Let’s assume same level. How much worse is a Amazon SDE1 (let’s say from ASU, equivalent school) than Google T3 (from Berkeley let’s say) or Facebook E3 (from UWash let’s say). I belong to the first bucket so I’m trying to figure out how bad I should feel if I fail my upcoming Google/FB onsites (already failed Microsoft).
Who cares
After having worked at a pretty broad swath of companies and range of experience— I'd say any such comparison is bullshit for a few reasons. The first one is, nobody has any real way to measure this. So to answer your question, no, you can't quantify this. Any engineer's work is hugely influenced by the team they are on, so you never know when someone is being bogged down by their environment... or carried on the backs of their teammates. The second one is, the range is both bigger than you think and smaller than you think. It's bigger, in that there are some folks who somehow wind up in a software job that it's blown my mind. They couldn't code their way out of a for loop. But on the flip side, there are folks in bad places who just pump out amazingly good stuff. Lastly, the comparison you are specifically asking for is flawed because the "bad" you've asked about and the "good" are really the exact same level. There's no comparison to be made. You need to zoom out and consider the larger perspective, which includes the random coder at some random consulting firm, all the way up to a staff engineer at Google. I'll stop short of throwing in Torvalds or someone because that would be dumb. But on the scale I'm asking you to consider, whether you're a fresh ASU grad at Amazon or a UW grad at Facebook tells me next to nothing. There's insufficient data to make a comparison because actual work experience and what you ship is a million times more important than any of those factors.
Also, I feel like an idiot now because the guy just above me summed it up much better with, "Who cares?" Sorry that neither of these answers is going to make you feel better, OP ;)
I mean dozens of people from UW get into top companies but like 1 lucked into FB from mine and like 4 did to amazon. That seems to strongly imply the folks there are superior.
School doesn’t matter. Either you get it or don’t.
Sure, a co-worker and I are both same level (IC4). One assignment given took this person 4 hours and barely quarter way done. I picked it up and finished it in 30 minutes the next morning. That’s 32x more productive.
It’s Darwinistic. Ideally the “Elite” Engineers were at one point junior engineers who bettered themselves. Your question should be. “At what phase does a junior/middle level engineer become an skilled engineer?” And this too is subjective. If that junior/middle level engineer is able to make engineer decisions with the correct domain knowledge they would be assessed as a skilled engineer, even though that view would be niche on the domain.
Oh look another insecure developer looking for a combination of punishment and validation. My favorite!
Is this the “imposter syndrome” I come across on blind so often ?
School means nothing. They’ll teach you to program and think maybe but There are no schools that teach the first fucking thing about software engineering.
Let's be honest. School is important at earlier career since it boosts the chance of getting opportunity at tops. But its effect fades away. I would say after 5 years not so much impact. Having said that getting into top 20-ish school is kinda important given crazy competitions. It all depends on people. But I am seeing easily 3x performance differences among interns. And high performing interns are more likely from the top schools like Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon. Please don't misunderstand. At onsite interview and internship, no one (should) care about school. It's all about your performance such as productivity, code quality, and learning speed. But it is also a fact there is a correlation between school prestige and performance. And there are of course always outliers.
How do I become like the people from Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon?
OP, I kind of feel like a lot of us have given you advice on how to grow and improve and you're just ignoring it. What's the point if you're just waiting to hear exactly what you're already thinking?
they all overlap heavily
What do you mean?