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Ask HN: What Have You Learned at Google as a Software Engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: What Have You Learned at Google as a Software Engineer?

#151

Post by Inufu »

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #12

Not Google, but another Big Tech company. Visibility is very important to getting a promotion at a large company. Selling your work is important. To move up, you must be playing the "choose a good project or team" game for at least 6 months before you try to get promoted. Preferably for a year or more to hit the right checkboxes for multiple cycles. If you fail to do so, you can do absolutely amazing work but rigid p…

L7 at Google here (joined as L3 right out of university).

Having feedback from L+1 or +2 peers is very important, otherwise it can be very hard for the committee to judge performance.

Actually "leading" a project less so - often a single "project" can be viewed as multiple components / projects for promo purposes, what counts (depending on level) is initiative, leadership, and technical contributions. It's not necessary to be the formal lead of a big project for this purpose, but rather for your senior peers to attest how well you did in those areas and how it helped the project launch X months faster, improved QPS by X or whatever metric.

As pointed out in other comments, it can be hard for the committee to see impact, so the more hard evidence you have (before/after resource usage, bugs fixed, etc) the better. Same for improving the codebase, document and show the evidence!

Re: Ask HN: What Have You Learned at Google as a Software Engineer?

#152

Post by admils »

Contract Python / JS engineer, working on the largest GAE app (internal, but 2400% RoI so well regarded). - GAE was missing basic functionality that we (as their biggest customer) couldn't get them to work on. The engineer in charge of GAE had other tasks and didn't care for this role. We ended up doing this work ourselves and I'm relatively sure this is now inside the App Engine SDK.

- Delivery was incredibly badly managed, I have to shut one one eye when I sneeze due to sinus damage caused by working when ill on a project with global visibility and no cover.

- 'Decisions based on data' isn't a thing: if you want an outcome, you research to that outcome or don't depending on how you feel.

As others have said having Google on your resume is great.

Re: Ask HN: What Have You Learned at Google as a Software Engineer?

#153

Post by jogjayr »

cbanek wrote: post #115
jogjayr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this happens at Google anymore. I knew what team I was joining, and spoke with the manager, before signing my offer. I've been asked to do phone calls/lunches with prospective new hires to sell them on our team. Everyone who started on the team after me told me they spoke with multiple teams before signing on.

My experience was that while you might get to talk to your manager before accepting, you don't get to interview with the team you will be working on. That hugely slants the purpose of the interview toward Google, as the candidate really has no idea who they will be working with, or how they think. The interview should go both ways and provide information to both sides on if it's a good fit, but at Google, they go onl…

> you don't get to interview with the team you will be working on.

That's why I mentioned that I've been asked to do lunch or a phone call with prospective hires. I'm not a manager, just a grunt, and these candidates wanted to speak with people from the team.

Re: Ask HN: What Have You Learned at Google as a Software Engineer?

#156

Post by akhilcacharya »

mav3rick wrote: post #43
yitchelle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering culture among FAANG companies is pretty much the same because of the industry that they operating in and the location of the HQ. Expand that to military or automotive, aerospace, in non-US companies and you might start seeing different engineering cultures.

Engineering culture at Google is vastly different than Amazon. Even Facebook which is more product oriented and iterates faster than focusing on the "right engineering design" first.

> Engineering culture at Google is vastly different than Amazon

How so?

Re: Ask HN: What Have You Learned at Google as a Software Engineer?

#157

Post by sssdmmmm »

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #12

Not Google, but another Big Tech company. Visibility is very important to getting a promotion at a large company. Selling your work is important. To move up, you must be playing the "choose a good project or team" game for at least 6 months before you try to get promoted. Preferably for a year or more to hit the right checkboxes for multiple cycles. If you fail to do so, you can do absolutely amazing work but rigid p…

Anyone at Google who's being honest and not just toeing the HR line will tell you that the easiest way to get promoted is to quit, go to another FAANG for a year or two, and come back at the higher level.
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