I think you need to separate 2 things here, getting a job at FAANG companies, which are available in many locations not just the US, and getting a job in a FAANG in US.

Getting a job in one of the FAANG companies is indeed hard enough, but doable, you just have to 1) Prepare and learn needed skills, and 2) Understand exactly what they are looking for.

I see a common problem where people train for Leetcode for months, then say I did great in the interview, and still got rejected. That is mainly because they don't realize that behavioural is equally important in FAANG companies as the technical skills, they also fail to see that knowing how to solve the problem is one thing, and showing your thought process and sharing it with the interviewer is the key there.

So, I would advice you to:

1. Decide the goal that your looking for first.
2. Continue working on your technical skills (DSA, problem solving, etc...)
3. Start applying NOW!
4. If you fail in the next interview, assess, and repeat.

I can assure you, starting to apply while learning is the best mechanism to know where you stand and get a real-world assessment for yourself. 

SDE @ Amazon - www.anamazonsde.com

anamazonsde

Yes, don't limit your self to planned work! For every SW team, there is a constant effort in operational work, tech dept, and unplanned migrations.

Book a constant percent of your time, look around, there will be a lot of areas for optimizations, new ideas, and great POCs, just keep mining for impactful changes, look for cost optimizations, operational enhancements, or new unfunded ideas that you think will have great impact.

Don't spend too much time on that though, if it succeeds, you will be having all the credit, but if it goes bad, you will be asked for that time.

Failures is how we learn.

I guess the biggest lesson I would see, is that, being senior, it's a part of your job to lead the team to success and lead by example, now there are cases where hardest work with certain teams would not get results as well, but I have seen in many times that just applying that effort into making sure the tech team does their best, and gets an opportunity to learn and deliver impact always pays off.

I don't know the exact specifics of that work your team did, and I trust you already are judging in a fair way, but I would also advice to be cautious of falling the trap of blaming others for dropping the ball etc..

Tbh, I don't think this is a bad feedback, it's an honest one, and shows also you deliver good results with high speed, and after identifying a problem (keeping stakeholders out of loop) you managed to align/fix that as well and deliver high quality work.

There is no perfect feedback or reference, and you won't be there listening to what every reference will say about you, I think your manager cared for you to let you know as well.

Good luck! And take it easy, it's a minor step, you already passed the hard ones.

Replying here to the comment.

Yes, it's said that people can get PIPed as well to fill the quota. It's also said that they do their best to ensure only really low performing people get it.

However, again, I think this should not prevent you from getting there, you are leaving a lot of benefits on the table out of fear of something that happens to a few people with very specific conditions.

I can help answering the Amazon part. First of all, as you mentioned you are a hard worker, that means you should not fear getting PIPed, as mostly hard workers are safe from that.

On the other hands, one of the main reasons to get PIPed, apart from not working of course, is **lack of good communications** and **bad relations with the team** members. I have witnessed these traits cause many people to go into Focus, then end up being PIPed.

At the end, I wouldn't worry if I were you, I feel like in Amazon you will be pretty safe, as also L5 is a terminal level. Good luck!

I would say you should look into the option to get into bigger companies, FAANG is not the only group to join, but definitely there are things to get there you would not get anywhere else in terms of scale and communications, also to use the fact that you are still early in your career.

On the other hand, you can also look into startup option, faster movement, great exposure to recent trends, yet a bit pressure more than average.

Getting to work with proper methods, learning automation, deployments, and better software engineering are things not everyone get exposed to early in their career.

Hearing office hours for team members felt weird when I read it. However, reading Alex's comment, I think that is a very good way to look at it.

I would however start by having recorded knowledge transfer sessions, upload them to the team's channel for future members, and taking Q/A at the end of each, this way you do it 1 time, and the rest of support can be an ad-hoc one.

Everything should be written in wiki, or readme files, I suggest you do all the onboarding tasks once at least to make sure they are clear, instructions are correct, and no hidden issues are there, this will reduce the back and forth, and save you a lot of time. (If this is done in the video sessions, that would be better).

After the onsite loop is finished, the interviewing team gathers to take the decision. This meeting has multiple parties involved:

- **The recruiter:** He is your defending partner inside the loop, he does his best to make sure you are hired if you deserve that.
- **The HM:** He is the manager that has a position open, he interviews you, and if he thinks you are a good candidate, it’s in his best interest to hire you as well.
- **The Bar Raiser:** He can be one of the technical interviewers, or a non-technical with just all-LP round, or even just an observer in the meeting without actually interviewing you, his job is to defend the company’s policy, and make sure to hire you only when you raise the bar for the company. This is the only person that has veto power to reject a person.
- **The interview team:** This includes all other SDEs that interviewed you.

The bar raiser starts by going around, taking any high level comments, then commencing with all the competencies that Amazon measures against. Every interviewer gets to show his feedback, gets asked on it, tries to convince the team with his decision.\
Prior to the meeting, every interviewer must input his feedback, that includes if he agrees with hiring you or not, then the bar raiser challenges each person to make sure the feedback is fair, and that the decision the interviewer chose is justified.

This is basically the summary of how it's done, but more details can be added if needed..

I think you should first decide, in case you have 2 offers, which one you would join, if that's the AWS, then you have your answer.

If you still want to explore both, you can reach reach out to the recruiter telling him you already have an offer and would like to accelerate the process.

The recruiter for amazon might not push the start date or decision deadline too far, but you should try.

I would avoid setting a start date, then eventually joining another place, it will be perceived negatively, as the team might stop their search once they hire you.

Congrats on securing the offer to join!\
Joining as L5 with 3 YOE means you will be at the very first stage of L5 bar, that means expectations will be of higher bar that what you are used to.

Still, to navigate the first few months there, be sure to look around and learn from everyone, don't be afraid to ask if you need anything, as long as you do your research as well, it will be taken negatively if you expect answers to everything and not lookup yourself and do some research before asking.

Amazon is a very big company, but teams are of sizes less than what you are used to, the challenging part is to cope with the knowledge scale, and getting used to all the tools, but your onboarding plan should be enough to get you past the first few months.