Senior Software Engineer [SDE 3] at Amazon

I was recently laid off but finding getting interviews to be quite difficult. If I cannot get a position in the next 6 months but spend that time focusing on interview prep, will employers view the gap as a red flag?

In the current climate, will being out of work after a layoff for more than 6 months hurt my chances of getting work?

Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon

Given all the layoffs happening all over tech industry.

This Amazon expert thinks so: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67SDQQipZJc#t=6m00s>

Please assist with your advice.

Is it a bad time to have career a.k.a. promo conversations?

Senior Software Engineer [SDE3] at Amazon

As a senior IC, I am included as part of leadership meetings (Director+). I gain a lot of early insights into business direction, which is great. However I would like to see how i can take part in the discussions and  have effective conversations? 

I am looking for a book suggestion and/or framework to use on how to go about improving on this? 

Few dimensions which could impact this - 

1. Personality of the individual
2. Awareness/one’s expertise of the topic being discussed

How can one be an effective participant in leadership meetings?

Entry-Level Software Engineer [SDE 1] at Amazon

One thing I have noticed about competent engineers is that they have a very strong understanding of upstream and downstream dependencies in terms of what are the typical parameters being passed into our API's and what we return and what are the things we pass into our dependencies API's and what they return, \
\
How can I learn the context behind what data is typically being passed quickly? I understand that one of the best ways to learn is to start tinkering, and call the API's myself and see what they return. I was wondering if there is any faster way because surely a staff/principal/TL doesn't have the time to tinker with all of the different dependency services and understand what they take in and return. Is it just a matter of reading documentation and asking around?

How can I contextually learn about my team's upstream and downstream dependencies quickly?

My manager told me in my 1:1 that he would like to see me working more independently. He had few points for me like utilize other engineers to unblock and have more discussions on team channel. I feel like I already work quite independently. I drive discussions on my own and involve stakeholders as needed. I speak out whenever I see any issue or I've something to contribute. 

I'm trying to understand what can I do more here and show my manager I'm already doing what he's suggesting. 

I'm in process for L5 promotion and I feel this feedback can negatively impact my chances.

TIA.

What are common limiting beliefs that you all believe software engineers have that aren't true that typically cause them to hold themselves back or causes them to not progress as quickly as they'd like? 

I would assume that at each stage there are some beliefs that we have that cause us to not progress, I am currently most interested in SDE2-&gt;Senior, but would also be interested in hearing other common limiting beliefs to progress past senior as well!

What are common limiting beliefs that software engineers have?

Say a recruiter from Series C reaches out to you for a SWE role. 

What all are the questions that one should ask in order to do the understand the potential of the startup so that there is less risk of layoffs when joining there, given the uncertain times. 

I am aware of crunchbase website and looking at the news article that are linked there. What other homework one should during/before/after the interview process in terms of questions to ask, information to collect?

The limitation that is usually is the startups have very few employees so it is difficult to get concrete answers about the culture, WLB, actual work unless you are in their network.

Since Dec 2021 to Aug 2022, My managers changed 4 times after and I got promoted from sde1 to 2. Due to multiple projects and managers, I could not take ownership as I was still in ramp up phase but manager was expecting more at the SDE2 level, pointing issues, demotivating. So I took internal transfer to a different team. I am in this new team for 3 months. 1 month - I took to even understand the basics. Manager left and new manager joined. I had to go on vacation for 15 days. I don't have metrics to show that I am performing at the SDE2 level because 

1. I didn't get design projects (design phase has already been completed by the time I joined this team). 
2. No OPS, this is a new product. There are no operational tasks. Working on beta launch. 
3. I am the last person who joined this team. I don't have anyone to become mentor since I have limited knowledge on this new team and work
4. Have not taken interviews due to hiring freeze

Worried about Q1 performance cycle in 2023. 2022 was difficult for me to show any impact. Is there anything I can do now to not get low rating in Q1?

At this point, I am no more interested in work and just want to leave due to lack of mentorship.  I have a buddy who answers questions if I ask in this team but I don't have anyone to mentor me to guide me to see what kind of projects I can work, coming up with the initiatives. I feel stuck. There are no hirings happening outside and inside the company. What can I do to proceed further?

I've done various presentations throughout my career, and I always get stressed out doing them. I'll make slides/a script beforehand and pull all-nighters the day before. I'm okay presenting in front of smaller groups, but it's hard in front of larger groups.

