I've heard that getting promoted at Google is kind of a shitshow -- that your manager can't vouch for you and it's basically up to how well you summarize and present your work to a faceless promotion committee (i.e. how well you play politics). I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, per se. In light of this memo, however, I wonder if the layered bureaucracy of the promotion process is an intentional way of not promoting promotion-worthy employees and keeping costs down.
Been @ Google 7 years, and never gone for promo precisely because the process is obnoxious. I'm fine with my level and salary anyways. But the process is ... Very showboat. I just want to do a good job and be a person who contributes incrementally and care-takes a code base. Promo encourages another kind of personality entirely.
To me, Google in many ways reflects the very academic background of its founders and senior employees. Larry & Sergey never worked in industry before Google -- they founded Google out of their project @ Stanford. The office is a campus, with cafeterias and layout like a university. Promotion and other things are done via committees like a graduate thesis committee. Design and planning is often about large documents and presentations like term papers or group assignments. When I worked in another product area there were poster sessions to present your work similar to what my wife had to do for some of her uni coursework. The interview process is like a test for your final year algorithms and data structures courses.
Its an environment that is immediately familiar to academics, researchers, and recent grads.
At least that how it seems, to me, as someone self-taught who worked in smaller companies and startups for years before coming to Google.
Xoogler here: I was promoted L5 -> L6 (senior -> staff SWE) in 2015, so I can talk a bit about this.
Your manager can actually be helpful, but the process is byzantine. In my case, my promo committee approved my promo. However, at L6 there was an automatic review of all promos to that level by a 2nd committee. The review committee denied my promo. My manager came in at this point and lodged an appeal on my behalf to the review committee's decision. That appeal took the promo to a 3rd committee that ultimately approved it.
I did not know any of the details of what was happening. I only learned what happened in my 1:1 with my manager when he told me the whole story. He was so happy and proud of himself that he managed to help me get promoted. The sad thing is that this was the 1:1 where I told him that I was leaving for Netflix (much better offer due to non-monetary factors).
The truly kafka-esque part of this: Since promo at Google is a huge deal, and since you if you are hired back, you retain the level at which you departed at, I really wanted to leave as a L6. So I delayed my start at Netflix until my promo went through. I resigned effective a day after the effective promo date. However, in the HR system, the resignation cancelled the promo. So I had to jump through some hoops to get the promo re-instated. I know it went through, because I had friends check go/epitaphs and I eventually got my promo jacket..
> However, in the HR system, the resignation cancelled the promo.
Can I ask you about occurrences of fence post errors?
There was a very important eng who was basically a sole contributor on a difficult component in a system. He announced his retirement date well in advance, but after the bonus payout period. HR terminated him early, denying him the bonus and leaving the team to scramble and organize a mini-summit to do knowledge transfer. The team itself had no control over the date. I believe it was a similar company.
I left my last company the day after our quarterly bonus and HR managed to reverse the transaction. To be honest I didn't even realize te bonus was due that day and I gave my usual 2 week notice. They could have not even deposited the amount and I would have not noticed. HR leadership used be a lot kinder at that company until there was a shift to a new HR director.
If you have an important or arbitrary milestone coming up in the next two weeks, don't give your two weeks notice until after that milestone. It sounds paranoid but it's better to be paranoid than to be screwed on something like this.
In my case, fear of this sort of thing is why I could not let my manager know that I was planning on leaving. He would not have intentionally screwed me over like this, but I was afraid somebody above him in the org chart would.
I felt really bad that he went to bat for me for the promo.
I'm a current employee and subject to the confidentiality agreement, so I can't go into detail here. But you probably know as a former employee that Google often makes incremental improvements to their processes, and the promotion process (including L6+) is no exception. Sorry for the boring corporate-speak. If you really want to know the details, come back! :)
(I realized after re-reading my comment that it was ambiguous; I didn't mean to suggest that your eventual yes would have turned into a no. I merely meant that the process to get there today would have been different, and hopefully more predictably efficient.)
EDIT: actually there is one hugely confidential scoop that certainly would have affected you and that I'm totally going to share with you. They no longer have promotion jackets. (Readers, these were lightweight zippered jackets or pullovers that read "Google Engineering" near the breast-pocket area. They were so understated that they triggered this sort of CrossFit reflex that compelled some wearers to tell everyone within earshot about them.) In the past couple years the company has tried to tone down promotion celebrations, at least in Tech, so many of the broadcasted congratulations are gone, along with the jackets. Fine with me -- promotion season is nice for those who get what they asked for, painful for those who didn't, and in either case something that should be private by default, like your salary.
