Amazon L6 SDM to L7 SDM
How difficult is the promo. What's the average number of years for those that make it?
About 2 years of delivering high impact on VP level visibility projects. A span of control over 20+ engineers with multiple people promoted to L5 and L6. And there has to be 1 role that requires an L7 SDM.
Basically, the issue is that by the time you have proved you are an L7 Sr. SDM to Amazon's satisfaction, you will likely have proved to other companies that you are somewhere between a Sr. Manager and Director elsewhere in big tech.
And to be clear, these 2 years start sometime in year 5 of your SDM/TPM career at Amazon.
My current L7 SM had 10 yoe as director of engineering for a team of 50+ people, so do the math.
It's not really a "do a good job for x years and you get to go to the next level" type of a promo. You have to deliver high impact results for your organization, prove that you can cultivate the top performing and high impact individuals (L6 SDEs), have important people willing to go to bat for you, and have a project available to you with enough scope for an L7.
It’s hard
Can you please quantify?
What do you want dude, some equation?