The recruiter tells me I passed the interview but will only be offered a SDE II position. Haven't received the offer yet. Does anyone have similar experience here, if level is still negotiable?
Pretty sure the level offered is based on your performance during the interviews.
performance is influenced by YOE
Not negotiable. But you can still negotiate for the top of the salary band for SDE2.
You could have 25 YOE but only be a fit for SDE2. Just because you have YOE doesnt necessarily translate to technical aptitude (or even behavorial aptitude) for a higher position.
With less YOE, I got the following offers: - Facebook E5, $330k tc - Splunk P4, $300k tc - Amazon L4, $160k tc (Some others I interviewed with but declined once better offers started rolling in.) I really wanted to accept Amazon for location preference reasons, but not if the tc matches the perks: đ
That's a huge gap of tc. For sure you should consider other options.
Down leveled and short changed, jeez, is there any reason you know that they might have evaluated you at L4?
Thanks for the advice. I agree YOE does not speak the ability. But I am pretty confident about my backgrand. I got SDE II this time most likely I gave one most optimized solution with some hint(I guess SDE III they expect the candidate just to figure it out all by himself). It does not reflect the true capability how you do a real project. But I understand the rule at least it's fair to all external candidates. If I retake another interview, I might just be able to get SDE III with different question sets. But I just don't want to wait another year to reapply.
While I understand that, your interview performance is the only measureable metric the company has for your abilities, regardless if you think your real world abilities are warranted or not. Hence you interviewing. If you feel you didnt do as well as you'd hope, unfortunately the only thing you can do is re-interview again and do better the next time and hope you are considered for the level you want.
Usually takes about a year or maybe slightly less to get promoted when you're new here, even if you're operating at SDE3 level the entire time. I believe it's about 6 months to be eligible for another interview. Regardless, don't let yourself be down leveled if that's what this move is.
Yoe and present title has nothing to do with offer. purely based on performance on the interview.
Decline