- Bob finds getting promoted to SDE 3 is hard (despite being qualified) because the bar for promotion is too nitpicky/convoluted/whatever
- Bob quits and goes to work somewhere else
- Bob then applies for a job at Amazon again, but for a SDE 3 role. He lands the job, effectively getting a promotion in a really roundabout way.
The premise is that getting hired as a SDE 3 is presumably easier for someone who was already a successful SDE 2 than it is to navigate promotion committee politics internally for that same SDE 3 title.
This "trick" isn't limited to any specific company or role level; rather it's mostly a hypothetical scenario that is used as an insider joke when there's a perception of an overly obtuse promotion criteria.
In the context of this thread, I'm guessing they're saying that lowering the hiring bar would effectively open the floodgates for ex-amazon people to join back at higher paying roles since they were already able to pass the previously harder interviews.
In all my years working in this industry I've seen very no boomerang promotions. Definitely not in the same team. In the same team of course, if you leave your current and future positions are taken by others, there is little logic for anyone to bring you in at a higher level.
Plus most shops will filter you out a resume screening level itself.
There was actually a fairly high profile boomerang in the news last year - and at Amazon, no less - Sukumar Rathnam went from engineering manager at Amazon to CTO at Uber to VP of e-commerce services at Amazon, all in the span of less than two years.
- Bob works at Amazon as a SDE 2
- Bob finds getting promoted to SDE 3 is hard (despite being qualified) because the bar for promotion is too nitpicky/convoluted/whatever
- Bob quits and goes to work somewhere else
- Bob then applies for a job at Amazon again, but for a SDE 3 role. He lands the job, effectively getting a promotion in a really roundabout way.
The premise is that getting hired as a SDE 3 is presumably easier for someone who was already a successful SDE 2 than it is to navigate promotion committee politics internally for that same SDE 3 title.
This "trick" isn't limited to any specific company or role level; rather it's mostly a hypothetical scenario that is used as an insider joke when there's a perception of an overly obtuse promotion criteria.
In the context of this thread, I'm guessing they're saying that lowering the hiring bar would effectively open the floodgates for ex-amazon people to join back at higher paying roles since they were already able to pass the previously harder interviews.