I did not leave for monetary reasons. Netflix offered me a few things that Google couldn't. I don't recall if there was a counter offer. I think there was talk of one, but I made it clear that it was not about money.
At Netflix, I get to contribute to an open source project that I'm passionate about (and which Google does not use). Netflix is also much smaller, and I had more impact at Netflix in my first 2 months than I did in my entire time at Google.
I should mention that Google was a fantastic place to work. I loved my co-workers, and I loved working for Google. Netflix just happened to be a much better fit for me.
How does the "only A players, adequate performance gets a big severance package" idea play out in reality? That seems like it would be a constant source of stress unless you were clearly in the top 10% even at Netflix.
It sounds far, far worse than it is. This was a really big fear of mine going into the company almost 4 years ago, and so far I've been fine. I think it is a common fear that new hires have.
Netflix is much faster to let people go (famous for no PIPs, etc). But I've never seen anybody shown the door with 0 warning.
That's a little relieving; if anything, making the policy sound more brutal than it really is probably sets better expectations than making the policy sound more lenient than it really is. For example, as far as I can tell, the PIP ceremony is just that, a ceremony. Not that nobody has ever survived a PIP without getting fired, but it's typically a mechanism to manage people out while minimizing the company's liability. It's probably an improvement to replace an expensive, bureaucratic mechanism that keeps disgruntled low performers around with a lump sum of cash that gets them out the door ASAP (assuming the "generous severance" tradeoff is accurate).
Also, every company talks a big game about setting a high bar and only wanting the best performers, so if you want to accurately convey the notion that you really do set a high bar and really do only want the best performers, you have to overstate the point to a degree that sounds brutal or even sociopathic.
your manager can't vouch for you and it's basically up to how well you summarize and present your work to a faceless promotion committee (_i.e. how well you play politics_). (emphasis mine)
Googler here, speaking for myself.
Isn't what you describe literally the opposite of playing politics?
I'm an Xoogler and was promoted when I was there. (see sibling comment for details).
The way to get promoted at Google seems to be to play a game where you tick all the boxes for performance at the next level and have the right people write for you. In some ways, that helps the company (working across teams, for example). In other ways, it may hurt the company (launching potentially redundant products is seen by committees as being more valuable than incrementally improving existing products). I think that a lot depends on who writes recommendations for you in your promo packet (and that's pure politics)
In my case, I was basically gathering requirements and helping other teams integrate with an internal product. So I was perfectly positioned for promo. I was an L5, and talking to a lot of senior folks in other teams (sr. staff, director, vp) who were willing to write for me. I'm pretty sure having a VP who knew me and could write about me really made the difference.
> I think that a lot depends on who writes recommendations for you in your promo packet (and that's pure politics) ... I'm pretty sure having a VP who knew me and could write about me really made the difference.
It sounds like that VP knew you because of the work you were doing, not because you bought him dinner or something. In that case, it's not pure politics, your work was apparently important and impacted a lot of people.
In this thread it sounds like a lot of people think promotion (and work performance in general) should be measured by purely technical contributions only, which is not realistic. That kind of work is important and makes sense for entry level work, but that's not how big projects get done.
That's true, he knew me because of the work I was doing on my 20% project. This was a small stealth-mode thing which was a pet project of his. So I mainly just lucky. Meanwhile, the guy who sat behind me, worked much harder, came in earlier and left later, and turned out mountains of high quality code never got promoted (he retired).
But Google prides itself on being a meritocracy, when really it is just another case of "who you know" is as important as "what you know"
(my guesses from reading this thread) The work was important, but the GP was _the face_ of that work only. Many other people collaborated on shipping that work - the VP only knew GP. The issue people are pointing out is that this incentivizes people gravitating towards such roles which are high in. "visibility".
Don't know how it is now, but most of my promos at Microsoft (in 00s) were unexpected by me. I just kicked ass, and my managers delivered the goods. I liked that system. That's how it's supposed to work. :-)
Some other people have mentioned hiring people defensively so they can't compete. I don't know how true that is, but if it is... then making a redundant project means you need to be retained so you don't write clones for anyone else.