How can I get more comfortable with this, especially with higher stakes presentations like those trying to get buy-in from a large group of senior+ engineers and tech leads?

How can I get more comfortable giving presentations in front of large groups?

I'll be going into Amazon as a senior engineer leading a team of 6-7 engineers. I have some anxiety as I have never worked in a FAANG company before, and I imagine the bar is high. Things are also trickier as I'll be in a different time zone from the rest of the team.

How can I make a stellar first impression after I start?

How can I hit the ground running as a tech lead?

I'm about to be officially promoted to Senior Engineer in a couple of days. At the same time, I've also been been presented with an opportunity to move to a different organization in Amazon that's doing some rather exciting work. This is an opportunity I'm likely to accept.

I deeply value my current manager's support, because he was critical in helping me secure my promotion despite some very tricky circumstances. I'm aware that promotions are just meant to recognize past work, but leaving virtually immediately after a promotion still feels rather unpleasant. Leaving now will also have a bigger impact on my team since we've shrunk quite a bit recently.

What are some tips for structuring and framing the inevitable conversations I will be having with my manager(s)?

Any tips around informing your manager(s) about your decision to move on?

There were some great tips on this question, <https://www.jointaro.com/question/CModSkZ4LWzw9bdaiakt/what-are-some-thoughts-on-maintaining-good-meeting-hygiene/> that was previously asked. Our team is pretty good at steps 1 & 2 that Alex mentions regarding setting an agenda and sending the invite beforehand. However, the team really struggles to make sure the meeting agenda is achieved. We have a lot of great discussions but they are not related to the objective of the meeting. How can we bring the discussion back to the main agenda without being rude and cutting potentially important tangents?

Manager and I have a disagreement on creating a promo doc as per the approach suggested by Rahul and Alex .

So to avoid losing the time I went ahead with working on a XFN project, say Project XFNA , as it has high visibility and chance of impact. Due to the complexity I had to spend lot more time on it than I initially estimated.

It meant putting 1 week time learning/testing a frontend framework , Angular and I am a backend developer and never done Frontend coding earlier.

What happened was.. my main project's progress ( say Projects B , which doesn't have impact opportunities in the short term) got delayed by a week , due to my focused attention on Project XFNA. I am Mid-Level Software Engineer \[SDE 2\] at Amazon.

I will need to defend my time on this project XFNA as I focused on it purely for delivering quick impacts. So can I say to my Mgr that I "I took this initiative to work on Project XFNA for showing impact in the short term". If not, how should I rephrase it?

Can I say to manager "I worked on this project to assist in promo" directly?

English is not my first language. I don't know what to write or talk in all kinds of situations. I don't know if I lack critical thinking to think about points or is it because of lack of English proficiency. I have joined Toastmasters but its not helping that much. I am looking for 1-1 coaching in English speaking, writing, public speaking. Group discussions, driving meetings especially getting alignment, breaking down points, story telling are my biggest problems. Any recommendations to fix these issues?

Does anybody have recommendations for English speaking, writing course/coach?

I used to describe project in three sections:

1. Problem
2. Action
3. Impact

Not every project is straight line. Some projects have lot of ambiguities and need lot of discussion to clear those ambiguities, certain features where we spend are de prioritized/removed, process challenges, changing direction/vision. How to explain all these as a story to express the complexity of the project by showing the challenges faced?

Any examples to describe the project as a story for promo docs?

My team is quite small but we own a handful of critical services. Because of the small size, our on-call rotation is around 6 weeks or less but the actual load is somewhat manageable. We do not get an intolerable amount of high severity pages but get a lot of low severity tickets. We constantly work on projects that support goals for other teams that always seem to be higher priority while our tech debt grows. We have identified longer term fixes for some of recurring issues but never have the time to implement them. Most of our planned work for the upcoming year involve modernizing infrastructure or migrating existing services. I'm concerned about whether staying on this team would be conducive to my career growth.

How do I grow my career on a team that owns too many critical, legacy services?

I have been at SDE 2 for a couple years now, and I feel like getting to SDE 3 is unnecessarily complicated. I've gone through multiple teams, and the recurring theme is that there isn't enough SDE 3 scope for me. You also need a **lot** of documentation (think 5+ pages) to show that you have the sufficient impact to deserve the promo, and that's really daunting as well. Any tips on how I can find that SDE 3 scope and navigate this senior promotion in general?

