Hey All Currently a software engineer in OCI. Level is IC5 - TC is $500K in Seattle. Looking at more non dev roles at Amazon and Google. Coding has worn me out and I want to do something more customer facing. I see some interesting jobs that are program manager related at Google (running some customer facing programs) and Amazon but hear that these PM roles are not going to pay as well. Are the salary bands for program manager at Goog and Amazon lower in these tracks?
Just move to an engineering management role. Will still use tech skills but not write code every day. Much easier transition from SDE, and vastly more likely to keep your comp intact.
I hear you - but being an actual manager means coaching and dealing with motivation and possibly even firing people. I am conflict adverse.
And you think a program management job won't have conflicting stakeholders and disagreement to navigate? Except your comp will be about 1/2 of what it is now.
You might want to consider becoming a Solutions Architect at AWS or Sales/Customer Engineer at GCP. Less hands-on, very customer-facing.
I think this could do the trick. Is the comp good? As good as SWE?
The only data points I have on the SWE and Google side are from blind, but the pay seems comparable from what I've seen, maybe a little bit lower but not much. The biggest influence on TC is going to be your negotiating power. You will not be making $500k TC without stock inflation, and you would need to be around L7 for that. You would really have to know your shit to come in as an L7, so you might need to downshift a bit when changing jobs like that.
Speaking for Amazon, the L7 PMT band tops out at about 370K total comp. Do you have any PM experience?
I am leading a lot of efforts across quite a few teams.