That's not a problem with the process, that's a problem with what the senior engineers value (making themselves feel smarter than their aspiring peers, not producing valuable products)
You know, I'd even believe you if I did not observe with my own eyes, at Google, how people get promoted despite not really doing much themselves other than gaming the visibility, and people who are literally one of a kind and who delivered world class, pivotal work get denied promotion repeatedly.
It's still a human-based system. It's still vulnerable to nearly the same political bullshit you see elsewhere: cliques, favoritism, backstabbing, etc. Heck even your boss still affects your promo (there's a "private" section in the feedback you don't see). If you don't see this, then you're probably not getting promoted either.
A good friend of mine from university is a Googler. He is a nice guy, but incredibly political and technically not very capable. A master of making himself look good, schmoozing and talking the talk. He has done rather well at Google.
Yet another friend, a brilliant, straight-talking techy, struggles at moving up the ranks Google.
Only one data point, but given the comments here, perhaps it is somewhat accurate.
The solution is to work for a smaller company where your output is directly tied to the market success of the entire organisation, and where its small enough that the CEO/Founder can directly appreciate your efforts. Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go.
Bonus is that these kind of jobs are often located outside of Silicon Valley, so your living costs will be much lower.
No, from my experience what is meant is to join a small and medium-sized enterprise and become a part of their success. $200k is a lot in salary, but it isn't that much for a company as such if they sell or provide high value products or services.
This is false. I’ve been at 4 different startups and the ones I made myself key to market success were way better than working in these soul crushing meat grinders like Goog or FB. There’s more to life than TC.
Just for what it's worth, my experience is the opposite; I've found Google less of a meat grinder and less soul crushing than startups. But I think it's possible that a lot depends on where - both in the country and in the org chart - you're located.
I don't get this statement. Google doesn't force anyone to work overnight. It doesn't force you to work at all, to be honest. Some people can spend a workday skiing and then arrive at 6 pm for dinner. TC is 400K. And once you're bored or feel undercompensated, you just go to FB, Netflix or Snapchat and get a 30-50% pay rise.
But you're an inconsequential cog, and in order to get a decent bonus and _any_ RSU refresh at all (which is the majority of that 400K btw) you have to jump through insane hoops and shave yaks all day. At some point it feels like Dostoevsky's labor camp description: you dig a hole and then you fill it back up. Except this is a very comfy labor camp, with 3 meals a day, and you can leave if you want to.
But some of us like to actually make things, and have a sense of purpose, and other things higher up on the Maslow's pyramid of needs. For them Google of 2019 is mostly not a good place, unless they end up on teams (and in positions on those teams) where they can do work that's meaningful to them, rather than copy proto buffers in some soon-to-be deprecated backend. Meaningful work is scarce there, and has been for at least the last decade, and a lot of people are competing for it.
In the grand scheme of things everybody is an inconsequential cog. You, me and everybody you know are average people who will grind away at whatever thing we happen do. You aren't gonna change the world. I'm not gonna change the world. Accept this and move on.
> Meaningful work is scarce there
"Meaningful work" is in the eye of the beholder. Learning to find joy in whatever task you are working on is an important skill to learn.
Being a very highly paid "inconsequential cog" at a mega-corp and working below market at some dinky startup can be the difference between actually affording to buy a house. It can mean you get to retire years earlier than you would have otherwise. It can mean putting your kids through a top notch education program. It buys you a lot of things.
The entirety of one's world view is defined by their perception. If you can convince yourself you're not a cog at Google, hey, more power to you, enjoy those golden handcuffs. But if not, there are plenty of options out there which let you pay mortgage, put your kids through college, and "buy a lot of things". It doesn't have to be FANG.
The other option is to realize that in the world of people, your people skills can be even more valuable than your technical skills. I think that L5 is the tipping point where people skills start to dominate.
Technical skills are the skills to make machines do whatever you want, they get no say in the matter. People skills are the skills to make people do whatever you want. You can see why many are reluctant to get involved in that.
> Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go.
That is a pretty big "just". Bonuses aren't common everywhere, and unfortunately it seems like management being directly involved in the company can also go the other way. Since they have a larger incentive to short change you on salary as it is their own bottom line.
