Don't Get Down-Leveled or How to Tell a Good Story (From a Principal at Amazon)
Summary
TLDRThis video script addresses the common issue of 'down leveling' in job interviews, where candidates may be offered a lower position than they believe they deserve. The speaker, a principal engineer with extensive interview experience, shares insights on why companies practice down leveling and offers strategies to avoid it. He emphasizes the importance of aligning one's narrative with the target company's expectations and using the STAR method to craft impactful stories that demonstrate one's capabilities without exaggeration or dishonesty.
Takeaways
- đ Companies often have different leveling systems, which can lead to potential job offers at a lower level than expected.
- đ It's important to accept a job offer at the right level to avoid the struggle for a promotion to reach the level you deserve.
- đŒ The speaker is a Principal Engineer with extensive experience in technical interviews and has conducted over 800 interviews for Amazon.
- đ Hiring at too high a level can have long-term negative consequences, including termination, which is why companies may employ 'down leveling' as a risk management strategy.
- đ€ There are two cases to consider if you feel you've been down leveled: the company might have correctly assessed your level, or they might have made a mistake.
- đ Researching company levels on sites like levels.fyi or Glassdoor can help understand the expectations and relative levels across companies.
- đ A strong behavioral interview component can help ensure you're not down leveled and can even save an interview if the technical parts were mediocre.
- đ Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Results) not as a story generator but as a 'linter' to ensure your stories have substance and a clear point.
- đ Start your story by anchoring it to your status and responsibilities, then introduce challenges and obstacles to demonstrate your capabilities at the targeted level.
- đ ââïž Avoid making up stories or describing villains; keep the narrative professional and focused on demonstrating your ability to overcome challenges.
- đŻ The depth of the challenges in your stories should be commensurate with the level you're targeting, and the outcome should be positive but not overly perfect to maintain authenticity.
Q & A
Why might a company offer a job at a lower level than expected?
-A company might offer a job at a lower level to hedge against risk, especially if there's ambiguity during the interview about the candidate's current operating level.
What is the term used for the situation where a job offer is made at a lower level than the candidate expects?
-This situation is referred to as 'down leveling'.
How can a candidate determine if the level offered by a company is appropriate for their experience?
-Candidates can use websites like levels.fyi or Glassdoor to get a sense of level expectations and how they compare across companies.
What is the role of a 'bar raiser' in the context of Amazon's hiring process?
-A 'bar raiser' at Amazon is a senior employee who trains others on how to conduct technical interviews and run debriefs, ensuring the quality of the hiring process.
Why is it important for a candidate to accurately represent their level during the interview process?
-Accurately representing one's level is crucial to avoid being mismatched with a role, which can lead to discomfort, poor performance, and potential termination.
What are the two types of questions typically asked during technical interviews?
-Technical interviews usually consist of functional questions, which test technical knowledge, and behavioral questions, which assess past experiences and behaviors.
What can cause a candidate to be down leveled during the interview process?
-Down leveling can occur if a candidate performs well in one area (either functional or behavioral) but not the other, creating an imbalance in the perceived level of expertise.
What is the STAR method and how is it typically used in interviews?
-STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Results, and it is a method used to structure responses to behavioral interview questions, ensuring a clear narrative of past experiences.
Why is it suggested not to use the STAR method as a story generator in interviews?
-The STAR method should not be used as a story generator because it focuses too much on what happened rather than developing the character of the candidate, which is important for showing fit with the company's needs.
What is the alternative story shape recommended in the script for interview responses?
-The alternative story shape recommended is a simple U-shape, starting with the status and responsibilities, followed by challenges, and ending with an imperfect but positive success.
Why should candidates avoid making up stories or exaggerating their experiences during an interview?
-Candidates should avoid fabrication because it can damage their credibility if they cannot answer follow-up questions or if the story is inconsistent with their actual experiences.
What should be the focus of a candidate's story when describing their experiences in an interview?
-The focus should be on showing how the candidate's actions and responsibilities align with the level they are targeting, demonstrating their ability to handle challenges appropriate to that level.
How can candidates ensure their interview stories are authentic and not perceived as fluff?