How to navigate the difficult SDE 2 to SDE 3 promotion?

I have communication issues. Especially in a new team, it takes lot of time to grasp what others are saying. During design discussions and post scrums -

1. When there are varying opinions and I still don't understand how to proceed next, what to say?
2. When there is an alignment and I am not confident if I have understand correctly, what to say?

Any techniques on how to end the discussion in post scrum due to time constraint when I am not clear what was discussed?

During design meetings, when there are questions that causes circling around a  topic  that is marked as out of topic. Even though I tell people that it is out of topic as we don't have time to build it and no plan to build it in future and people are still ask questions about same topic. When I personally feel its a nice to have feature but the scope has already been defined, what to tell and move forward to continue with the rest of the design?

How to drive the meeting to proceed further when we are circling around the same topic?

As a team switcher, I'm worried that I could join a team that is rapidly expanding in headcount but isn’t having a clear business impact so the execs don’t care:
- As an engineer, would you get punished for this with worse performance reviews and slower career growth?
- How can you evaluate the business impact of a team?
- Is it just an educated guess or are there concrete things I can look at to judge this?

Can you get punished by joining a team that’s high-growth but has no impact?

I'm currently a mid-level engineer, and I've already made a good amount of progress towards senior. However, I'm looking to change teams as I don't like the work too much on my current team, and I want to minimize the progress "loss" as much as possible in my new team by finding one that sets me up well for the mid-level -> senior promotion.

What’s a good team composition for this? Do you just want a good mix of all levels? What other factors besides team composition should I look for when it comes to evaluating a team on this axis?

How do I find a good team that sets me up for the mid-level -> senior level promotion?

I'm looking to leave my current team, as I don't find the work to be interesting: I spend ~50% of my time on ops work.

I want to choose the right team that’s interesting to me, but it's tricky as I don’t exactly know what I want to work on. I just know that I want to work on the back-end and on a team where learning opportunities are flexible. During team matching, what kind of things would you look for in a team?

My priorities are as follows:
1. Interesting work
2. Growth opportunities
3. Compensation
4. WLB

How can I find a team with interesting work which is also healthy overall?

During my first 1 on 1 with a manager, I asked him if he could help me find a mentor and he said he would find one within our overall organization. He also said he could find me a manager within overall Amazon if I want. This would for overall mentorship in Amazon vs being limited to the scope of just my organization. 

What are some advantages/disadvantages of having 2+ mentors?
Also are there any qualities I should be(or probably more likely asking him to be) on the lookout for those 2 mentors?

Is there such a thing as having too many mentors?

I am working in 3 XFN projects (Say Projects A, B ,C) at the same time. Manager wants success in Project A for sure . 
But he doesn't allow me to be fully dedicated to Project A. He also wants me to come with suggestions to make project A successful. The thing is Projects B & C are huge time consumers and I am left with very little time for Project A. 
How should I approach my manager to assign me fully to Project A. I have successfully deliver projects in past when I was assigned to a single project only . I am bad at multi-tasking.  Project A's success will definitely increase chances of my promo.

How to ask for more time for a particular project?

These are Google levels for discussions/comparison sake and that I came in under-leveled.

I can do work in below capacities:
1. L3 - individual contributor and doing my tasks well. 
2. L5 - Delegating work to others as well.  means developing and maintaining relationships XFN teams which are costly in terms of time/meetings it requires in order to do that. Also doing system designs /architecture/ planning /preparing content for consumption.

If I work in the L5 scope ..will the calibration meetings/equivalent give me sufficient credit for that or will I  still be viewed as a  L3 ( my actual level. If so then my raw code output will be primary metric)? Code output is something I won't be able to do if I focus on delegating work ( scope of L5). So will my L5 work lead to penalties if I am viewed as L3? 

Lines are bit blurred in terms of R&R as I have to do product management work as well in order to get the project to succeed. I have regular meetings with many L5/L6s in order to drive the ideas and occasional ones with Directors and Senior Directors to get their buy-ins.

In particular, what are the upsides of living in the SF Bay Area? Is it worth the high cost of living?

For my situation in particular, I would like to end up at Amazon working full-time after school, but I don't live in Seattle or the Bay Area (I live somewhat close to another major metro area). Does moving make sense?

How important is location for software engineers?

Starting my first day and I was assigned an onboarding buddy. I was wondering what are some of the main questions I should ask.

