Support engineer 3 at amazon trying to be SDE-1

So I joined Amazon 2022 September as an SE2 after an internship on campus, after the internship ended I got offers from other startups as well where I was being paid more but I joined Amazon for long term prospects of better career growth (planning to become an SDE, and be on that track, I am the only SE in my team) As of now my experience has been great, my team is awesome, everyone works very hard to deliver our projects, no nonsense toxicity, and team members are very helpful and super smart, manager is good as well, I am getting to learn a lot but the problem is my career growth is going slow, I recently became SE3, 1 month ago (and now on the path to become and SDE) and my in-hand salary too is not very good, I get 97k a month in hand, all my peers kinda jokingly say you have been saying to become an SDE since the beginning and yet just SE3. Hence I am having second thoughts and I am really concerned if I am going on the correct track or I am just making a big mistake.

Is so much effort for Amazon SDE1 really worth it ? Or am I just putting SDEs into the pedestal ?