What kind of autonomy do Amazon L7 roles have?
Considering an L7 role within AWS. I was wondering what level of autonomy this role has to offer with respect to defining new products under the specific team’s function. Do L7s get to do this, or are the new products driven solely from the executive team? Also what kind of TC range is typical for an L7 in Seattle? TC: 💩
Depends, scoop34. Most of the time, it's upto the discretion of the PE himself
Well, that's why I picked the word choice that I did. They're supposed to be involved purely in design, but that's just what they're supposed to do. Managers are supposed to spend all of their time doing people stuff, but perhaps some of them use that "discretion" to write code too. Even though that's not what their role is intended for. 🤔
Would you like to be stressed about getting fired every day? 🔥
This depends on your org. In a tech org, products will be driven by science and/or engineering leaders, who will work in conjunction with product leadership for customer facing aspects. In a traditional, business-driven org, product management will drive product based purely on customer needs, engineering leadership (managers and principals) worry about design and execution. In my (tech) org, SDMs and Sr. Managers work with principals and senior principals to define products and high level functional capabilities, then senior engineers and experienced L5s do detailed designs and drive execution from there.
You sound stressed just talking about it
I think people management actually has a very reserved impact on defining new products. I believe it comes more from TPMs and Principal Engineers.
levels.fyi shows L7 as a Principal SDE. I was asking about that role specifically, so good to hear.
Principal engineers are supposed to be really hands off with the code and focused much more on things like system design.