That said I think looking at the promotion structure is something underappreciated and should really be part of these "how to be successful" post rather than maxing out you credit card (or whatever).
Specifically, there are two job ladders in this area, one for management and one for engineering. People are welcome to switch ladders, though there's some friction in the process because they actually are different jobs. The idea is that people shouldn't sacrifice talents to progress in their careers, as often happens when talented engineers are pushed into people management at other companies.
Like a lot of jobs in tech, there is overlap. Managers can write code, and senior engineers can manage people if they want. Everyone needs at least some technical skills, and everyone needs at least some people skills. But the intent is to provide a good long-term path for people who want to focus more on one or the other.
That is true, but what's also true is that it's _way_ easier to get promoted beyond L5 as a manager, and darn near impossible to get promoted beyond L6 as an IC. Google values managers more, just like any other company. That's why you see like 7 layers of management there by now and directors reporting to directors and VPs reporting to VPs: people want more money but can't get to the next level as ICs. Fun fact: when I left Google, I was 1 level deeper in the hierarchy than I've ever been at Microsoft, a company that at the time I left was twice the size of Google I left 7 years later.
I wouldn't say it's easier to get promoted in the sense that the work is easier. A company with 85,000 employees needs a lot of managers (who themselves need managers, and so on), so there's definitely demand. But that demand need not change the stringency of the job requirements.
... until you figure out that maybe comparing numbers of high level technical engineers to numbers of high level managers would be the correct way to gauge this. Your chances of becoming a high level manager are very slim, but your chances of becoming a high level engineer are much slimmer.
But if your message is "it's better than elsewhere", then yes, it probably is.
I guess i should clarify. Useless in a technical sense, not in a bureaucratic sense. You still need them of course.
And I'm sure even the worst at google are far from 'useless.' Figure of speech.
Edit: Possibly better than the alternative overall though. So frustrating to have competent people promoted as you're trying to put out a working product. Cancel those meetings and fix this code!
But just to be clear for when this comment gets mined by some future HR department. It is of course very important to have good people making the high level architectural decisions, and you should absolutely hire me for your senior technical positions to maximize the output of all those around me!
It's just the whole needing to give blunt assessments of underlings that may have consequences for their and their families livelihood that I'm not suited for.
I've seen it go both ways. Definitely agreed that it's a human process and it can be gamed a bit. There are (or had been in the past) some checks on that with secondary committees that re-reviewed primary committee results (not just appeals of negative cases). I think the removal of those checks and move to org based promos has allowed more of what you described to take place in unfortunately.
Is it? It might not be playing inter-personal politics, but it's like doing a campaign speech.
Instead of a long term assessment of your work (and the real interactions within your team etc), it's how you represent it in a pitch that is measured... The most charismatic presenter (e.g. bullshit artist) wins.
Well, I would call everything you have to do besides the work itself to 'play politics'. Since very few tasks in a company require to present your work afterward, it is hard for managers to find out who did best without extra presentations.
In the end, I think it is the manager's job to motivate their people to present their work, but ultimately it is in the employee's interest.
My advice is to get used to having to present your work. Otherwise, you might end up doing a fantastic job and being disappointed when nobody notices that it was you who did it (probably resulting in promotions for people who didn't do as good as you did).
Engineering is a social job. Coding is much less of one. Explaining, debating, and presenting the relevance, correctness, quality, and comparative advantage of one's engineering work is part of "the work itself."
You're right that it's kind of pointless to "present your work afterward," and indeed, promotion committees at Google actually pay little attention to after-the-fact summaries of technical work. Instead, they look for artifacts of in-the-moment design and implementation discussions. This is the evidence showing that a given solution wasn't just one person's moment of inspired genius that he or she deigned to bestow upon the codebase, but rather the best of many possible solutions that the team chose, as a team, drawing on all the resources available such as literature, other projects past and present, the informed opinions of others in the field, the experience of senior engineers and former engineers now in management, the PMs who agree this solution achieves business goals, etc.
All too many junior engineers think a design document is "what we actually did." It's not. It's "why we picked the path we did, and why we rejected the alternatives." And yeah, as you say, nobody's going to care about what you actually did. That's kind of like being forced to look at a long series of selfies on Instagram. But they definitely will care if you asked their opinion which way to go at the start of the project, and later on they'll respect the fact that you consulted them and others on their area of expertise, because what you built has a little bit of them in it.
