Someone with 10 years of experience getting offered an SDE1 role is a huge red flag for me and makes me wonder what this person's skill set actually is.

I'm willing to bet if I interviewed at Amazon (or Google/MS/FB/Uber) I would probably be put in a similar role, despite having been programming since I was 8 with 14 years of commercial experience. I never went to Uni and have no degree.

Eh, as a datapoint, I also have no degree. I worked at google for a few years as a contractor (with 15+ years industry experience before that) - A few months back, I interviewed and was hired on as a L4 (L3, as I understand it, is where you come in after college, L5 is senior.)

My personal impression is that it was pretty clear to all involved what they'd need to pay me, and they slotted me in at a tech level that made that ask reasonable.

(but then, I think that ask really was reasonable for my skill level and the current market, if anything in this market can be seen as reasonable, so I guess in the end, that means the same thing as slotting in my level based on my skill level. But google and the contracting house both had a lot of information about what I was willing to accept, and about what other companies were willing to offer me. I have a very open negotiating style.)

My other impression is that I totally would have had that senior title at a smaller company, but I wouldn't have gotten paid any more, so again, the money seems to be the honest signal.

~~Correct, L4 is the same thing as SDE2.~~

EDIT: I completely screwed that up. L4–L6 map to SDE1–SDE3.

When I left, L4 was SDE1, L5 was SDE2.

Sometime after I left there was a big push to get more and more L5s on board, at the point than in some teams L4s were effectively sidelined (and found themselves with little no ability to advance to L5 depending to org politics, in some "high growth" ops teams they made for convenient beasts of burden...)

Oops you're right, I completely screwed that up. Just shows how often I think about L-levels.

Ex Amazon here. If you think you would be offered a junior role just because you don't have a degree, think again. Degrees are treated as a plus; the answers to technical questions is what really matter, including the ones or past projects.

I was in the same boat as you two years ago, (coding since I was 5, no uni degree, 14 years of commercial experience) and I interviewed successfully at a FAANG company (where I still work), for a senior role.

Let me guess: Netflix?

From the outside (I've never worked at any of FAANG, I don't even work in the US) it seems to me that they are the most likely of those companies to actually hire seniors as seniors, simply because they appear to have made hiring preferably seniors (in terms of experience, not in terms of age) a strategy, while the others all seem to have made hiring huge numbers of inexperienced juniors their strategy.

It's Facebook. I've met plenty of people from other companies on that list without a university degree. Although, engineering levels are not something that people usually talk about outside of their close social circles.

I know engineers in your situation. I've interviewed a few. It is unusual for someone with 10+ years of experience to be considered for an entry-level job, no matter what kind of education they have.

With the type of interview and questions at those places I would probably fail. I’ve read stuff on algorithms but I’ve never been in a job needing to use this stuff so if you asked me anything about them I wouldn’t have a clue. Yet it seems this sort of thing is a key requirement for interview process at these big companies.

so, from experience? Interviews can be the best way to learn algorithms for the interview.

First trick? there are fads in interviews. When I go through a round of interviews? there is always a lot of overlap between one company and another in the same location at the same time.

Second trick? Most places are cool with interviewing you once a year. In my experience? the second interview at the same company a year later is more different than a second interview at a different company a week later, but still, there's a lot of overlap, and most companies are actually pretty okay with you trying again every year, if you are close (and if you aren't close, you usually won't make it past the phone screen)

When I was a contractor, I lumped all my interviews into around the same time of the year, and I interviewed with all the top tier companies, a few of the second tier companies, and occasionally one of the not so second tier companies. (The latter mostly because those are usually the easiest interviews and they usually got back to you fastest, so it was a good ego boost, and a good way to negotiate my yearly raise as a contractor) I didn't have a spreadsheet or anything, but often the recruiters at my targets would hit me up when that year was up. Or I'd start wondering how long it had been since my last raise.