-Candidates can ensure authenticity by anchoring their stories on their actual status and responsibilities, describing real challenges, and avoiding the creation of villains or perfect outcomes.
Outlines
đ€ The Risks of Down Leveling in Job Offers
The paragraph discusses the complexities of company leveling systems and the risk of being offered a position at a lower level than one's capabilities. It emphasizes the importance of being hired at the right level to avoid the struggle for promotion to reach one's deserved position. The speaker, a principal engineer with extensive interview experience at Amazon, shares insights on why companies might down level candidates and offers strategies to avoid this situation. The focus is on the importance of aligning one's technical interview performance with the expectations for the desired level within a company.
đ Understanding Leveling and Interview Dynamics
This paragraph delves into the reasons companies may hire at a lower level than a candidate's capabilities, highlighting the long-term consequences and the resources wasted in correcting such mistakes. It introduces two scenarios where down leveling might occur: when the company correctly assesses the candidate's level or when they mistakenly underestimate it. The speaker advises on using resources like 'levels.fyi' or 'Glassdoor' for research and emphasizes the importance of honesty with oneself and being realistic about one's capabilities and the company's level expectations.
đ Crafting Impactful Stories for Technical Interviews
The speaker provides guidance on effectively using storytelling during technical interviews to convey one's capabilities and suitability for the position. They critique the traditional STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Results) method, suggesting it focuses too much on recounting events rather than character development. Instead, they propose starting with one's status and responsibilities, then introducing challenges and obstacles, and finally describing overcoming them to achieve success. The 'U-shape' story structure is recommended for its ability to convey the magnitude of impact and problem-solving abilities, which can help avoid down leveling.
đ« Avoiding Pitfalls in Storytelling and Interview Preparation
The final paragraph warns against the temptation to fabricate stories or exaggerate one's experiences during interviews, as this can damage credibility and lead to a failed interview. It advises keeping stories professional, avoiding the creation of 'villains,' and ensuring that stories end with an imperfect but positive success to maintain authenticity. The speaker also suggests using the STAR method as a 'linter' to ensure substance in stories, rather than a strict formula. The goal is to make it easy for interviewers to gauge one's level by demonstrating the ability to handle challenges appropriate to the targeted level.
đ Embracing the Power of Storytelling in Professional Growth
In the concluding paragraph, the speaker reflects on the innate human tendency to connect through stories and encourages embracing this in professional settings. They acknowledge that while it may feel artificial at times, storytelling is a fundamental way to convey one's narrative and experiences. The speaker invites viewers to engage with the content, suggesting that with practice, one can become a compelling storyteller, enhancing their professional interactions and growth.
Mindmap
Keywords
đĄLeveling Systems
đĄDown Leveling
đĄTechnical Interviews
đĄBehavioral Questions
đĄBar Raiser
đĄDebriefs
đĄCareer Ambition
đĄStorytelling in Interviews
đĄSTAR Method
đĄImperfect Success
đĄNarrative Animals
Highlights
The importance of leveling systems in job offers and the risk of being undervalued by companies.
The speaker's experience as a Principal Engineer at Amazon and their role as a bar raiser.
The potential long-term consequences of hiring at the wrong level and the use of down leveling as a risk management strategy.
The two cases to consider when feeling down leveled: the company might be right or they might have made an error.
Using sites like levels.fyi or Glassdoor to understand level expectations across different companies.
The limitations of using Blind for research due to potential inaccuracies in anonymous claims.
The importance of being honest with oneself and aligning one's level with the company's expectations.
The impact of interview performance on the level of job offer extended, focusing on both functional and behavioral questions.
The narrative structure of interviews and the importance of storytelling in showcasing one's capabilities.
Critique of the STAR method for story generation and a suggestion to use a simpler story shape instead.
The role of conflict and challenges in interview stories and how they reflect one's level of operation.
The importance of story authenticity and the risks associated with fabricating stories during interviews.
Avoiding the creation of villains in interview stories to maintain a professional tone.
The significance of concluding stories with an imperfect but positive outcome to reflect realism.
Strategies for mapping one's experiences to the target company's level expectations.
