Internal role transfer from L6 SA to SDE3 tips
I am a full stack developer until past couple of months at a different company, I recently joined AWS in the solutions architect family. Spoke to an SDE3 a while ago as he is hiring for his team. I told I'm comfortable with coding as well as design, ofcourse havent leetcoded these days or prepared yet. He started like it's very difficult to interview for SDE3 and I need to prepare extremely well in complex design scenarios in a scary tone. He also told SDE2 is easier to prepare and crack, may be they can down level to L5 if it's allowed. He kind of sounded too confident and scary like it's an impossible interview for SDE3. I wanted to know the ground reality. How hard is an SDE3 internal interview when I have both coding and design experience before but not at the scale of AWS ? I'm willing to prepare well. Do I have to do leetcode hard or it's mostly the design stuff for SDE3 ? How much of a time is realistic for my preparation ? Kindly help.
Not happening, role switching like this has the same bar as external hire. SDE3 bar is indeed very high. In my 4 years in Amazon I only saw one external SDE3 hire. And yes you need lots of leetcode, as well as system design.
So what shall I do ? Prepare well and if i cant make it to SDE3, accept SDE2 ? That guy says may be they can promote me in an year to SDE3 if I do well.
Promised promotion most of the time is BS. To clear SDE3 bar, you have to be able do very well on SDE2 loop, like flawless solution for all whiteboard questions. Basically SDE3 and 2 have the same technical skill bar. But SDE3 focus more heavily on system design and leadership principles. You can try interviewing other companies at senior level as practice like FB, Google and maybe MS. The difficulty of questions is usually LC medium. Asking LC hard serves no purpose in for asserting problem solving skill IMHO. Also, if you’re going to put this much effort to prepare, why not just join other company?