Significant knowledge/skill gaps in people promoted during the hiring boom of 2021-22
During the hiring boom of 2021-22, a lot of folks I know jumped ship or got promoted too soon due to the lowered bar at that time. People getting to Sr. SDE at FAANG at 4 YOE, or getting Staff level offers at other unicorns at 5-6 YOE to an extent that it's ridiculous. Someone at Amazon posted how they got to L6 (Sr. SDE) at Amazon within 3 years (1.5 years to mid, 1.5 years to senior). The bars are extremely high again now - recruiters aren't even interviewing you for the senior level below 7 YOE. Amazon is not longer giving out senior offers below 10 YOE. There is ample supply of 5+ YOE engineers in the market. Amazon is also making it stricter to get to the senior level now due to lower attrition and too many people promoted too soon during the boom. I know folks who hadn't ever written a technical doc, or ever designed a system - got to the Sr SDE level just because the approvals are lax on their org (no tech assessments, only L7 SDM approval needed). When talking to these folks, you can really tell they struggle being a true senior leader. Most of these folks know they won't be able to perform at the L6 SDE level, so they immediately switch to being an SDM which basically confirms them getting promoted was a fluke. I just appreciate how thorough the promotions and hiring was on my org at Amazon. My manager really ensured I'm operating at the senior level of the industry standards of mentoring, giving talks, operational quality, code quality, setting org direction, experimenting with new tools for the team and writing them, setting a bar for tech design and docs on the org and acting as a solid enabler for rest of the team. My time at Amazon was great but unfortunately I did not want to relocate to Seattle given the phase in my life. That said, Amazon did get a lot less innovative in the last couple of years with more focus on showoff than actual quality. Me: Former L6 SDE at Amazon. (L4 to L5 - 2.5 years, L5 to L6 - 5 years) Quit due to RTO/relocation Now at a startup, full remote 310k 8.5 YOE
The external hires during that period all turned out to be either mediocre or downright incompetent.
I've noticed the bar is super low whenever companies are hiring in bulk.
Hired in 2021, was HV3 right away. Worked with plenty of dumbasses with many years of experience at Amazon. Worked with many new hires who were great. Conversely, worked with plenty of great red badges. And worked with some new hires who clearly were a mistake. If anything, I agree that we’ve promoted people too fast. I have 10+ YOE and came in at L6. Saw a lot of people getting L6 with like 5 YOE. I’ve led multimillion dollar P/L, managed large teams, and here I am at the same level as an IC with half my experience who has never managed anyone else. lol.
where do u live now? are you there for cheaper COL or other reasons?
Suburban North East, won't really call it LCol as it's pretty much in the extended NYC Metro area. I work for an NYC based startup now that offers full remote. (maybe have to go to the office once a quarter but that's okay). My family and kids are here, I did not want to move to Seattle. I lived in Seattle for my first 4 years at Amazon then moved to Amazon NYC, but now they had decided to remove our team's NYC presence and asked folks to relocate to Seattle.
It’s called a bozo explosion. It happened in a big way at my company during the pandemic. Absolutely filled with dumbass low level managers, many of whom ended up getting canned in the bust.
Chill bro ! Amazon l6 SDE = l5 in most other places .. bar is already dead at Amazon
So you think people who become Engineering Managers do so cause their technical skills are lower than a Sr. Engineer?
At Amazon? Yes. There is a reason Amazon is known for bad managers. Unlike at other companies where managers also act as a team lead and write code, Amazon managers write zero code or system design and it's more of a people manager and project management, roadmap planning role - which they fail at anyway because people management=PIPing at Amazon, and the engineers do the actual heavy lifting of project management.
Amazon converts TPM to SDM so there can be eng managers with no technical skills. I accidentally shuddered involuntarily on Chime when my manager mentioned they were considering our TPM for SDM opening.