That's the difference between coding and engineering. Code is something that works. Engineering is the selecting the best of the possible working solutions, and being able to explain why it was the best.
To be cynical, though, being successful with that kind of process requires knowing how to describe your accomplishments, what metrics to emphasize, and what projects are simply not worth spending time on because they won't scream "promote me!" during your review (even though they might be necessary & important).
You can call almost anything 'playing policits'. In other companies, getting along with your manager on purpose to get a promotion and taking credit for successes, can certainly be called 'playing politics. The difference in Google is that there's a standardized process, so maybe that avoids a manager promoting his friends.
Brilliant jerks lower the morale and output of everyone around them.
I agree that promotion processes suck if they don't create room for understated high achievers, people who are just a little more shy or awkward or humble.
But focusing exclusively on individual output and ignoring more pathologic behaviors can lead to massive problems. And some team projects absolutely require communication as a core skill that influences overall output.
But none of that is the same kind of “playing politics” that it sounds like is required by Google’s processes. Indeed, if you’re good at playing politics, you can be an absolute jerk on a regular basis, but still get promoted all the time by saying the right things to the promotion board.
Someone else’s comment had it almost right: playing politics is anything you choose to do at work primarily for the purpose of making yourself look good to those you think have the power to promote or fire you.
Something apparently missing from this is that what you say is only a small part of what the promo committee looks at. They also see peer reviews from coworkers and your manager.
So this idea of blindly sucking up to the promo committee doesn't happen. (And in practice I'd agree, everyone I've seen get promo deserved it).
The promotion board pays attention to what your co-workers say. More attention to that, then what you say, actually. If everyone says you're an asshole in your promotion packet, you're going to have a hard time getting promoted.
Who decides what "good code is"? There is no gold standard for such defenition. Guess how that gets decided? Politics.
> your design decisions
In order to "get credit", how does anybody know your design decisions were the best? Hell, how do you even know it was the right move. Just like the code, there is no 100% correct design decisions. It's all trade offs. Knowing you chose the best path and more important trying to get credit for it is.... politics.
I mean, you had to convince people your design decisions were correct to get them implemented. That was political....
> and the quality of your project output
What does "quality" mean? Wanna define it? That is politics.
What does "project output" mean? Wanna define it? That, too, is politics.
Engineers always think they can avoid "politics". But politics is everywhere and is an unescapable feature of life. It isn't even a bad thing. Any time you have limited resources and people are in contention for those resources, you are gonna get politics.
Stop trying to avoid it and embrace it. Politics are part of every job if you want to be successful.
Hell, even attempting to convince people that they should ignore politics is itself a political move.
>> your code
Who decides what "good code is"? There is no gold standard for such defenition. Guess how that gets decided? Politics.
There doesn't have to be a "gold standard", just sensible experienced programmers doing code reviews, instead of office-politics-players and executive drones.
>In order to "get credit", how does anybody know your design decisions were the best? Hell, how do you even know it was the right move.
How about people with actual domain knowledge judge that?
All the rest of the comment is the same, as if any judgement of a project/code/design is impossible outside of "who likes whom" and "who kisses whose ass".
If that's the case where one works, they should get out pronto.
Who would know the employee's work better, her manager or the promotion committee? This reminds me of an interview process that does not include checking references.
A system like you describe would seem to favour the employee who is adept at promoting her work. It also might disadvantage employees who are better performers than promoters. It would fail to detect employees who are poor or average performers but adept at covering that up.
Does the promotion committee consult with the manager?
A system like this suggests the company is concerned about favouritism and may not trust managers. It also suggests they may be willing to blindly trust self-promoting employees without knowing much about them.
How does the system account for high-performing employees that are too busy working to prepare presentations for promotion committees? Is there no such thing as an unsolicited promotion based on performance under this system?
Surely managers are reporting on the employees they manage. Assuming that includes any information on performance, then a system like this could allow the company to ignore the issue of rewarding high-performers with promotions, unless and until those employees came forward and presented to a promotion committee.
However a system like this does seem potentially beneficial for employees who feel they are undervalued by their manager.
"How does the system account for high-performing employees that are too busy working to prepare presentations for promotion committees? Is there no such thing as an unsolicited promotion based on performance under this system?"
