Hello Blind community, I need some advice. I am currently a SWE 1 at a small startup (<50 people) with no growth prospects and no scale to work on. We mostly do small applications and sell them off. I have 1.5 YOE at this company and I want to move to larger tech firms (Not just FAANG, I am open to companies like Dropbox, Flexport, DataDog, Stripe, etc. in addition to the typical FAANGMULA+ companies). I typically work alone or with a small team to design and develop these applications, which vary widely in scope and technology. I am full stack but not an expert in anything. I don’t need hand holding to get to be productive at this scope, but not sure if that experience carries over well to larger scale projects at bigger companies. My plan is to interview next year when I have 2YOE. So my question to you is: Do you think L4 is feasible? Is there something I am missing? My impact is low (by FAANG standards) because I don’t have high scale applications available to me. Should I shoot for L3? Should I shoot for L4? Will I be immediately down-leveled or immediately rejected? Do they even care about “impact” at that level or will passing the LC bar be enough? TLDR: Low-impact junior at small company looking to jump to big tech. Is L4 feasible? Thanks in advance! Tax: TC $120k
Amazon L4 seems feasible
Yes. But they start at L4. And their bands are wider, so I wouldn’t even think about L5 there. Maybe upper L4, if that even makes sense?
This is literally my story
But you work at Meta? So you have high scale experience, no? Or are you saying you were like me before you got to Meta? If so, id love to know more about what route you took to get there.
Yes, don't want to give the full story but basically was in the same position as you at one point. Want to let you know it's totally possible.
Always go for higher level, 2 yoe is enough for L4
Yes but I may burn through opportunity if I just get autorejected for low impact. So for example let’s say I interview at Meta for L4 and they reject me for low impact, then I missed the opportunity to interview at L3 and have to wait a year. Maybe I am overthinking it?
Companies will still give you L3 if you did well enough for that. If you did poorly enough that you get rejected, you probably would've been rejected if you had interviewed for L3. Especially for google where the interview is the same, since there is no system design round until L5.