Avoid Amazon non-Tech SDMs

TL;DR - Joining a team managed by a Non-Tech SDM will set you up for failure.

Amazon has a large number of non-tech folks internally transitioned to SDM without any tech bar check. This includes TPMs, QAEs, PMs, Support Engineer, DBA, Data Engineer turned SDM. They don`t know much about writing code. They were in minority couple of years back. But they are un-hirable in other FAANGs and slowly accumulated at Amazon to the level that now 1 out of 3 SDE teams are led by these folks. They are everywhere, even at AWS.

Majority of them don't know how to evaluate you, coach you, or promote you. They also can't judge the mounting tech debt and eventually bring the team to ops load hell. They can't even interview people on Coding and System Design but they are first level managers for SDE team. The biggest downside is you can be put on PIP at any time, your promotions are delayed, and you will be wasting a lot of time explaining them. Biggest upside is some people like having stupid managers if they trust you.

Internal engineers avoid them, so they look for external hires (university grads and industry hires) to fill the team. Amazon has a job history tool that will tell you the background of a person. The best way to avoid them is:
- Ask anyone at Amazon to check job history of your new manager and your skip level manager.
- Tell your recruiter that you will not interview for such teams clearly. Your recruiter is generally working with multiple teams and can direct you to the right team.
- If this happens after you join the team, GTFO of the team or Amazon as soon as possible.

Many of the severe PIP cases and hire to fire you hear from blind are actually from these folks. Avoid them at all cost.

TC - 700K (Sr. SDM)

PS - There are exceptions. A minority of them were from Software Development background and now came back to the role.

#amazon