191–200 of 202 posts
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Not OP, but I image they are more projects that span multiple teams, disciplines, and stakeholders. There's nothing (unless it hasn't been invented yet) that can't be implemented in software in a silo given infinite time, but the ability to deliver complex solutions to difficult business/process problems that require buy in and coordination from a lot of people are probably these kinds of projects, particularly if th…
Is the legacy vcs ClearCase or DesignSync?
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It's not rare at all in my experience. You just have to have a combination of skills that pays more than average on the open market (big data runtimes or distributed systems, say, or AI, in addition to other domain expertise perhaps), and you'll be L6 or L7 IC, no problem. No managerial duties whatsoever. L7 is more nebulous, but L6 is absolutely doable for anyone with a modicum of marketable skill. You see, in spite…
That sounds entirely logical, but unfortunately having never worked in a FAANG or FAANG-like company[1] I can't tell whether this is the reality or not. I would very much like other readers here with experience in FAANG or FAANG-like companies to comment on your comment. [1] Most Corporates and enterprises are different - they resolutely refuse to match based on market-value of skills. There's also very little a deve…
The promo process is based on your value to your employer, and at least at Google is done by committee, which is drawn from a selection of high-level employees outside of your manager's department (so they have no incentive to keep you) and has a packet of information that does not include anything about your market value outside the company.
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That sounds entirely logical, but unfortunately having never worked in a FAANG or FAANG-like company[1] I can't tell whether this is the reality or not. I would very much like other readers here with experience in FAANG or FAANG-like companies to comment on your comment. [1] Most Corporates and enterprises are different - they resolutely refuse to match based on market-value of skills. There's also very little a deve…
Largely false. Managers have pretty wide latitude to approve compensation matches for employees they want to keep without up-leveling them. So if you're a star L5 at Google and Facebook is giving you a $MM E7 package, you could end up with a $MM stock grant (which would normally be reserved for L7+) at Google. Compensation raises are tied to level, but that just means that you'll sit and vest your existing stock gran…
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Largely false. Managers have pretty wide latitude to approve compensation matches for employees they want to keep without up-leveling them. So if you're a star L5 at Google and Facebook is giving you a $MM E7 package, you could end up with a $MM stock grant (which would normally be reserved for L7+) at Google. Compensation raises are tied to level, but that just means that you'll sit and vest your existing stock gran…
Stock ranges (as well as refresh grants) are also tied to levels you're hired at. "Largely false" my ass. All of this BS applies _only_ to people with weak skill stacks. Committee doesn't even know your "previous" level elsewhere. They know that you've e.g. built this very impressive distributed system here and now and hopefully it made $MM revenue difference (which you'd be smart to quantify and mention). So if you…
This is one of the perks for moving from FAANG to non-FAANG; hiring managers elsewhere know that simply by being an engineer there you will have had exposure to distributed systems and big data, and so bring a transferrable skillset to their company.
I thought about whether your comment is true in the context of Speech & Image recognition and other AI technologies. The Speech leads do seem to have an awfully high number of Distinguished/Fellow engineers (this is the top of the eng ladder, where you can basically write your own ticket and your comp package is enough to retire on). However, there are still an awful lot of L4 engineers working on Speech, many training deep-learning models as part of their daily duties.
FB may be different.
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Stock ranges (as well as refresh grants) are also tied to levels you're hired at. "Largely false" my ass. All of this BS applies _only_ to people with weak skill stacks. Committee doesn't even know your "previous" level elsewhere. They know that you've e.g. built this very impressive distributed system here and now and hopefully it made $MM revenue difference (which you'd be smart to quantify and mention). So if you…
Distributed system & big data knowledge is table stakes for Google engineers. At L4 you will be expected to deal with large distributed systems handling petabytes of data. You probably don't need it for L3 (which includes new grads who would never have had an opportunity to develop that skillset elsewhere), but by the time you're at L4 you should be dealing with that regularly. This is one of the perks for moving fro…
True, but observe that knowledge is very different from _experience_. In anything sufficiently complicated there's tons of stuff you won't find in books, and even if you do, you won't pay sufficient attention to. E.g. you could sorta know how a database works (from a university course or something), but if you haven't implemented e.g. a state of the art query engine or a storage manager, you'll still be SOL in practice until you write one or more of those things and actually gain experience.
Knowledge by itself is darn near worthless, it only becomes valuable with experience, particularly if it's in 2 or more related fields.
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Can you give an example of a project like that? Or at least a hypothetical example if they are confidential. I can’t think of a project like that that people said couldn't be done, its usually just people saying “we cant do it at this time unless we get more time or reprioritize something else.”
My current project is confidential, but one from 2013-2014: We had a bunch of UXR that showed that people liked iPhones because of the fancy snappy animations, and our execs really wanted to bring that to Google's webapps. At the time, there was this big perception that mobile web sites were slow and clunky and you absolutely had to go native app to get smooth 60fps transitions. I did some profiling with the Chrome p…
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My current project is confidential, but one from 2013-2014: We had a bunch of UXR that showed that people liked iPhones because of the fancy snappy animations, and our execs really wanted to bring that to Google's webapps. At the time, there was this big perception that mobile web sites were slow and clunky and you absolutely had to go native app to get smooth 60fps transitions. I did some profiling with the Chrome p…
What about this project made it L6? Is it because it was a high priority for execs? Is it because you had to get a lot of buy-in from external team(s) in the Chrome org?
This is all for IC engineering. I actually prefer to think of the ladder in organizational terms which also encompass management, but the sub-thread here is specifically interested in what it takes to be an L6+ IC.
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Can you give an example of a project like that? Or at least a hypothetical example if they are confidential. I can’t think of a project like that that people said couldn't be done, its usually just people saying “we cant do it at this time unless we get more time or reprioritize something else.”
My current project is confidential, but one from 2013-2014: We had a bunch of UXR that showed that people liked iPhones because of the fancy snappy animations, and our execs really wanted to bring that to Google's webapps. At the time, there was this big perception that mobile web sites were slow and clunky and you absolutely had to go native app to get smooth 60fps transitions. I did some profiling with the Chrome p…
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One area that was not discussed at length was the transition from a high tier to a medium tier. In that case the HR at the medium tier often put a lot of weight into the title. I have seen HR teams say thing like "That person was not a principal engineer in their previous job" so they need to come in at a lower level here. They (HR) often don't recognized tiers within the industry, and use titles as a proxy for skill…
I worked at a company that called everyone Member of the Technical Staff (were you at Cycorp too?), and I just put a more descriptive title on my LinkedIn, resume, etc. I never had a use for business cards so the issue never came up
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My current project is confidential, but one from 2013-2014: We had a bunch of UXR that showed that people liked iPhones because of the fancy snappy animations, and our execs really wanted to bring that to Google's webapps. At the time, there was this big perception that mobile web sites were slow and clunky and you absolutely had to go native app to get smooth 60fps transitions. I did some profiling with the Chrome p…
Thanks this is really illuminating, how did you find projects like this? Where did u get the visibility to be able to find problems like this that were priorities for leadership?
Management thought of me specifically because I'd built a reputation as someone who could tackle difficult projects, particularly those surrounding browser UI. I'd worked on the last 3 visual redesigns of Google Search (as the first engineer of the 2010 one, a consultant for the 2011 one, and the tech lead of the 2013 one), plus I started the Authorship project within Search, plus I'd done a bunch of little visual easter eggs like the [let it snow] holiday one (also a project that many people thought was impossible because it was started after the last binary push of the year). Management takes note of who delivers; it takes a while to get noticed, but once you are you get all the high-profile projects.