Amazon Alexa Smart Home vs VMware-Propel offer
Hi! I am currently doing my Masters in the US, graduating in Dec-2020. I got an offer (SDE-1) from Alexa Smart Home team and another one from VMware-Propel program for MTS-2 (Propel program is one where you work in two different BUs in the first year and then finally decide on which team you want to end up in). The offer details are not known yet (Still in talks with different Hiring Managers in the Alexa SH team, and the Propel offer details are only gonna be revealed in two week's time or so). YoE: US-0, India-4 Location: Seattle vs Palo Alto TC: Not known yet but levels.fyi for SDE-1 vs MTS-2 seem similar (factoring in the differences in state-taxes), right? I want to work on large-scale distributed systems as a career path. I am not sure if the smart home team is a great place for that and the VMware gig depends on which BU I end up in. I wanted to go for SDE-2 at Amazon but since I my previous experience is in the embedded/Operating-systems domain and not in distributed systems, I felt that the bar for SDE-2 would be too high for me to clear. (Is it possible for me to interview for SDE-2 with another team @ Amazon that deals with distributed-systems while keeping my SDE-1 offer intact in case I don't make it?) (I liked VMware as a company when I was an intern there this summer) Which one would you choose? (Edit: I see that votes are pouring in but no comments :) Please comment on what you think of the 2 companies and why you would choose one over the other..) #offer #amazon #vmware
Levels.fyi
Don't come to Alexa smart home. The tech stack is a bunch of band aids
Oh! And what about joining Amazon SH and them moving to other teams internally after a year or 2 or once I make to SDE-2. Is that easy enough to do - like move to AWS?
Yes, after 3-6 months it should be easier .. but smart home may bury you with work and it's difficult to find the time and your way around the company to apply to good teams
I honestly have no idea about that specific team, but in general the tech stack is one of the lowest quality anywhere in Amazon
Is amazon through the new grad pipeline?
Nope. A recruiter reached out to me on Linkedin.
I hope you didn't join amazon smart home. It's a shit show
Wow when did you apply for propel? I have a referral but haven’t heard back yet. Congratulations!
I was an intern @ VMware and we get to interview for Propel much earlier (4 rounds). Good luck with your application!
Cool, thanks! From what I’ve seen in levels Propel has competitive salary like 180k+. Amazon hands out ~170 rarely but mostly it’s in 140-150 range. I’d go for Propel. Btw what would you suggest me to prep for Propel ?