Some questions I have asked:
1. Wiki on how to set up dev environment
2. Info about all meetings that I was invited to
3. More info about what our team does?

I'm wondering if there are any other main ones I should be asking or is it just ask as they come along?

What questions should I be asking my onboarding buddy?

I work with several senior engineers who split their time between teams. This leads to odd stand up updates such as “I have no updates for this team”. As a result, I feel like I’m not getting value from their updates, and I also don’t know how to structure my updates to make it relevant for them.

How do I give a good standup update on a fragmented team?

I'm currently working pretty long hours on the weekdays to boost my learning speed, but I know that this isn't sustainable. I feel like my micro-routines can be improved: How can I get the most out of each day? I'm also fairly new to the company, and I want to set myself up for a senior level promotion ASAP - These are 2 big reasons why this is very important to me right now.

I've heard Alex, Rahul, and other engineers within Taro talk about handholding when joining a new company for all engineers and for newer engineers in general. 

What does it mean that an engineer doesn't require handholding anymore? Does this mean the frequency of the questions gets diminished or is it more about needing as much initial help to start tasks or something else entirely?

What does it mean to not require handholding anymore?

I'm new to the team, and I want to make an impact quickly. How can I quickly gain respect of people on the team? Are there certain things I should do as I act/react to other people?

When my teammates think of me, I want them to see someone respected/important. How can I do that?

I am going to join as an SDE2 at amazon in couple of weeks. This is my first FAANG. I work on an oracle ECom platform.I don’t use design patterns often. Please recommend how important design patterns are in FAANG. What are the main ones ?

What are the Main Design patterns should I know in Amazon AWS?

As I'm starting to join a team soon(and knowing this answer varies by team, level, and company), I'm wondering how long does onboarding take and what does it mean to be fully onboarded within your team

I'm going to be joining Amazon soon and the team I'm on is going from 4/5 people a month ago to I believe 9/10 people (counting me). Our team is going to be comprised of SDE 2's and 1's (I'm an SDE 1).

I'm wondering what's the best way to have the best onboarding experience during this time.

While it will be nice that I will have a decent amount of people who will be in the same boat as me in terms of onboarding, I'm also worried that my manager and more senior teammates won't have as much time for things like 1 on 1s, answering questions, helping me onboard, etc. if they're also helping other people on our team in addition to their own work.

Best onboarding tips when multiple people are onboarding at the same time?

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.

Expectations at different levels? (Junior vs Mid)

I'm a pretty new SDE 2, and I know that the SDE 2 -> SDE 3 promotion is really difficult at Amazon. Given that, I would like to start working on this promotion as soon as possible. However, I'm new, so I don't want to make things weird for my manager and I. When does it make sense for me to bring up this topic of promotion and start working on a growth plan with my manager?

How early should I let my manager know I want to get to SDE 3?

Across my career, I've felt bad about my skills sometimes because I'll have teammates, who are also at my level, doing as much as 2x more than me. This has led to me feeling like an imposter many times - Any thoughts on how to process all this?

I've felt imposter syndrome from seeing super talented peers - How do I deal with this?

Lately, I have been finding myself with a lot of free time and am unable to shake this feeling that I am not "doing enough." After finishing my school work, I usually just go to the gym, hang out with friends, or play video games. 

Is there anything else I can do to further improve myself as an engineer and set myself up for success later on? Perhaps some books or resources to read.

I've tried working on some side projects, but honestly find it hard to follow through with them due to lack of urgency with no deadlines and prior fatigue from working on school assignments.

How to make the most of my time in school?

I was working on a P1 - High priority bug today which needed to be done within a day. This bug was assigned to me by a Senior Engineer who was supposed to pick up this task but was delegated to me. This engineer has been pretty helpful to me when I was ramping up on things. He explained me the context of the bug in a short call. I figured out the fix and sent him the method which was responsible for the issue and the stack-trace from the log and how I am going to fix it.

I was then told by the same engineer to not 'swing by small small things by me and that I take the entire ownership of the task I am doing and bring it to closure'. I do agree with this and understand that they have other priority meetings and features to work upon but my entire purpose of sending him updates was then I was not going off track and that the CR which I am going to raise does not have a lot of revision / reviews.

I just need to know when exactly are we supposed to let the other team member know how much we have progressed and also at the same time not let them feel that I am not taking ownership of my tasks?

When should we give the status updates to our team members?