The advice against lying in interviews and the emphasis on spending energy on personal development instead.
Encouragement for viewers to engage with the content by liking, subscribing, and commenting for future video topics.
Reflection on the human connection through stories and the speaker's personal approach to storytelling.
Transcripts
in a perfect world every company would
have the same leveling systems
sadly this isn't the case
there's a very real risk that companies
see your potential but extend an offer
to you at a lower level
it sucks and it forces you into an
uncomfortable position
accepting the offer even if it's more
money at a better company
might feel like you're groveling at the
feet of their bad judgment it's just
better to come in at the right level
than to battle for a promotion just to
get where you should be
in this video i'll share with you the
reasons why this happens and show you
how to avoid it
meta here i'm a principal engineer and
i've conducted more than 800 technical
interviews for amazon during my 15 years
at the company i'm a bar raiser and i
train other amazonians how to conduct
technical interviews and how to run
debriefs
while i work at amazon these videos
express my own opinion and the contents
of the video do not contain amazon
confidential information i've run
hundreds of debriefs for engineering
loops this video will focus on technical
interviews but the concepts are also
useful when you're describing yourself
to potential new teams
talking with recruiters during
performance review time
or when you're making a stab for
promotion
pretty useful stuff
companies are trying to fill a specific
need when they decide to interview you
hiring somebody at too high of a level
has disastrous long-term consequences it
takes a long time to fix the problems of
getting someone's level wrong and it
usually will end poorly like in
termination
it also takes time and resources that no
team has to spare on top of being very
uncomfortable for all parties involved
so that's why companies employ down
leveling it's an easy way to hedge
against risk if there's any ambiguity
during the interview about what level
you're currently operating at if you
feel like you've been down leveled there
are two cases to consider
it very well may be that they got it
right
remember levels at a company are
relative you need to be open with the
possibility that they made a correct
determination of your level at their
company
perhaps you were the cto of a failed
startup with three engineers and they
gave you an offer of senior developer at
a mid-sized company you can scream all
day that you're being demoted from the
c-suite but in reality you aren't being
demoted you can use sites like levels
that fyi or glassdoor to get a sense of
levels across companies years of
relevant experience and expectations
when applying to companies
sometimes levels at one company straddle
two at another it's okay to be ambitious
if you're being realistic
be wary of sites like blind for this
sort of research
there are a lot of stories where people
brag that they receive de facto
promotions by moving companies
people say a lot of things when their
words can't be traced back to their
identities
sometimes it's true sometimes it isn't
the key here is to be honest with
yourself after doing your research while
it might be nice to get a title you
don't deserve you'll be in a world of
pain if you can't meet next level
expectations
your goal should always be to write
level yourself at the new company the
second case is that they just got it
wrong you actually operate at a higher
level and for some reason they just
don't see it
interviews consist of functional
questions and behavioral questions if
you bomb them no offer will be extended
if you do really well on both an offer
will be extended at the level you
applied for
down leveling happens in these two
quadrants if you had a barely passing
set of coding but you did really well in
behavioral questions or you did really
well in coding and design but you didn't
do a good job relating your experience
this is the down level zone
in both of these cases the behavioral
part of the interview is where the
opportunity is
a strong behavioral interview component
will ensure that you don't get down
level if you did really well in the
coding and design portions of the
interview and it can save an interview
loop if you just did mediocre on the
functional parts
humans are narrative animals
during the interview your job is to
convey to the interviewer that you have
what it takes to fill the need they have
think about trying to describe a good
friend to someone that hasn't met them
oh my buddy meta yeah he's he's good
he's smart
kind of funny
a little quirky
you know good stories for interviews
really just have one shape and form
bad stories can be bad for many reasons
but the most common is that you're
trying to tell the interviewer how good
you are when you should be focusing on
showing them how good you are
metta that guy
he's been in amazon for 15 years so he's
either tough as nails or really stupid
i don't know how he does it he's got
this demanding job just had a kid and he
still has time to make these quirky
youtube videos
classic meta
star stands for situation task action
results and it's the classic way folks
are trained to develop stories for
interviews you describe the situation
you were in what your task or mission
