Offered levels for fresh PhDs straight out of school is usually +1 higher than entry level lf new college grads. AFAIK this is an auto-slotting: no other levels are even possible in these cases for fresh PhDs. I have 3 friends that have PhD + 2YOE (one did post doc at an ivy league-> L3 at Google offer, the other went to VMware-> L4 at Amazon offer, the third went to ASML -> L3 at Google offer. These are all people with PhDs from a top 15 school in Computer science and engineering. None have accepted. In other words, these folks are being penalized for getting 2 years of experience after their Ph.D. They would have been better off staying in school for 2 more years! Is this a trend? I know FANGs are great, and the interviews were “ok”. But why doesnt the company just reject/lowball them instead of insulting them? How does putting PhD+2 on same playing field as 22 year old new college grads make any sense?
If you can demonstrate value of phd, you can get some leverage. Else, a PhD's SWE skills are same as new grad (i.e. very little).
PhDs specializing in ML and big data.
I am sure they earn a lot more than new grads despite the levels. The pay bands are different.
The guy who got L4 atAmazon did a stupid move
They did not accept, please re read.
Are thry getting Software role or scientist role?
All SWE
So the Amazon L4 friend, probably interviewed as SDE2 (L5) and were down leveled. The alternative would have been no offer, suggestion to get experience at second job and try again in a year.
Microsoft offers L60 for fresh phds
So I guess you are saying you’d rather they just didn’t get offers instead of an L3 offer due to their mediocre interview performance?
From the company’s perspective it is better to reject, else the candidate can just shop the downlevel to their competitors (even tho comp may be good) and get a superior offer there, which in conjunction with the insulting downlevel will jointly increase the odds of losing the candidate in the future. If they reject, candidate reapplies in 1 year or w/e, and can rejoin. FB E4 guy turned down L3 Google for max FB E4. How likely do you think he is now going to jump ship back to Goog after they gave him L3 this time? If Goog rejected instead of downleveled, he would not have been insulted, not have got max E4, and reapply to Goog next year.
A lot of posts on here are missing the point. Of course people can get downleveled, however fresh PhD offers have a floor and ceiling at Google L4. Why does the floor reduce when said PhD gets a couple years of experience? And please don’t talk about easy promos, we all know that is a faux and that too many factors outside our control can kill promo chances even for good engineers.
Once you have experience you are evaluated more on actual skill than education. As a new grad you can only really be evaluated on education and anticipated performance. In other words, your friends didn't interview well and couldn't demonstrate expected performance.
How often do you think this is happening?
I have PhD+3yoe and I am interviewing for L4
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If they accepted the offers then that's why the companies do it. They just got someone for cheap. Your friends need to negotiate/get competing offers or they'll get lowballed 100% of the time, especially Google. No doubt L4 was on the table unless they really interviewed badly.
None of them took the offers, obviously. Who would do that? One took a competing FB E4 offer, but Google would not budge. Other took competing Apple ICT3 offer. Point is, no sane PhD +2 is going to take a downlevel to 22 year old new college grad. So why do these companies even bother wasting time and giving the candidates leverage for competing companies?
Fair enough, maybe they do get some takers I guess, would seem pointless to make the offer otherwise