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At Amazon, yes. You can be interviewed for a different job or level than what you applied to (this should be made clear to you from the recruiter), and you can be offered a job at a different level than you interviewed for. Different typically means lower, but it can also be higher. If you’re down-leveled after interviewing, it’s most likely due to scope, scale, depth, or complexity of experience, or potentially due to not meeting/raising the technical/functional bar at the level you interviewed.
Good for you for trying something new, I did the same.
What was your level before you went into management? That's probably where you want to start. Unless you grew as an IC while being a director.
I can't speak for very large tech companies, but I can tell you that we will make an offer below a level if the person is the right fit but has gaps. It's not to ding the person as it is to set the correct salary and growth trajectory (it would be awkward for your manager to get you to grow into the role you are already in, versus the next one you haven't achieved). We usually want to fast track them to their original level, for their benefit and ours, e.g. within a year.
Some additional context:
Fwiw titles at my company mean virtually nothing. My opinion is that most people at my firm (myself included) are over-leveled by 1-2 levels. However, I would feel very confident as an L5/E5. The reason I’d feel pretty uncertain as an L6/E6 is because I’ve seen only a very limited set of technologies and problems thus far. For instance, my startup doesn’t have massive scale / traffic issues that consumer facing sites handle, so we haven’t needed to implement caching. It also doesn’t have “big data” — a few hundred GB is a generous upper bound. There’s also very little need to optimize for great UX as well so usage of asynchronous code, pub/sub is virtually non-existent. The biggest technical problems it faces are just really poor DB model design in its legacy system, highly coupled components, and poor testing. So my particular gaps that I’m aware of are around these areas. Not sure how rounded out these larger tech firms want their Staff level engineers to be.
More art than science. You should let the recruiter know you are open to a lower level (L5). Ideally, if the interviewer find you not strong enough for L6 but good fit for L5, they’ll indicate in the feedback. And HC will consider you for both.
Speaking of FB, there is a definite learning curve on how to drive projects and influence other teams or sub-teams that you’ll need to work through at E6 where the expectations at E5 are more about delivery of your pieces and providing technical and light project direction within your team. One advantage to joining a level down as an IC is that you will have more time to learn how to be effective in the culture, which has a different idea of what a successful engineer or tech lead looks like when compared to a startup. Your management experience will help you a lot at E6+, but I found startup experience to be undervalued coming in.
I agree with the advice shared here. Go for senior, learn the company culture, and quickly move into a staff role.
Based on what you shared, I don't think you would excel in an interview for a staff engineer. I think you're correct in recognizing you need more exposure to things like asynchronous dev, scaling, performance, and general large system design to really shine in an interview.
Final note - a Staff engineer at a FAANG that grew into the position after years in the company is not the same as someone who was promoted to Staff after joining as a senior. Internal promotions (generally) have a lower bar.
Thanks everyone, appreciate all the insight offered here. I hadn’t considered the increased runway I’d have as an E5/L5 vs E6/L6. This solidifies my decision to just apply as E5/L5 and establish the knowledge and skills necessary to feel confident at operating at a Staff Engineer level. Happy holidays all!