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0 pointsamznthrowaway56y ago0 comments

What are the benefits to treating SDEs as fungible?

At Amazon, Sr. Leadership and HR love to pretend all SDEs at a given level are interchangeable, level actually indicates competence, and leetcoding external hires with zero domain knowledge have far more worth than internal promos. All of the above assumptions seem completely insane to me and have resulted in the destruction of many projects.

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natalyarostova6y ago· 1 in thread

Yeah me too. Also at amazon. And yet amazon is obscenely successful, as are other big tech companies which take similar strategies. It seems that matching expertise to projects is so fucking hard that just giving up at the start and accepting it’s impossible is the optimal strategy.

Honestly I don’t know. I agree it’s weird. But these companies keep succeeding doing it this way, so I’m not sure what to make of it.

amznthrowaway5OP6y ago

> But these companies keep succeeding doing it this way, so I’m not sure what to make of it.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. The fact that a system might be working, doesn't mean it's anywhere near optimal. I think these companies are successful in spite of these types of policies, not because of them.

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