Frontend engineer 3 yoe to Amazon SDE 3
If I have mostly Frontend experience with a bit of full stack I working with Django and node, will I be okay in Amazon as an SDE3? Im afraid that my lack of backend understanding will make my life miserable at Amazon. I’m based in London right now #tech #softwareengineer #amazon
Doesn't look like you'd be okay. You'll need to provide high level architectures for multiple teams in your org and also code initial phases so other engineers can gain momentum
So I haven’t got the offer but I’m planning for the future because I want to join big tech and move from uk to USA. Currently doing Frontend at my fintech company but slowly started to pick up more of the backend spring boot micro services tasks. Is there anything I can do in the next year to help me be ready for a mid level engineer position at a big tech ?
Don’t be afraid, because you won’t be hired.
Would I be okay for SDE2?
Sde1 would likely be best fit. See my comment below for more
Be realistic, you will be interviewing for SDE-2. Good chance some team might even down level you to top band SDE-1
Bro thinks shitty react code is what it takes for L6
nope, it takes shitty Java code.
Good for you for being ambitious. I wish you the best. In order to establish realistic expectations, keep the following in mind: Lots (most?) of services at Amazon handle hundreds of millions of requests per month minimum. This means they have to scale well, and issues become magnified. Even services that are small for Amazon handle far more requests than core functionalities of other businesses. Couple that with the fact that at this scale “small errors” (such as being down for an hour, or adding .01 to price) can easily result in millions of dollars of damage to business. Finally, designing/coding/deploying/operating these services can be exponentially harder than running small scale business. Thus, I’d recommend most industry hires with less than five years of experience for sde1. It’s better for you, and it won’t surprise your teammates. 5+ years for most people is sde2. Then some external candidates with 10 years experience are a fit for sde3 (but there are many external candidates who have been “senior/staff/lead” devs at other companies who just aren’t ready at all for that here). So in short, study up, interview for sde1, and I wish you the best.
Thank you for your insight, really appreciate it! One question though, is it worth taking a pay cut to join a big tech company as an SDE-1 so I can learn from the beginning. Or is it better to work towards transitioning to backend in my current role and eventually joining big tech as a mid/senior developer after gaining some experience? I currently work at a mortgage lending scale up company.
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