Amazon is famous for its coarse leveling structure. What are the biggest differences in expectations between New Grad SDE1s and lowballed SDE1s? or perhaps theres a wider spectrum, could someone elaborate?
7 years and sde 1 , you gotta be kidding me
It is kinda a jest
Don't take the offer at 7yoe unless you believe you're a bottom performer. In which case don't go to Amz because your future will be a struggling SDE 2 at best. Go elsewhere and be stretched/grow more
I know a guy like that, he's now an sde3 in less than 2 years, I actually think racism, he was black
So tbh, im joining with 1yoe, but was given a comp package that’s reasonably higher than college grad, but joining as SDE1, im wondering how I’d be treated differently, if at all
I mean 7 yoe might not matter if you didn’t do much or improve yourself during that time.
Expectations are purely based on level and role; your past/background should (in theory) have bearing on that whatsoever. On paper, at least, you aren't actually going to be held to a higher standard or expected to get promoted faster just because you were an industry hire. Whether your manager (SDM) follows that or not is a different matter, and impossible to predict. They CAN use your prior experience to flesh out a promo doc, for what it's worth. Also, YoE is a pretty worthless metric in isolation. I think people try to use it as a simple proxy for experience, but it's just too abstract to carry any real weight. That said: regardless of where they started, a newly hired SDE1 is expected to get to SDE2 in about 3 years (ideally 2). Any more than that and people are going to be asking questions, and without satisfactory answers to those questions (e.g. management churn or whatever), they're liable to be managed out for poor growth potential or trajectory. For industry hires, I'd definitely be voting no hire on a candidate who couldn't clear the SDE2 bar (which, at Amazon, would effectively mean "can't handle much ambiguity or work independently") with more than 4 YoE. That's a seriously poor trajectory--yes, people get stuck in bad situations, and that's fine, but an inability or unwillingness to extricate themselves from those situations in a timely fashion strongly implies that they don't take initiative, which in turn means that they're highly likely to fail in the Amazon environment. (Side note: I'm not at Amazon anymore, but I was still there at the beginning of this year)
Essentially what you’re saying is, all SDE1s by default are treated the same, I.e. 3 years to promo, but the more yoe you have (up to a point, as you mentioned an arbitrary 4yoe) it becomes illogical to even hire someone for sde1, but up to a point (say hired as 2yoe) you would have an advantage of prior experience to justify early promo. Is that somewhat correct?
Yup. That's correct. Classic example of an industry hire SDE1 is somebody who has the fundamental skills but spent a chunk of time working in an environment where there were no opportunities to utilize or improve those skills. The potential is visible, and that's what drives the decision--SDE1 hires are lottery tickets, essentially. You shouldn't be penalized because you were sold a bill of goods or got stuck in a bad situation for reasons well beyond your control (especially because new grads aren't very good at recognizing or avoiding those situations--and in many cases they don't have a choice, either). Also, at 1-2 YoE you'd pretty much be an SDE1 by default no matter where you came from, because most of the company's own college hires aren't promoted that fast (and they've been working within the system directly).
One of them is expected to be promoted faster.
How would their team know? Like at work you know everyone is SDE1 but how do you differentiate someone who is a college hire and someone with 10yoe when they’re both at the same level? Just asking their yoe or comp outright?
It’s not a realistic scenario - just trying to figure out, when someone gets a lowball sde1 offer and takes it, when they show up to work are they treated like a college hire because they’re sde1? (3yoe to 7yoe take your pick of lowballed candidates)