I’m considering an offer at Microsoft for Principal. How does the scope and expectations of the role compare with PE at Amazon? Edit: maybe understanding the metrics used to measure the performance at Microsoft would be good data here.
L6 at Amazon is similar to principal at Microsoft (in terms of skills and work).
At Amazon we consider an L6’s scope of a single dev team. At Microsoft a Principal is only engaged with a singe dev team? Then who do work at the initiative/organizational level? This doesn’t seem right.
L6 has more than Dev team scope on the teams I've worked on. And at msft, a fair amount of principals have team scope. But I suppose Jr L6 is below Jr msft-principal.
The levels.fyi chart does a pretty good job: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Microsoft,Amazon&track=Software%20Engineer
PE @ Amazon has significant clout compared to L65/66 @ MSFT. If you have tenure (14+ yoe), then you should only consider 67 else Amazon is a way better!
My understanding is that Partner isn’t something that’s really achievable, either artificially or purposefully limited. Coming in at 67 means there’s no upward growth, right? At least here L8 would be feel possible, even if it took a while to arrive there.
The perception difference between a PE at Amazon and an MS principal is vast, at least from an SDE perspective. PEs run the show at Amazon; getting your design/vision rubber-stamped by a PE is a big deal.
Do PEs not do design reviews at Microsoft? Or are you just suggesting the interpretation of PE approval is different? And I would say PEs do not run the show at Amazon. Mostly we collect up the work everyone else has done and make sure all the individual pieces fit together.
L7 is more like 66 at MSFT. Apart for strong deliverables focus in both roles is on maturity of your contributions, how you come across. Think executive presence.