Would you think it hurts your outside career prospects if you're an sde2 for 4+ years? Heard this from a fb recruiter and was just curious if people have seen this. I know Amazon's sde2 is a little sticky so I would think this doesn't factor in as much as other companies, but maybe not. Is there an sde2 tenure that's too long? I've been thinking about making a switch. Manager is bugging me to write my promo doc but I'm kind of bored of Amazon and was thinking of just finishing out this last stock vest before leaving this year, but I don't want being at an sde2 for too long to limit my job choices.
SDE 2 is considered a career level at Amazon. The band of knowledge and experience within SDE2 Is pretty big.
Amazon and Microsoft take longer to promote to SDE3/Senior, I don’t think anyone that is aware of that will hold it against you. In contrast there are plenty of senior-level engineers at places like Facebook and the unicorns that only have a few years of experience.
Facebook takes it into account. Level 4 is not a career level at Facebook and if external candidate hasn’t reached senior level for a considerate number of years, we consider it a risk that they may not reached level 5 at Facebook as well. There are exceptions of course depending on specifics of candidate’s career progression.
FWIW, I got a Google L5 offer after being an SDE2 for almost 4yrs, never got promoted. I guess they don't care.
You were SDE2 for almost 4 years; how many years of work experience overall? Are you at Google now or did you reject the offer?
Neither.