was the actions you took and the result
turns out it's a terrible algorithm for
generating stories
the problem
is that it's too focused on what
happened rather than developing the
character you
remember the point of these questions is
to determine that there's a good match
between you and what the company needs
the proper story the interviewer becomes
invested in you
what you should do instead is to use the
simplest of the story shapes
kurt vonnegut calls the story shape man
and a whole but it doesn't have to
involve a man nor does it have to
involve a whole
basically you start by anchoring the
story on your status and
responsibilities on a team by using
terms from the job description after you
have established this context you layer
in conflict challenges and obstacles you
want to lay it on thick here many layers
make it much more satisfying when you
finally overcome and achieve success
don't overthink it an effective story
has a general u-shape
the magnitude of the use signals to the
interviewer everything they need to know
about your level where the use starts
and ends tells the interviewer what
level you operated at and what type of
impact to expect if you were to join
how far the u dips tells the interviewer
what the size of the problems are that
you can deal with
so it turns out star is useful
don't use it as a story generator you
star as a linter on your story to make
sure that it has a point in other words
you start after you've crafted your
story to make sure the story has
substance
hey uh meta is it yeah cool can you hear
me
yeah i can hear you yeah i can hear you
cool um great thanks for taking the time
to interview with us
um can you tell me about a time you made
your team's processes software or system
simpler
uh okay yeah um
my team and i inherited some software
from another team
since it made sense for our team to own
it instead of their team
since our team provides a lot of the
data for the flagship feature of our
product
turns out it was really buggy
and was adding a lot of operational
burden to the team
and on top of that it had a dependency
on a library that represented a pretty
large security risk that was going to
take a long time to migrate away from
yeah
once we found the library though uh
corporate policy was that we immediately
migrate away from it
this was really bad since we had a big
launch coming up soon
i thought it'd be best to deprecate the
service so i worked with all of the
clients
of the service to move them off of it
and our existing software
it was a ton of work
but the
service now is decommissioned and we
don't get paged in the middle of the
night as much as we used to
uh the system architecture is is so much
simpler now and we know how our data is
being used downstream
um can you tell me about a time you made
your team's processes software or system
simpler
cool
yeah i was the team lead on a team of
eight sdes that was responsible for
several mission critical data plane
services for our flagship product
i was responsible for
not just the system components
or the features that my team owned but
really the team's architecture
i spoke with an adjacent team and we
decided that it made more sense if our
team took ownership of some software
they owned because it aligned with the
charter of our team much more than it
did theirs
turns out it was pretty buggy
but that wasn't a big deal after i
squashed the bugs and added unit tests
and integration tests
the big issues started cropping up later
it started paging our on-call engineers
late at night
people would just restart the process
and go back to sleep but when it was my
on-call
i dug into the issue and it turns out we
depend on sus4j
yeah sus4j
its usage is not allowed in the company
and we were on the hook for migrating
off of it
immediately we estimated that it would
take about a month of dev effort which
we didn't have because of an immovable
deadline two months away
i decided that the only reasonable
course of action was to decommission the
service
it wasn't going to be easy but it wasn't
going to be so bad because
the original reason i decided that the
team should inherit this service
was because it was so similar to the
services we already had
but we didn't know who was using the
legacy service
cool so uh what did you do
so um we turned pass-through mode on uh
through the service configuration which
requires clients to identify themselves
at request time
it didn't like stop them from you know
getting at the data that they needed
just sort of identified them
i analyzed the logs and created a
spreadsheet to track and it turns out we
have like 27 teams that use this service
i set up meetings with some of them and
it turns out most of them could get what
they needed from other services that we
owned
so i created a campaign to deprecate the
service we split the clients up amongst
my team members and i went to our vp to
get an exception
for
you know not removing sus4j for a couple
of months
we let the client teams know that the
service was going to be shut off in
three months and that we would provide
support to them to move to our existing
endpoints and you know by sort of by
analyzing their use cases
this was disruptive to our schedule but
it didn't blow up our project
there was one team though
that really pushed back on us
we didn't have any apis that could help
them and they escalated up the
management chain
