What are Chao Tan's core engineering habits?

Five: be an owner with a growth mindset; dive deep on operational tasks; learn systems the hard way through refactoring, breaking, fixing, and supporting ops; understand and prioritize tech debt; and get your own things done first.

What does 'learn systems the hard way' mean?

Four practices: refactor it, break it, and fix it; support ops and tickets, drive 5-Whys until the root cause is fixed and remains fixed; identify the hard-to-change architectural seams; and observe the system's performance benchmark.

Why prioritize tech debt explicitly?

Tech debt rarely surfaces in feature reviews but compounds across releases. Making it visible and ranked against business impact is the only way it competes for the time it actually deserves.

tanchao.xyz

Chao's Habits

By Chao Tan · August 3, 2022 · updated May 28, 2026 · 1 min read

Originally at https://tanchao.github.io/2022/08/03/chaos-habits.html

TL;DR Five engineering habits to keep after leaving Amazon — own with a growth mindset, dive deep on operations and tickets, learn systems the hard way (refactor-break-fix-support), understand and prioritize tech debt, and get your own things done first.

As I am leaving Amazon and pursue my next adventure, what are the essential good work habits that I want to keep?

Lots of things listed on this blog, but what are the critical ones?

Be an owner with growth mindset
Hands-on and Dive deep with operation tasks
learn system the hard way: a) refact it, break it, fix it; b) support ops and ticket, 5-whys and fix the root cause so that the issue remain fixed; c) figure out the architecture part that hard to change; d) observe their performance benchmark.
Understand tech debts and try to prioritize and evaluate impact with them
get my own things done first

FAQ

What are Chao Tan's core engineering habits?: Five: be an owner with a growth mindset; dive deep on operational tasks; learn systems the hard way through refactoring, breaking, fixing, and supporting ops; understand and prioritize tech debt; and get your own things done first.
What does 'learn systems the hard way' mean?: Four practices: refactor it, break it, and fix it; support ops and tickets, drive 5-Whys until the root cause is fixed and remains fixed; identify the hard-to-change architectural seams; and observe the system's performance benchmark.
Why prioritize tech debt explicitly?: Tech debt rarely surfaces in feature reviews but compounds across releases. Making it visible and ranked against business impact is the only way it competes for the time it actually deserves.