From the description in the blog post, the author was a high performing L6 SDE[0] getting paid the rates of an L7 SDE[0] because he was about to get promoted.

From the description in the blog post, the author was a high performing L6 SDE[0] getting paid the rates of an L7 SDE[0] because he was about to get promoted. Amazon has very few L7+ SDEs (~1% of SDEs). So when you read that salary, you have to remember the author is relatively rare even within Amazon. [0] https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Amazon/Facebook/Google https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Amazon/Facebook/Google