after our big launch i was able to work
with them to design and deliver the
functionality that they needed
it was kind of painful though
because we didn't have bandwidth to work
with them while we were heads down
trying to launch even after we gave them
what they needed relations between our
team are a bit strained today
i think on balance it came
to a positive outcome though pretty
happy with the way that the architecture
looks afterwards
the magnitude of both sides of the u and
the depth of challenge you faced needs
to be commensurate with the level you're
targeting
if the challenges contained within your
story are small potatoes then you risk a
down level conversation same goes for
the sides how do you know it's big
enough because they are part of your
roles duties and responsibilities at the
level you're targeting the key is that
you make it easy for the interviewer to
make a relative judgment on your level
by anchoring them with your status and
demonstrating that you can rise to the
challenges appropriate to that level and
more importantly that you have
perspective on what it takes to operate
effectively at that level
if all of your stories make you sound
like a junior engineer solving junior
engineer problems you're not going to
get a senior engineer offer
just because you're using the same story
shape doesn't mean that you can't make
it your own you can make it funny
self-deprecating dramatic it's all up to
you
constraining the story shape doesn't
constrain your voice or make it
inauthentic
okay let's talk about making stuff up
don't do it there may be a chance that
you get away with it but more than
likely you won't be able to answer all
of the follow-up questions if these
stories don't come from lived experience
you had 123 girlfriends during college
yes
can you show me some pictures of them
no
are you being serious
yes
do you remember any of their names i
don't remember
that must have been a crazy time
it was a crazy time
if there's a suspicion you're telling
tall tales the most likely outcome is no
offer you can make a story easier to
understand by simplifying some details
or reordering the elements in the story
to make it flow better but don't risk
undermining your credibility by lying
just takes a little suspicion
you might be tempted to tell someone
else's story since you were close to the
action but you're unlikely to withstand
the follow-up questions because there's
too big of a gap between the
hypothetical and the actual
you can watch a bunch of youtube videos
about someone giving good advice that
doesn't mean you give good advice
you may be tempted to describe some
villains in your story since hey you're
the hero right
don't do it if you describe too much of
a bad guy the interviewer may conclude
that you were the actual villain keep it
professional and if there was some wrong
done to you make sure you don't describe
it as evil
this is especially important if you're
answering questions about working with a
difficult co-worker
finally when you conclude your story you
want to make sure that you never
describe a perfect success
life is too messy for everybody to live
happily ever after you want the ending
on balance to be positive
it really speaks to your perspective and
adds realism if everything is wrapped up
in too nice of a bow at the end
suspicion about the story's authenticity
is bound to creep in let's wrap up
levels are relative at different
companies map your experiences and work
to your target company and by using
sites like levels at fyi or glassdoor
get a sense of what expectations are at
each of their levels
you can try to get a promotion with a
move but it's in your best interest to
come in at the right level when down
leveling happens it's usually because of
answers on behavioral portions of the
interviews because if you did poorly on
the tech parts they wouldn't extend an
offer
humans are narrative animals use the
story shape that every human understands
because levels are relative start by
anchoring your story on your status and
responsibilities on your team and the
job description at your target company
later on challenges commensurate with
the type of problems people at this
level are likely to encounter
describe an imperfect but still positive
success
don't describe villains
you star to make sure that your story
has substance and isn't fluff but don't
use it as a way to write your stories
don't lie in an attempt to make yourself
look better it's too much work to keep
your story straight and you risk
damaging your credibility
it's better to spend your energy on
being a badass rather than concocting a
story about how much of a badass you are
if you found this content helpful please
hit the like button and consider
subscribing i try to make videos that
would have been helpful to a younger
version of myself but i'm getting so old
that i forget what that was like so
leave a comment on what you'd like to
see in upcoming videos
you won't be a great storyteller
immediately after watching this video
but i think that once you start thinking
in these terms you'll start seeing
yourself as a character in a larger epic
and your day-to-day actions as part of a
broader narrative
at times it may feel artificial
devoid of authenticity
but there's something innately human
about the way we connect with others via
stories
thanks for watching
[Music]
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