With a recent, completely unexpected reorg, the product my team owns has effectively been cancelled and will be sunsetted. The company is trying to figure out new scope for my team, but in the meantime, I don't really have stuff to work on. Here are my questions:
1. Is having 1-2 months of downtime like this okay for my job and career?
2. What can I do in the meantime to be productive? I've mainly just been doing auxiliary things like reading documentation.

Due to a reorg, I've been left without work and haven't been doing much.

I'm a native Android developer, and I really enjoy doing the work. However, I want to make sure that I'm well setup across my career overall - Does Android have good prospects in tech going forward? On a related note, how does it correlate to future opportunities and growth within Amazon?

Does Android have a long-term future in the industry?

I have my 1:1 catch up call scheduled with my manager soon, this is the first 1:1 / call I'll be having with him since I met him in the interview. What are some of the good questions I can ask w.r.t to the team and the work that I'll be doing? He had taken my System Design interview and there he went on to talk about the team for 15 mins where we discussed about the team work, team size, on call structure, wlb etc. One important point which I feel is that I won't be joining the team immediately, there's still 3 months time.

What questions can I ask to my to-be manager about the team I'll be joining?

I’m an electronics and communications engineer, I’ve been working in low-level software and hardware. I want to understand other domains – other technical teams and also dipping into PM strategy. I think this is limiting my growth in Amazon.

How can I branch out of my domain and learn about adjacent areas in order to build more scope?

As I think about my career a few years from now, I wonder if I will continue to learn and grow at Amazon or if it would make sense for me to switch to a startup. I do care about compensation as well so that may be a limiting factor in jumping to a startup. What advice do you have for someone who may be interested in working at a startup vs. Big Tech? How many years of experience should I rack up at Amazon / in Big Tech before moving to a startup?

How many years of experience should I rack up at Amazon / in Big Tech before moving to a startup?

Does it make more sense to specialize in something? I feel like senior engineers focus more on a specific area, while mid-level engineers work on something that’s more generic.

If I were to specialize, how do I pick something that’s going to be on the cutting edge in 5-10 years? I want to work on something that stays relevant long into the future - Are there any specific technical spaces that you're excited about that fit this description?

I feel like senior engineers tend to focus on a specific area. How can I pick a specialization that's still relevant in 5-10 years?

Would you recommend software engineers try a rotation as an SDM (software development manager)? What benefits or drawbacks would you say would come from making that switch to SDM?

Would you recommend SDEs try a rotation as an SDM?

My team is responsible for an ambitious product that we're looking to have a multi-year time horizon for. I know that it's important for senior engineers and especially staff engineers to be able to think proactively, so I was wondering what can concretely be done to get better at creating that long-term vision spanning across many years?

I've had teammates do this in the past, and it's frustrating. How can I prevent it from happening again, and should I approach my manager about it? How do I frame that conversation if so?

How can I prevent others from taking credit for my ideas?

This is my first job at a FAANG company, so I'm interested in what are the main mindset shifts needed to succeed when switching into massive environment like this for the first time.

Mid-Level Software Engineer [L5] at Amazon

The leadership principle is as follows: “Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.” 

I have a hard time with this, e.g. my team is debating between two JavaScript frameworks. How do I stay firm in the decision while keeping others positive?

“Disagree and commit” is an Amazon leadership principle. How do I do that while still maintaining my relationships?

How do you build up technical skills for a senior engineer? I want to develop that intuition to understand how to choose the proper technical approach and break down the trade-offs. Are there any resources I can read to accelerate this process?

How can I grow from an SDE 2 level of technical proficiency to that of an SDE 3?

I'm on a team with many new SDE 1s, and I'm trying to get them up to speed. However talking with all of them takes a lot of time, and it's affecting my velocity with project execution. My manager suggested that I set up office hours. Does that idea make sense and are there any other ways to make this all more efficient?

How can I teach and onboard other engineers faster?

Through a series of unpredictable events, my team has boiled down to just my manager, myself, and many entry-level engineers (SDE 1s). Some of the SDE 1s have some experience (e.g. a somewhat tenured internal transfer) but many are new grads.

My manager is being more hands-on with this gap (and I like my manager overall), working through technical reviews and whatnot, and has other plans to shore up the seniority of the team. However, it looks like a lot of responsibility will fall on me to upscale this team and help deliver. This is nice as there's a pretty clear path to SDE 3 for me, but I'm also a relatively new SDE 2, so I'm unsure if I have what it takes.

