community nees some guidance. have been vacillating between which is better. key things that matter to me: - WLB - career growth into management - work culture - good colleagues, smart tasks. which is better?
The trajectory at Dropbox is L1, L2, L3, L4, ... L3/L4 is senior, and L5 is staff. Compensation wise, L4 at Dropbox probably beats SDE3 at Amazon. WLB wise, Dropbox wins hands down. I work from home once every week, and typically work less than 40 hours a week. Regarding work culture, Dropbox has the smartest yet humblest engineers out of anywhere I worked. People here are strong engineers, friendly, and very willing to help.
Thanks 🙏
Dropbox pays 400k+ to L4?
Yes, the estimate on levels.fyi for Dropbox L4 is $466,000, and for Amazon SDE3 is $305,000. Why do you need to feel the need to downplay other companies? Are you insecure?
Lol, L6 external hires in Bay Area are usually $400k-450k. 305k is average for internally promoted L6s in Seattle. There is a massive gap and the band is wide.
TC wise Snapchat beats them all.
Lmao. Obviously Dropbox if u care about wlb and culture
TC and YoE?
I think at Amazon you can make more impact and learn more but you’re going to cry at your desk and deal with big egos. At Dropbox mostly everyone is super nice and humble but very competent. I work with many ex employees of FMG, not many from Amazon though. My suspicion is Amazon and Dropbox have completely different company cultures. Dropbox cares a lot about diversity and not being an asshole and Amazon’s culture seems to be like you can be the biggest asshole as long as you deliver. Dropbox is also not very frugal. Also L4 at Dropbox is higher level than L6 at Amazon. The only con at Dropbox is the engineering work is kind of boring depending on the team. You could be refactoring and fixing a monolith code base instead of developing cool new products. Dropbox has some pretty shitty engineering practices and things feel pretty hacky. Some LOBs are not mature as engineering shops despite being around for 10+ years. If you want to be management though, the code base shouldn’t matter. We need good middle management at Dropbox, too. Dropbox is more prestigious than Amazon too just based on rule of scarcity. It’s more difficult to get in Dropbox than Amazon. I would go with Dropbox but I’m biased.
Thanks 🙏
Obviously SDE-3 since it has much broader scope