Reneging on an offer is always a tough situation and our recruiter coaches at Levels.fyi always try to advise people to do it as little as possible, but it's to the benefit of you as a candidate as well. For AWS specifically, they don't have hard and fast rules on it but you should definitely keep a few things in mind. Like most other companies, they use an internal applicant tracking system where they'll take notes in your candidate profile to help recall previous conversations but also for other internal recruiters to be able to see if you're already working with a team or being interviewed. It'll log all steps of the process, including that it shows you've accepted an offer. If you back out of it, they'll have to go into the system to update it so any other recruiter will see your history of backing out of the offer and it could potentially make them wary of working with you for a future role. It's not super likely to happen that drastically, but it is a possibility. In addition to that, you'd have to think about the possibility of it burning a bridge with your hiring manager or recruiter. That said, recruiters know things come up and you still have to do what's best for you. My advice if you end up wanting to back out of it is to keep your conversations and reasoning as vague as possible. If you offer up the info that you're backing out to take another offer, they'll probably note that in your profile so any recruiters/hiring managers on other teams will be able to see it and it'll reflect poorly on you.

This is really helpful. Thanks Brian.

I was hoping for a discrete chat with the hiring manager to see if the role was genuinely of interest before pursuing but maybe I should consider landing and then having a chat when I’m on the insider. Assuming the role is still available.

I’m not sure I’m going to be able to find out who the hiring manager is otherwise (without applying).