All that being said, is this overall situation good or bad? The growth potential is there, but I'm also afraid of being overwhelmed.

I have this crazy opportunity to raise/lead an entire team - Is this good or bad?

I'm currently working at Amazon as a contractor. There's 2 questions on my mind:
1. I approached my manager for the possibility of converting to full-time and they said that headcount wasn't available. However, several full-time engineers joined the team recently in a similar role to mine. Should I approach my manager about this? If so, how do I frame the conversation?
2. Is it a good time switching to full-time in general? What are the pros/cons of contract vs. FTE?

How can I approach looking for an FTE role?

My starter project was to migrate a web service to a new API which offers similar functionality. This was intended to be a pretty straightforward migration, mostly renaming + replacing some strings. However, this project took much longer than my manager or I anticipated. How could I have predicted and prevented this?

How can I more quickly identify blockers in my starter project?

I was inspired by the gamification on Duolingo, which is a language learning app with a "daily streak" mechanic. The incentive to do something in the app every day has been very powerful for me - I have a streak of 200+ days!

I want to bring this idea over to an engineering context, creating an app called "Leetfriends". The purpose of the app is to have friends share with one another their Leetcode streaks, using social pressure to encourage consistency for everyone. I’m hoping that the app does well, so I could include it in my portfolio and boost my job prospects. How do I best go about this app?

I'm working on a side project around Leetcode streaks - What's the best way to build it?

Here's the experience I have so far with leadership:
- I schedule meetings between teammates to clarify things for everyone when people seem to be lost or start asking a lot of questions in a trend. This usually helps unblock them.
- Most of my success comes from cross-team communications in terms of knowing and finding the right people for local tasks. I also jump on opportunities myself which usually end with good results. But I haven't yet been able to make a significant impact within my own team.

And here's more details about my current team:
- My team is myself, a PM, one full-time developer, and two other developers/Solution Architects that juggle other responsibilities part-time.
- I've had issues with a particular person who leans too aggressively sometimes questioning the impact of the work items I'm proposing. I'm able to work it out with them, but this relationship could probably be improved further.

How to demonstrate leadership (for promotion) on technical teams as an introvert?

Asking because I have some experience with it, which you can find below:
- I wasn't truly enjoying the work I was doing in my role from the very beginning. I think the fact that it is customer facing drains me the most and I keep feeling bad that I wasn't doing deep technical work.
- I completely burned myself out last year after joining a high-stakes team with too much ambiguity to deal with being early in my career. Also, my senior colleague left the team so most of the work landed on my shoulders. It was also a lot of the non-technical work I disliked.
- That burnout was the breakpoint of my decision to switch careers to SWE where I can be more hands-on. LeetCode is a grind on its own so this non-stop chase somewhat makes me question the whole field in general, but I'm probably just spoiled with the current opportunities I have.

How do you avoid mental burnout and passion loss across a long career?

I want to know if I'm ready to start interviewing. Here's some additional context:
- I'm confident with easy and easy-medium questions, 50-50 with normal-mediums, and I'm having tough time with harder-mediums and hards.
- I can identify and apply most patterns but the topics I struggle with are heaps, bit manipulation (python sucks here), backtracking, and dynamic programming.
- I'm more confident with System Design than LeetCode due to professional experience. I also studied through 4 use-cases in Grokking the System Design for practice.
- I've done 217 Leetcode questions total in the span of 1 year. Of those, 100 new questions were done in the past 6 months. I also re-do questions using spaced repetition in a Notion table with ToDo, 
- For recruiter phone-screens I kinda struggle to explain what I do in my role since I do a little bit of everything. I need to work on a concrete explanation.

Did 217 Leetcode across 1 year - Am I ready for interviews?

I have ~3 years of work experience, but it was spent working a non-SWE role within Amazon. Because of this, companies consider me between SWE 1 and SWE 2 when I'm interviewing.

What’s the difference between SWE 1 and SWE 2 on the job, and how can I show that I'm in the latter camp in interviews so I can get a SWE 2 offer instead of being set back with a SWE 1 offer?

How do I show that I'm at a SWE 2 level when interviewing?

I’ve seen this a lot with smaller companies like startups. It’s just not likely that I’ve worked with the particular tech stack of whatever the question is about, so I can’t really answer them a lot of the time. How can I respond gracefully to these types of questions?

How do I deal with companies that ask very framework specific questions?

