How to get promoted from Amazon L5 to L6?
Starting at Amazon soon as an L5 following a really positive onsite. My manager is relatively new (started January this year) and the team is essentially 75% L5's (6 of 8 people). Was previously on track for a senior role at Wayfair and wanted to continue to tackle business-level problems and LPs. Looking for positive anecdotes from anyone who's successfully been promoted internally from L5 to L6. My goal is to have a plan to hit the ground running and gun for a promotion within two years, BUT... If that timeline is 100% unreasonable, and my TC was really what I cared most about (even though it would be really nice to hit senior/L6), would it be wiser for me to stay for just 1 year and start interviewing again at other FAANG companies? TC: 230k YOE: 5
Dude you did not even start yet
Promo process is all luck and political. Lots of factors that you cant control, including good enough projects that come in, and how people perceive you etc. Also, L5-L6 type projects are few and obvious. All different teams managers will claim that they own that piece and try to get those projects for their team, so that they can promote their guys to L6, so that they rack up enough promos, so that they themselves get promoted. So it becomes a big political fest of "fighting" over projects. If you have a good manager with a strong backbone and knowledge, you can form a "team" with him and navigate the politics and land those projects on your plate - and oh.. get other L5s or L4s to do the work, you should just do a bit of it. After you promo, you'll learn they give you peanuts for a pay bump. Then you'd want to jump ship to FB for higher TC. So during this whole time, while you have your L5s doing the work for your project, leetcode like crazy, so that when you promo you're ready to leave
Lmfao but very true
Wondering how op is doing right now, is a flagship project really a must?
Any updates OP ? Did you get promoted within 2 years ?
Any updates??
Updates??
Very much dependent on scope of the work you will be doing. Super star SDEs without good projects would not get promoted. So, it's like someone said, Amazon has become a promotion obsessed company than a customer obsessed company. Load of people are sniffing around for L6 or L7 projects. New comers are usually behind unless your political skills are outstanding
Appreciate the response. I guess I had two follow-ups: 1. Conversely, hypothetically would I have a legitimate case for moving up by not being a superstar SDE but having my name attached to big projects? 2. Political skills - what would you say are the biggest-impact things I could be getting done besides the obvious of networking with my manager(s) and managers' managers?
You should talk to your hiring manager about expected career growth and make it clear he is supportive. But that's not a guarantee as he may be leaving anytime and you will be reporting to a new manager you don't know. With that said, I would not put a lot of hope on L6 promo within 2 years. You need a lot of hardworking and luck for that to happen