Low L5 Amazon offer after L6 downlevel
TLDR; Downleveled from L6 + Rejected low offer for Amazon L5 DS position Blind tax: 260 TC after Meta stock time-traveled to 2016, IC5 DS, 5 YOE, remote Happy Monday you beautiful and paranoid people! Wanna share my experience and contribute a data point from my recent experience with Amazon. Will also share interview details at the bottom of the post for those who are interested. Went through a full loop for Amazon L6 Data Scientist position. Recruiter said TC would be in the 400-500K range. Originally wanted to do Applied Science since I want to get back to ML/modeling but was told that since I don't have a master or PHD, DS is a better fit :( Offer stage: Final TC offer was 230K Seattle/Austin (averaged over 4 years). Was downleveled to L5 after onsite even though I thought I nailed every single round. Recruiter said my LP answers didn't show enough signals for L6 level and 5 YOE is typically too little for L6. I had prepared 11 different examples of LP in STAR format that showed leadership and org-wide contributions but I guess I was too optimistic of my own performance. Recruiter also said that Amazon is being "conservative" with their offers in this economy. A bit surprised by this low offer since I was expecting 300-400K range for L5. Anyway, I rejected their offer and recruiter said to reach out and try again in a few months for other L6 positions (possibly Applied scientist or MLE) when more roles become available. Overall, aside from the low offer and being downleveled, I had a really pleasant experience with Amazon. Recruiters were responsive and things moved very quickly (4 weeks start->offer). They gave me an offer 3 days after onsite. Side note, I personally dislike LP questions and much prefer technical coding/ML questions but it's all part of the process. PS: I'm currently looking for senior SWE ML, DS, AS roles in the 400-500K range. Would love to connect if there's an open role that you can refer. I'm a US citizen. Also feel free to ask me any question but post them here so everyone can benefit. Interview process 1. Technical phone screen (1hr). 2 SQL medium with partition and left joins. 2 statistics/probability questions. 3 basic ML questions (L1/L2 regression, feature importance, perceptrons, etc..), 1 case study on how to build ads recommendation. 2. Onsite (5 rounds, 1 hr each). each round asked 3-4 LP questions. Across all rounds, there were no stat questions, 3 case studies on how to set up experiment to test/measure XYZ, how to use ML to predict XYZ, etc.. 4-5 questions on Python AND SQL data manipulation. No model building from scratch with Python. The technical part is super easy if you use SQL and pandas dataframe daily. I highly recommend stratascratch to prepare.
Check your self and understand what you really bring to the table at 5 yoe. Pretty damn soon we will have 3 yoe asking to be L6 sde 3. Are you staff at FB?
I have an interview coming up and I’m struggling with some of the LP questions too. Especially around ‘bias for action’ and ‘earn trust’. Some pointers from you or others here who have done these before would be very helpful. Thanks.
I'm sure you're familiar with the STAR format so i wont go into that. But I highly recommend that you write down your answers word for word for each example and read them off in the interview. Be VERY specific about what you did, what metrics/methods you used and why. Earn trust: some examples of your going against or making important decision without consulting manager or following common methods to achieve good results. Bias for action: some examples of taking calculated risks. You could have failed but again, be very specific.
Apologize for my ignorance. What does LP stand for?
Just because you think you have good answers doesn't mean they're good enough for L6 - the way you answered the probing questions likely where you were assessed as 5. Imo L5 is reasonable at 5yoe.
I’m 27 years old and believe I should make $400K. If I’m not paid that, I’m undervalued and I’ll throw a tantrum. This question here shows everything wrong with the tech fueled entitlement and bubble this community lives in.
where exactly do you see my "throwing a tantrum" ? I'm simply sharing my experience and data point. > I’m 27 years old and believe I should make $400K Yes this was roughly my offer with Meta. Why would I ask for less when I know what I'm capable of making and what top companies can afford to pay ?
Yeah Hitachi Vanamtara is just salty. OP is trying for the best offer and has some expectations, what wrong about this ? OP shared experience and personal opinion ? I don't see any whining here
Sit out the cooling off period and try again for L6 as you will not be happy as an L5…… it’s Amazon so you probably are also going to be unhappy as an L6 too but at least the pay would be slightly better.
yup thats the plan. Hopefully by then other companies will have more headcounts as well.
You got a ~400k offer when stock was rocket high, and now it’s worth 260k after dips. It’s unrealistic to expect 300k-400k range for Amazon L5, because that’s when the stock was good. In mid 2020, the medium L5 TC in NYC was 250k.
Not sure I understand your point. If you joined meta today as ic5, you'd still get 400-500K quite easily. There's nothing unrealistic about it and it has NOTHING to do with current stock price.
With present situation where most orgs in AWS are asked to close reqs because of budget, they are probably seeing you as someone who is either going to be laid off or already laid off. So I am not surprised they downleveled. Any mid-level company will match that offer you got. So why join Amazon which is known for giving PiPs.
I would join if there's a significant bump in TC
Thought ds bands were identical to sde across Amazon? I know someone with 1 yoe who got a L4 offer for 220k NYC. Even op being Seattle this feels like a huge lowball
5 YOE is definitely not enough experience for L6. They said they don’t have a MS or PhD. I wonder why people ignore education when talk about level. BS+5, MS+5, and PhD+5 yoe are not same. Google wanted me to interview at L4 with PhD+3 yoe. Amazon interviewed for L6 but downleveled to L5 due to lack of mass production experience.