But, point being, when you interview? always remember the questions you got wrong. I put any memorization/trivia into flashcards the night after, and I practice the flashcards year round. Keep the old ones; you won't get those questions as often, but you still get 'em. And they are usually interesting bits of trivia that can come in handy in other cases where you want to look smart.

Go through any algorithms you didn't get with a friend to make sure it is what you think it is, and then with a book or online resource. Note, it's totally okay to ask the interviewer what algorithm it was supposed to be if you get it wrong; I mean, you still got it wrong, but if anything, it shows enthusiasm and willingness to learn.

Also, interview in clusters. At least in silicon valley, the fads change pretty quickly, so the more interviews you can do in a row, the better.

Wouldn’t that be likely for someone with 10 years of experience in a very niche technology - say cobol - but applying for a C/c++ job?

In my experience years on the job are what determine the level someone gets hired at, not skill in a specific language.

Being a senior engineer is not normally about raw coding skill -- it's about knowing how to design a complex system, knowing what can go wrong, being able to collaborate effectively with others, and so on. The specific language used is not normally going to make a big difference in those areas, although candidates who need to pick up a new language are going to take longer to ramp up.

I worked at IT department of Intel for 6 years. Then for about a year as a DevOps. Then for 3 years as JS developer at a startup. Plus few open source contributions and side projects. I wasn't strong in Java or other fundamental languages. == That is my skillset

So it sounds like the role worked primarily with Java? I guess I can see why IT for 6 years plus 3 years as a JS dev wouldn't really prepare you for that and why, as a result, you would get slotted into an SDE1 role (hopefully with the expectation of ramping up quickly and making it to SDE2 in relatively short order). I'm not sure I understand why such a role would be interesting to you, though.

Thanks for the article

How many years of SDE experience do you say you have?

Not sure I would would count devops or IT though

I mentioned "10 years of experience in the industry", is it fair?

Then it's equally fair on part of your employer, which is interviewing for a software dev position, to consider as relevant experience only those where you actually did software development...

It is a little misleading in this context, even 25 years of experience doing IT often won't clearly mean you have the right skill set to be SDE2 (and vice versa).

Amazon busts everyone down at least one or two pegs in title. A friend with extensive agency experience joined their creative team and when I saw his title I was shocked but he explained that's what they do everyone. He say this leads to people frequently introducing themselves to others by saying "I used to be title X at company Y".

SE1 is ridiculous for someone with 10 years experience as either they deserve a much better title or they didn't learn enough in the last 10 years and you shouldn't hire them at all.

he commented above that he had 10 years of IT and DevOps. I found the article's glossing over that detail to be pretty misleading.

This seems like an exceptionally harsh thing to say, especially without knowing any of the relevant details.

Well we do have more details. The OP wrote in this very topic about his software developing experience: he only worked "3 years as JS developer at a startup. Plus few open source contributions and side projects. I wasn't strong in Java or other fundamental languages"

The only thing it may be a red flag of, is of the Amazon interviewing process. Or, of how poorly he interviewed, which may be tangential to how well he does his job.

It doesn't matter if your name is Alan Turing, or Donald Knuth. If you don't do great at solving five pet questions, posed to you by five software engineers of average ability, you're going to get an offer for a junior position.

I somewhat agree with this comment, but I don't want him to take his article down. I really hope people out there manage their expectations and come to terms with reality by matching up their experiences with this guy's experiences, followed by reading comments like yours on HN.

I hope the net isn't too harsh on this guy for being honest.

Agreed, I enjoyed reading it because it’s honest and non-dramatic. Seems like the average experience a tech can expect in big corp land.

Most of your points are good but SDE1 may be all the sycophant recruiters would let him in the door at for a variety of reasons that are a dystopian caricature of "values" and misaligned incentives. If his intentions were to quickly try his luck at a tech giant like Amazon, he probably did so the only way possible.

Not sure what you mean by "sycophant recruiters". Most recruiters I've worked with were strongly motivated to bring good people on board at their company. If you are an attractive candidate but you let them know you're only interested in pursuing roles at a certain (non-entry) level, they'll either make adjustments to slot you into interviews for that other higher role or the process doesn't move forward and everyone avoids wasting time. It's really a win-win to be upfront about your leveling expectations early.

