5 Lessons I Wish I Knew Early in My Career

Hosted by Ethan Evans

Wed, Nov 19, 2025

8:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

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324 students

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Get Promoted Faster: For ICs & Managers
Jason P. Yoong and Ethan Evans (special guest)
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What you'll learn

Understand what careers REALLY are

I just knew to get a job. Promotion, reviews, career paths, they were all new to me. So I was blindsided.

Importance of human psychology

We work with humans. Understanding them is crucial. Knowing what EQ is and knowing how to do it.

Build your network

I got lucky (CMU was a strong network foundation), but what if I had started building my network intentionally earlier?

More lessons plus live Q&A

Why this topic matters

If you want rapid career growth, then start early because momentum and reputation compounds. Learn from the experience and mistakes of others so you can leapfrog them.

You'll learn from

Ethan Evans

Former Amazon VP (15+ years); 70+ patents; led global teams of 800+

In Ethan's 15+ years at Amazon, he led global teams of 800+ and invented well-known businesses and products such as Prime Video, Amazon Video, Amazon Appstore, Merch by Amazon, Prime Gaming (formerly Twitch Prime), and Twitch Commerce.


  • Hold 70+ patents.
  • Reviewed 10,000+ resumes and conducted 2,500+ interviews.
  • Was an Amazon Bar Raiser and Bar Raiser Core Leader, responsible for training and maintaining Amazon's group of interview outcome facilitators.
  • Helped advocate for and draft the Amazon Leadership Principle (LP) “Ownership” — the words, “They never say ‘that’s not my job.’” are Ethan's.


Ethan has promoted 8 reports from Senior Manager (Amazon L7) to Director (Amazon L8), contributed to 25+ Director promotions, hired 10+ Directors internally and externally, drove the promotion of 3 engineers to Principal, and of his former reports 2 are current Amazon VPs (L10) and 5 are C-Suite outside of Amazon.


Ethan retired from Amazon as a Vice President in September 2020 to focus on paying forward his good fortune to others.


Prior to Amazon, Ethan spent 12 years at 3 startups.


>> Our next course Get Promoted Faster: For ICs & Managers starts January 31st.

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