Amazon's platforms.
But here's the catch. Chen gives a strong warning that even if AI is a big help, engineers must understand their code completely. She makes it clear that the developer is 100% responsible for the code written by AI. If something goes wrong, you can't just blame the AI, she warns.