I think maybe "high-performing employee", in this system, is simply defined at least in part as "one who prepares excellent presentations for promotion committees."
In any system based on individual inequality a high-performing employee is whoever is appreciated by the central authority. If you actually want to award performance you need collective inequality. That is, you need differences between successful and unsuccessful projects rather than between employees deemed successful or unsuccessful in those projects.
In a few ways, the hurdles you outline are a helpful filter management skills. Presenting and promoting your team's work will become just as important as doing the work. Providing context for failures, which could be seen as covering up, is critical. If you are too busy working to prepare an important presentation, you are not ready to be a manager.
Even if the promotion keeps you at an IC, your responsibilities are still increasing, so I think most of those points stand.
Is that what is being promoted in a presentation to a promotion committee arguing that you individually should be promoted within the organization?
"... too busy to prepare an important presentation..."
Important to whom? You or the people you are working for?
I agree a system like this could filter for what we commonly recognise as "management qualities".
Although I am not sure they would be qualities such as selflessness and putting the needs of their reports and the organization ahead of their own aspirations.
If you can't advocate for yourself, how are you going to advocate for anybody else? A promotion process, if there is one, is an important time for you and the organization. Lots of people's time is being spent to figure out whether to elevate an individual towards a position of company leadership. In the long run, it's far, far more important than any individual project you might be working on (and if it isn't, show that you can get yourself out of the front lines, or you are destined to fail at management).
My brother is an Xoogler, who told me a few years ago there was a de facto 3-year "up or out" policy. That is, if you go 3 years and haven't been promoted, you should probably expect to need to find work at another company.
It’s L4 as of like a year ago; also going up to L5 no longer has promo committee per-se, but instead is a PA meeting between leads who hash it out, and the manager is much more involved.
with that kind of policy, it's no wonder they can't retain talent. Since most people can't be promoted, then they have no choice but to leave or get laid off.
To be honest, promotion is a difficult process in general. I'd like to hear of a company where promotion isn't a 'shit show'. Generally, either companies like to err on the side of 'this is gonna be very difficult, buckle up!' or they promote too many people, which has a number of side effects. That leads to even worse results if you ask me.
Promotions in other companies are usually in the year’s budget, so the number of seats is known in advance.
The only question is who gets to level up, and it becomes a dancing chair competition with none of the participants having a direct say (managers will take feedback and do whatever they want with it).
For a small and growing company it’s not rare for higher ups to explicitely fish around for people to promote as they just need to grow the ranks. The bigger it becomes the harder the competition is.
I like (what I've seen) at my workplace. We've designed a rubric across multiple dimensions (basically leveled epectations at each role, software engineer 1 through 4 plus two levels of principal engineer). Everyone knows what is expected at each level. You have goals tied to personal and team initiatives. Managers are limited in the count for direct reports and work daily with their teams, and the they also often solicit feedback on strengths and opportunities for growth from direct reports for teammates who have more interaction with each other. Managers then all get together and level set on performance and promotions. Managers have to defend a promo and performace with data. It helps protect against rubber stamping and from being overly hard. Sure there is a budget that is taken into account, and that is life. We announce all internal promotions, and when you know the person, you always can agree it was deserved. I've been promoted multiple times and have increased my salary a lot each time.
To be honest, this sounds pretty much like the same process as Google, with the main significant difference being that the promotion is approved by committee. But even then the purpose of that would seem to be exactly the same as your statements "Managers then all get together and level set on performance and promotions. Managers have to defend a promo and performace with data." It's just done with more formality at Google due to their size and desire for equitable treatment across teams.
I have also never gotten a “promotion” in over 20 years and only twice have I gotten a meaningful raise and they were both around $10K and that was early in my career.
I stayed at one company for 9 years and made only $7K more in year 9 than I made in year 2. I stuck around mostly because of side businesses that I was hoping would turn into full time businesses.
But I did learn my lesson. A company has exactly two years to at least get me to local market value.
Now being on the other side of the bell curve, after working for 5 companies over the last 10 years, I either have to settle with just cost of living raises or move into an area that I am qualified for but doesn’t really excite me - consulting (“digital transformation consultant”, “cloud consulting”, etc.)
