Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by hintymad on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:36PM (#31783201)

As a result, AWS engineers are very much promotion oriented. This leads to two results: title inflation and disgruntled employees. L6 used to be a big deal but not any more. L7 is now the new L6. The challenge with this arrangement is that whoever got promoted early on but stayed in the same level get less in return. And apparently it's human's nature to compare. When engineers see that their peers get promoted to L7 (a role used to be considered almost impossible to reach) in three years for no particularly obvious reasons, they can barely hide their cold anger.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by vishnugupta on Friday June 17, 2022 @04:38PM (#31784004)

> L7 (a role used to be considered almost impossible to reach)

I can attest to this; worked there from mid 2000s to early 2010s. Principle Engineers, L7 ICs, were looked up as Gods back then. To an extent that a couple of projects by an L5 where it went through principal-review process was almost guaranteed to get them a promotion to L6. Back when I was there I thought pulling off L5-L6 required crazy work schedule (I couldn't so didn't) and L7 was well and truly beyond mortals.

But now I hear they are doling out L7s like candy as they are getting increasingly desperate to fill their open head counts. How times change!

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by Firmwarrior on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:11PM (#31784424)

Man, I worked at Amazon in the early 2010s, and I remember I was an L something and proud of it, but thought I'd never make it to L whatever. It was such a huge deal and a huge part of my life, and now I can't even remember which number it was.. I wish I'd spent less time working and more time doing stuff I cared about

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by the_biot on Friday June 17, 2022 @07:30PM (#31785807)

At least you picked up some life wisdom along the way.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by jhugo on Saturday June 18, 2022 @04:24AM (#31788149)

They should teach this lesson at school, but instead they reinforce the opposite.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by WalterBright on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:14PM (#31784457)

The US military is the same way. Officers get promoted, or they retire. I.e. "up or out".

In the AF, your performance reviews need to be "firewalled" or it's time to leave.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by vageli on Friday June 17, 2022 @06:15PM (#31785112)

> In the AF, your performance reviews need to be "firewalled" or it's time to leave.

What does firewalling a performance review mean?

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by WalterBright on Friday June 17, 2022 @06:37PM (#31785341)

All the scores are at the max. "Firewalling" the throttle means full power (pushing it towards the firewall).

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by taocoyote on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:30PM (#31784620)

Firewall fives, I forgot about that, or maybe blocked it from my memory. It’s the same for enlisted.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by pram on Friday June 17, 2022 @09:28PM (#31786524)

No kidding, my first EPR out of tech school had a bunch of 4s and when it came time to test for SSgt my combined points were so far off I just gave up and coasted until I got out. For the best though.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by knolan on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:42PM (#31783281)

That almost sounds like a cult.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by woah on Friday June 17, 2022 @04:13PM (#31783660)

You need to buy 10,000 hours of self improvement tapes to get to L7. Only the most enlightened have achieved it

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by burntoutfire on Friday June 17, 2022 @04:21PM (#31783765)

A cult takes money from you and doesn't pay you a million a year or whatever these people are making.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by r00fus on Friday June 17, 2022 @08:37PM (#31786256)

Their work output is worth more than the compensation or Bezos wouldn't be authorizing it.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by int_19h on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:34PM (#31784656)

How much are they making for Amazon, though?

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by Rexxar on Friday June 17, 2022 @08:48PM (#31786315)

They give money but take your life time.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by deanCommie on Friday June 17, 2022 @04:00PM (#31783487)

Promotion-orientation is bad, but so are promotion levels that are considered "almost impossible to reach".

Levels.fyi doesn't seem to agree with your title inflation evaluation: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Amazon,Microsoft&trac...

It's only 3 data points, but it seems that Amazon Senior is comparable to Google senior, and it's Microsoft that inflates the Senior title.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by bigmutant on Friday June 17, 2022 @04:19PM (#31783753)

Sort of. The main issue is that AMZ/AWS doesn't differentiate (by title) between someone recently promoted to L6 (generally ~8-10 YOE) and someone deep in to L6 (~12-15 YOE). Other companies solve this with the Staff Engineer title, but AMZ doesn't have that. If you're an L6 who reports to an L7 Sr. Manager then you're functionally a Staff Engineer and supposed to be on the Principal track. Mileage varies across orgs/teams.

Gist: "junior" L6 SDE is more like Google L5, "senior" L6 SDE tracks mostly with Google L6 (or even L7 in rare cases).

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by l8guy on Saturday June 18, 2022 @06:02AM (#31788586)

Are you sure about this?

I think it's more like Google junior L6 SDE is equivalent Uber L4.5, which itself is about the same as senior AA at Oracle (= like a L11 at Twitter).

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by hintymad on Saturday June 18, 2022 @06:34PM (#31794427)

You’re right. Amazon’s L6 do not have larger packages than Google. On the other hand, Amazon has a flatter structure. Amazon’s L6 used to influence more than 100 engineers, advising general managers, owning an entire product line, if not more. Go figure.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by amzn-throw on Sunday June 19, 2022 @09:07PM (#31805150)

You're right, but when they adjusted the L6 role guideline (circa 2016), it was specifically to clarify that the L6 role was never intended to have that span of influence. Rather, every 2-pizza team (8-13 people) should have a sr. engineer. What at Google would be a Tech Lead.

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Re:Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of pe... by hintymad on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:22AM (#31807671)

Yeah, L6 is the new L5, and L7 L6. That's bad for those who joined Amazon as L7 and thought that they didn't have to work for title any more.

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