I am joining Amazon soon as SDE 2. At my previous job, I was a higher end SDE1. I have owned small internal services at my previous job. I would like to know what are some of the things that can be expected from me as SDE 2 @ Amazon ? I am expecting more ownership, but is that the only thing? I did ask the same question to my manager but he seemed very chill about it and said that he cannot say anything at the moment, maybe in our 1:1s we can discuss more clearly. Also, if you can let me know how the expectations vary across levels for Junior and Mid level and what can I do to hit the ground running and create a good impression from the very start, that'd be great. I am sure that you must have seen various E3 / E4s at Meta. If you can relate to what exactly was the difference that you saw, that'll be super helpful.
I really want to include canonical examples of the scope/ownership expectations for each engineering level in Taro!
In the meantime, one really simple heuristic: how far in advance do you know what you'll work on? If you're SDE1, you're probably handed bugs/small features to work on for a few days at a time.
With SDE2, I'd expect you to tackle more ambiguous projects which may take 2-3 weeks. You should of course be checking in during that time (and providing status updates), but you have a clear objective/autonomy on a multi-week time window.
Levels are interchangeable among FAANG/FAANG-equivalent companies generally, so I do imagine that SDE 2 isn't too different from Meta E4. For a very detailed breakdown of Meta E4 expectations, I recommend checking out my Meta E4 -> E5 growth plan.
I also recommend checking out this Q&A around what a competent mid-level engineer looks like. There, I break down how a mid-level engineer's performance is mainly dictated by very high technical proficiency and what that concretely looks like.
That aside, I actually disagree with Rahul in his time horizon for mid-level engineer projects: A task that takes 2-3 weeks of coding is something I would expect an SDE 1 to be decent at. I believe that a meaty SDE 2 task should take 2-3 months.
The most concrete thing you can do is benchmark yourself against strong SDE 2s in your team/org (you can ask your manager for who are good role models). Some things to observe from them:
For advice on how to hit the ground running:
Thank you for the details response guys. This helps. To answer Rahul's question, I did ask my manager in my intro 1:1 if you have anything planned for me or first project or anything that I will be working on and he mentioned that he has nothing such planned upfront for me at the moment. I guess it'll be decided once I join the team.