About Me: Currently a graduate student with 4+ yoe (all in well-known technology MNCs) Please help me in selecting the below offers. Both are in Bay Area Amazon -- SDE2 (Alexa AI team) TC -- not discussed yet. (expecting 200-260K) Google -- L3 Currently, in the team matching process. As per the recruiter, AI teams require a PhD, so an AI/ML team is unlikely. TC -- not discussed. The recruiter said anything above 200k is very difficult for an L3 when we discussed TC expectation. What would you choose? I would appreciate if you could share the thought process behind that decision? Cheers!
Seems very likely your l5 amazn offer number will be higher than your l3 google.
They will match Amazon and take Google
My recruiter kept saying if you are expecting above 200k, we are wasting time here. So I am skeptical if they will. Nevertheless, I asked the recruiter to offer best numbers he can. Let's see!
If that is the case, your l5 offer will likely be 30k-60k higher...
Have you considered the question of what do you want to do? You seem very AI wanting, so even if you took Google, would you be okay not doing AI? Also, heard work life at Google > Amazon, from friends at both.
If you think you will do core AI work in Amazon you are dreaming ... Even MLE only writes python script for algo decided by a PhD scientist
Thank you for responding. I am well aware of the fact that I will not be doing any modeling work at Amazon. Although I believe that working in this domain even as an SDE and acquiring domain knowledge might help me future roles with companies who look for candidates with a good balance of both software development and applied ML/AI skills. Still not sure if I should leave Google for Amazon.
To double click on this - this is not totally true in Alexa AI in Bay Area. There are SDEs that work on some modeling projects and collaboration between scientists and engineers is quite close since it is a smaller group.
Amazon
My take - a great team at Amazon is much better than a mediocre team at Google. And coming in a level higher is a big step up. And working in a domain you love is priceless.
Honestly Google overpays it's AI people because that's the CEO's vocational training.
Google of course. 2 years there and you'll get a much higher offer at any other company.
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