Hi, I’m Sarah, and in this vlog I’m taking you through a realistic 9–5 as a software engineer at Amazon—except it’s on-call week, so it starts with a 4am page. I bring you along for standup, ticket investigations, and the on-call report I have to write at the end of my shift (root cause, action items, key findings). On-call still stresses me out because I run into problems I’ve never seen basically every shift, but I’m learning to stop spiraling and treat every alert like a new category I’m learning—just one more thing than I knew yesterday. I also share the little systems that help me, like writing down what I tried/what failed/what worked on pen and paper so it actually sticks. I also talk honestly about the heavier stuff that’s been making on-call feel extra loud lately: uncertainty at work, layoffs, and how AI is changing the field. I share what my mom (30 years in tech) told me about layoffs and how it helped me shift from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. And because stress has been bleeding into my health, I share what I’m doing to take it more seriously (and why I like tools that remove friction when you’re trying to get help). The day ends with coffee shop work, a quick office gift exchange, and the annual peer review process—aka the corporate report card that makes me anxious every single year.