Sure but all big, desirable tech companies have almost identical promotion processes: every 1.5-8 years (with higher levels generally taking longer) you get a title/full level bump. And the biggest, hardest bumps are always the bumps from IC to manager. Yeah it’s a shitshow but there’s much less diversity in process than you seem to think
The highest paid people I've ever known, as developers, work at Google. And that top salary was $650,000/yr. I have no idea what the benefits were, but I'm guessing substantial. And, from an HR friend of a friend, I found out that managers in a group make at least as much as the highest paid report.
It may be my sample size is very senior or very desired, I don't know.
I won't write a long whiny post, but when I left in 2009 it was really bad, at least where I was.
Since the committee that promotes you don't know anything about your daily work, you're free to lie about your accomplishments, and the promotion essays I saw and were asked to endorse took credit for vastly more than the person had done.
This changed for almost all promotions around when this slide deck was allegedly made. Now, below L5, it is more or less conventional, because your director effectively makes the decision. So your manager now has a LOT of influence, for all the promotions people care about (the mandatory ones). They had explicit promo budgets per org at least once. So if anything the more recent changes were made to facilitate something like this.
What was really interesting to me about this was that although it did seem like a good way to avoid politics, what the original promo process actually did was incentivize fire-and-forget projects that would be more promotable if they touched as many other moving pieces as possible. This to me explains a lot of Google.
"kind of a shitshow" would be an improvement over what it really is. If you intend to work at google, negotiate your title up front, while you still can.
Am I crazy for thinking that type of presentation sounds like fun? I love that kind of thing. Not saying it’s the best way to determine who gets promoted, but I’d look forward to making a pitch like that.
That sounds a lot like their interviewing style — treating people like cogs by reading from a script. Instead of immediate feedback and interaction the results are sent to a committee for analysis.
It is almost by definition more objective but there isn't evidence it achieves better results. It doesn't seem worth the cost; most people appreciate being treated like people.
Perhaps some people are content with their role. I know many engineers, who, by virtue of being productive, got themselves promoted into managing roles where they hardly ever write code.
Perhaps this system works because it allows "climbers" to proceed up the ranks, ensuring they don't become resentful, while ensuring productive engineers get to stay productive?
The problem is that up until recently there was an expectation that you climb or you don't belong. If you stayed at L4 for too many years they'd start to take a close look at you and consider you for... ejection.
They say that's not the case anymore. Entering year 7 without promo, so I'll let you know how it goes.
that’s only for people senior and above. (small amount of people). 99 pct of people reading this would never get to that level. although you are correct that it used to be the case for a lot more people.
You don't just 'make' L5. You have to prove you deserve it with a whole bunch of showboating. The process encourages self-promoters and fame seekers, not incremental contributors. They fiddle with the knobs every few months and say they're trying to rectify this, but it's never going to change. It's not like you can just do a good job and move from L4 to L5. You essentially have to lead a project. And that means fighting for a project or lead of your own. Which means nobody wants to do the grunt work, because there's no recognition for it. You will be promoted for initiating and leading a new effort, not plugging away at an old one. IMHO this has a deleterious effect on engineering quality and when its PMs doing this, it leads to runaway competing novelty projects.
It's also far easier for an L4 to get competing offers for amount far exceeding what L5s make. That's also how many (most?) people get the L5 level: they negotiate with HRs when they have the leverage (competing offers). Getting to L5 via the promo committee is probably the hardest way to get there.
I'm expecting to get to l5 in a large part due to (necessary) grunt work.
It's also unclear what you mean by plugging away. If you make improvements to an existing system, you absolutely can get promoted. But on some scale, those improvements are probably viewable as a "new launch", so that's sort of tautological.
This has improved in recent promo rounds, there seems to be more recognition of this. However the L4 to L5 process has been in the past framed as "L5 owns/leads a project/component." In some smaller projects, or in my 'remote' site, this can often mean having to stick your elbows in, in order to own something, rather than just contributing to something someone else owns.
Yeah. I've been with Google 8+ years. Got promoted once, 3 years ago. Then in two consecutive years, on two different teams, I had a manager leave me, and ended up reporting to a sub-optimal manager that I didn't choose to report to. That meant zero career progress for that time period.
Now I am 6 months into another team. I have a good manager on a good team who is unlikely to leave, and I'm on track to get promoted again.