I came out of school wanting a traditional SWE role but ended up taking a non-SWE role with Amazon due to its name brand and strong TC. This role doesn't have too much coding, so I want to switch to the SDE track within Amazon.

I'm wondering if it makes sense to pursue avenues outside of Amazon as well. My concern is that after losing the reputation I have within Amazon, I won’t be able to get a SW2 role, getting a SW1 role instead.

I interviewed internally for SDE2 in Q1 2022, but didn’t pass the Leetcode portion. However, I was told that I was pretty close to meeting the SDE 2 bar, which is why I am optimistic about this path.

Should I transfer internally to SDE II at Amazon or look elsewhere?

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, and much more. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world”.

Amazon

Software Engineering Intern

In a vacuum, yes, I think it does make sense to move. Especially if you're young + don't have kids or a house (which is likely the case if you're an intern). 

A more nuanced take: it depends on the density of the team + org headcount in the area. 
- If your entire team is co-located in the Bay or Seattle, you absolutely should move -- there's certainly some element of "out of sight, out of mind", and it's *so* much easier to create deeper relationships in person. 
- If most of the org/company is located in one area, you'll find that the leadership of the org is going to be where most of the headcount is. So you'll have a much harder time advancing to the leadership levels, despite the company saying that they're remote-friendly. 
- If the company is fully remote, it matters less, but the Bay and Seattle are still better for job hopping given the number of opportunities here.

Meta, Pinterest, Kosei

Rahul Pandey

Even with the shift to remote work, the Bay Area is still by far the best place to be in a vacuum as Rahul mentioned:
- A lot of companies are doing RTO, especially Big Tech companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon. This means that the wealth of opportunities is still the largest in the Bay Area as so many of these companies are HQed there.
- The best "next generation" of companies are still overwhelmingly in the Bay Area. Think pre-IPO companies like Instacart and recent IPOs like Airbnb.
- The Silicon Valley is by far the best place to be if you are a founder or aspire to be a founder.
- Career networking is the easiest here due to the sheer density of talent, especially in SF. There are very few places in the world where you can walk into a coffee shop in a major downtown area and be guaranteed to see several other software engineers there.

That being said, the costs are (literally) quite steep, hence the "in a vacuum" caveat:
- Cost of living is insanely high and not slowing down.
- CA has some of the highest taxes in the nation, and local taxes in Bay Area counties tend to be high as well. CA is a high-benefit state, but you're not likely to experience too much of it as a young, high-income software engineer.
- Traffic is a nightmare as outside of SF, the Bay Area is mainly suburban sprawl and extremely car dependent.
- Crime is a problem, especially in SF.

At the end of the day, it all really depends on your situation and what I will say is that with covid, *it has become far more feasible to build a stellar software engineering career outside of the Bay Area*. Here are some reasons for you to stay where you are:
- You're already in a great position being part of another major metro area and having interned for Amazon. If you like your team and it's not in the Bay Area, it's a great option to return to them and just not move to the Bay Area.
- If you have deep roots in your current location (family and friends) and not many within the Bay Area, that's a big argument against moving.
- You don't want to deal with all the downsides I mentioned above, haha.

If you (or anyone else reading this) end up moving to the Bay Area, I recommend these resources:
- ["How can I make the most out of a return to office?"](https://link.jointaro.com/84bnboEeBsBD7XXZ9)
- ["How can I better network with other software engineers in the Bay Area?"](https://link.jointaro.com/42JLsbppRMwAJAPUA)

Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal

Alex Chiou

Wanted to also share a YouTube video I made about location here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEf3brlRrQc>

I am not an expert like Rahul and Alex, but for me, working remotely is super important. In my past company, we had a mandate for everyone to return to the office. \
\
I changed companies in the past to move to remote work. I was even willing to take a pay cut for the same but I didn't have to. I think I still continue to enjoy remote work and have no plans to move to a company where a return to office is mandated (even if it doesn't mean I don't work for FAANG or get a super high-paying job)\
\
To each his own, I guess. It depends on what is essential for you.  And will change employers should the need arise. But I do work hard for whomever my employer is though.

Intuit

Senior Software Engineer

This collection represents the best of what Taro has to offer, personally curated by Alex and Rahul. If you're short on time, go through the content here.

An internship is a period of work experience offered by an organization for a limited period of time. In software, internships tend to have stronger importance with more competitive pay and real projects to work on.

How important is location for software engineers?

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