I have an onsite coming up for an SDE2 role at Amazon. My concern is that I only have a little less than a year of experience. Am I being set up to fail my onsite? I know that in theory, I can just get down leveled to SDE1, but an Amazon employee told me it’s risky because you will have to do even better on the coding rounds. Should I talk to my recruiter and convince him to have me interviewed as SDE1?
I went through this earlier this year. Interviewed for sde2 with 7 months of experience. I got a lc hard for my bar raiser interview and spent 15 minutes going in the wrong direction. I got downleveled but got the max sde1 comp.
How did you do on the system design round?
I think I did well on system design. It was a variation of the parking lot problem but with a lot of follow up questions. Although missing out on sde2 still sucks, I think it's been beneficial because expectations are lower. I'm keeping pace if not beating the sde2s that joined with me on ramping up and getting a lot of praise from my manager.
Maybe you should worry more about their 14 LPs than anything else. Amazon's tech interview is not super hard, but they care a lot about leadership skills. Prepare well for that, and you will actually have a chance to get sde2
Do you have a PhD or a lot of internship experience under your belt?
From the post OP made along with the comments, doesn't seem like it
I do have quite a bit of internship experience. This was the reason the recruiter told me he wanted to me to go for SDE2, but it was my understanding that internships are not really considered as experience. From what an Amazon interviewer told me on rooftopslushie the system design interview is VERY in-depth and the system design can be asked by the bar raiser. This is my main concern.
Better to get SDE-1 responsibilities with SDE-2 pay. To be honest, to be successful as bar raising SDE-2, you need at least 4-5 YoE or are a true genius. You are still new to the industry, SDE-1 position will allow you a more sustainable growth
Are there any specific metrics that SDE-2, SDE-3 are evaluated on that distinguishes the roles within Amazon?
No! Go for SDE2, be confident in yourself.
The reason why I’m not super confident is because I really don’t have much real world experience dealing with system design. I would have to just study topics, but I doubt that can ever replace real world experience.
That's true, but at the same time it's definitely something that's preppable as well. Check out "System Design Interview" on YouTube.