Is a FAANG downlevel worth entertaining?

Mar 2 42 Comments

Been mulling over an offer to work at AWS. Interviewed for SysDev II(L5) and received offer for SysDev I(L4). Recruiter cited coding could use some work and scope of LP questions as reason for downlevel. Currently a senior consultant with a hopeful path to principal, mostly able to work autonomously as a cloud/DevOps engineer with a bit of guidance needed at times. Recently started interviewing candidates for my current team, and does some mentoring/assisting of junior engineers on top of client work.

TC offered is about 20% more than current TC. Didn’t apply directly, interviewed after them reaching out. I’m pretty okay with my current gig, but was willing to hear out about more pure engineering roles to dive deeper into various technical subjects.

Offer breakdown:
Tc: ~$220k
Base $185k
Year 1 sign on $32k
Year 2 sign on $27k
Rsu 25

Yoe: 10 total, 5 as cloud/DevOps engineer, 5 bouncing around systems engineering roles. Never held a software engineering role.

Dms welcomed

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TOP 42 Comments
  • Levels are useless coming from outside Big Tech. Your level at a consulting company that I have not heard can't really be used for level comparison. In other words, I am not sure it is considered a downlevel.
    Mar 2 14
    • Gotcha, interesting. I'd definitely like the opportunity to do more coding consistently. Right now I do a lot of TF, and some Python automation, but the need depends on the project I'm on. Sucks about not being able to use open source tooling, etc. but I guess that is a trade-off with working at a company like that. What would the other 60% of time consist of? Mostly operational work, or are there opportunities to design, etc.?

      The service I'd be supporting is an internal tool that analyzes and monitors and alerts on host access for internal infra. It processes large datasets and events in the order of ~1m requests per minute. The manager told me the tool is built using AWS services
      Mar 3
    • Other 60% is operations, meetings, design reviews, documentation, writing design docs, interviews. As an L4 SysDev I’d think about 80% of time is is ops and coding.
      Mar 3
  • Apple
    pyII56

    Go to company page Apple

    pyII56
    You lost me at Amazon
    Mar 2 0
  • Meta
    ipYi06

    Go to company page Meta

    ipYi06
    Interview elsewhere too. Amazon is notorious for doing this because L5 is terminal…
    Mar 2 12
    • Got it. When you assign larger work, is it usually with the expectation of working cross teams or more of an epic size task that may be accomplished with the internal teams assistance? Also on the topic of levels and L5 being a terminal role, do you see any progression in regards to switching to another org? Perhaps if I get to L5 SysDev and want to move to SDE or SA, are there usually paths to reasonably accomplish such shifts, or are these kinds of moves uncommon?
      Mar 2
    • Levels effectively determine what scope of work you’ll have. SysDev and SDE actually vary on this though.

      For SDE L4 you’re expected to just be able to work on one area that your team owns. L5 works cross team under basically your sr manager. L6 works across all teams in your org. L7 is cross org.

      SysDev essentially shifts all that down a level because of the nature of the work. As a SysDev your expected to be working at a systems level rather than software level. Working at a systems level means you’re going to need to inherently work with other teams to solve problems. L4 works cross team under the senior manager and all the others are shift down as well. Getting promoted for either role expects that you’re already working at the next level.

      As for transitioning to another role it is done but it’s not easy. You’ve basically gotta be working both jobs at once. Prove that you can do the other job but you don’t want to be the low performer of your current role. I’ve heard of people basically doing full interviews to transition but never seen it. What I’ve seen the most is that people just start picking up some other type of work as part of their normal job, be useful to the manager so that they want you to do more and then transition. Changing roles though is a rigid process at amazon so the manager needs to really be able to prove that you’re doing the other work well.
      Mar 2
  • Apple
    nonamevaa

    Go to company page Apple

    nonamevaa
    I would do it. Your TC progression will be much better when you jump next from Amazon.
    Mar 2 0
  • Don’t downlevel for Amazon.
    Mar 2 0