One thing that wasn't mentioned here is Amazon will tell you you're interviewing for a SDE3 role, but when the offer comes, it says SDE2. If you ask about it, they'll give you some story about how "oh. we have to hire you as a 2 because of budgetary reasons, but we're giving you a 3 salary. you'll be automatically pro.oted to a 4 after 6 months."
This is, of course, complete bullshit.
No one is "automatically" promoted to an SDE3. You have to propose and complete a "project" - which you aren't allowed to complete on company time. Usually it's around 60-120 additional hours. Then there's a chance you might get promoted.
Amazon itself is filled with a collection of projects that people wrote in 60 or so hours, and are completely undocumented. Most are orphaned after a year.
Most SDE2s I knew who went through this process and completed their project weren't promoted and moved onto another company.
