As far as I know, using & after the command is for running it in the background.
&
Example of & usage: tar -czf file.tar.gz dirname &
tar -czf file.tar.gz dirname &
But how about &&? (look at this example: https://serverfault.com/questions/215179/centos-100-disk-full-how-to-remove-log-files-history-etc#answer-215188)
&&
&& lets you do something based on whether the previous command completed successfully - that's why you tend to see it chained as do_something && do_something_else_that_depended_on_something.
do_something && do_something_else_that_depended_on_something
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