I am in process of interviewing with Amazon Alexa in SoCal. I had online tech screen, then a phone screen to decided between L5 and L6. Afterwards was told was downleveled to L5. I really think the reason wasn't able to show lot of pratical experience leading projects or having much of an impact with my current work. Given the implosion happening at Symantec and the fact Amazon would pay way more even at L5 I am going forward with the interview. Would this harm things long term? What compensation could I expect for SoCal? Can I push for L6 consideration on site? YOE: 13 TC: ~150k Principal SWE @Amazon
L5 to L6 at Amazon is pretty tough from what I hear. L6 is basically expected to lead projects/teams. If you join as L5, expect to stay L5 for a bit unless you can really showcase strong interpersonal and technical leadership right away.
As long as I get paid more don't mind. I think it be less risk for me and I am sure I clould show both out of the gate. Don't mind if it takes a year or two.
Alexa down levels people? Lol. I would have expected the opposite given their bar.
Their bar is WEIRD. I know a QAE who was given a leetcode hard in an internal transfer interview. I know another SDE who was given rotate a matrix. It makes no sense
You can’t negotiate level. If they want to bring you in for a loop as an L5, I would go for it but don’t expect to be able to get an L6 offer since that would be a different loop altogether.
Is it possible to ask for L6 loop?
You can ask but they won’t give it to you if you were already assessed on the PS and they determined L5
L5 TC is around 200k so it's worth it
Alexa team also down leveled me from L6 to L5. I think I didn’t exhibit enough leadership in challenging the status quo as they expected according to their leadership principles.
From someone who works on Alexa, you made the right decision
How is it working on the Alexa team? What’s the culture like?
This happens all the time at Amazon. It will not impact your future
Even at L5 level, you will have a lot pressure when you started. Most new hire takes 3-6 months to ramp up, 1 year to be functioning, 2 years to earn the trust. This applies to all levels. At L6, the pressure is very high bc ~10 L4/5 are waiting for you to be functioning during yr first year.
Whats the implosion happening at Symantec ?
CEO was recently fired, about to have a massive layoff, and Boardcom might buy us and layoff even more people. Enterprise side is shrinking fast lots of competition from startups in that space and bluecoat appliance business going down tubes since everyone moving to cloud. Not sure why they didn't see that when we bought them couple years ago.