Because there are developers like him that were beating on the door to get in, the function of recruiters is a joke at widely known companies. The needed function would have been called secretarial work a few decades ago but grifters have flocked into most companies and built empires completely outside the line of business and common sense. He needed to talk to hiring managers and find a good team fit and be placed at a level that reflected his capabilities on that team. Only hiring managers can do that unless recruiters start putting in a decade of building software and managing development teams and somehow intimately know a manager's personality. A hiring manager might occasionally need a search firm to find people outside their own network, but that is a completely different function and the manager should start the interviewing after receiving lightly screened resumes. Bottom line if you want to be a leader you need to step up and do your job, and that means recruiting and building your team.

There are good recruiters, who do tend to act this way.

But then there are also bad recruiters, who seem to think that blindly generating as many candidates as possible and throwing against the wall as many resumes as possible, is a good way to do business.

I’ve learned enough in this business that I have been able to avoid bad recruiters for a long time, but not everyone has that kind of luxury — or luck.

Of course, even if you do get a good recruiter who has contacted you about a position, it’s entirely possible that it might be for a shitty company, or maybe just not a company or position you are well suited to.

There’s lots of things that can go wrong in this process.

Why is it "completely foreseeable" and normal to you? OP had a work visa for Canada and he and his colleagues were forced to break the terms of the visa and do work in the US.

That alone is such a major clusterfuck that it should push everyone away from working at Amazon Canada.

> Everything in this piece was completely foreseeable and does not reflect poorly on Amazon.

Most of what you say is true, except the part about expecting him to work in Seattle illegally. If true, that reflects terribly on Amazon.

I agree that I don't think anything the author has written reflects particularly poorly on Amazon, but did you make it down to the "Summary" at the end of the article? Because the author basically says "Yeah, probably just wasn't a good fit for me."

All in all I found it was just the normal level of "big company bullshit" that is in fact a necessity whenever you have very large groups of people trying to work towards a common goal.

In a smaller company even a junior person can have impact. It's more of a reflection of being a cog in the wheel of a large "soul less" corporation...

> I also don't understand why the candidate with 10 years of industry experience decided to move forward with interviewing after being told it was for an SDE1 position.

| given the fact that I wasn’t too efficient with Java (it was not the primary tool in my past experience)

Maybe because his 10 years didn’t give him the relevant knowledge? Also, his attitudes sends a clear ”I’m a junior” message, so SDE1 might have been right call.

< Also, his attitudes sends a clear ”I’m a junior” message, so SDE1 might have been right call.

Please explain. I don't mind to be called "junior" or whatever title you stick on me, but what is "junior attitude"?

For one, you accepted a junior position. Then you seemed to expect to be treated as a senior.

Then you seemed to be surprised by the issues, again showing you lacked the experience of a senior. I feel you got good guidance but it feels it was not well received.

The away team experience also felt a bit juniory. Your requests we not priotorized high enough but you didn’t find the tools or means to go around it. Understanding their needs and life in general would be an indication of seniority.

Finally, I think it takes at least a year to see how you are able to cope and progress. It takes time and effort to make any changes in a huge corporation.

In the end, I think that you would not have enjoyed yourself working in that environment so you made the right call. It takes certain character traits to be able to enjoy navigating and gaming such corporate culture.

Source: ex enterpreneur with two decades of experience, atm employed in a >100k employee corporation and loving it.

Reading your comment I see a fundamental problem: you treat people... as A or as B, but not as a reasonable person, a peer and a colleague.

> Then you seemed to expect to be treated as a senior.

no, no.... treated like a human and a professional :)

In my experience junior people need to be told what the problem is and directed what to do. Seniors tend to bring up the problems along with potential options.

That's one difference in attitude I can think of.

In my organization we often have newbies come in and want to re-architect the system from the ground up, then get angry when the leads don't agree.