Comment by amzn-336495

That is sad. They could have made double the SDE2 salary of $120k somewhere else. No one is really sure what Amazon PE's did or do to be a principal engineer. Most people think PE's bribed or extorted their way into the job at Amazon as that is the only realistic "path" to that particular job. All that Amazon SDE's know is that there are two levels, SDE 1 and SDE 2 which comprise 95% of Amazon SDE jobs and 99.9% of open positions. Both pay less than every other place.