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I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

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Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#41

Post by nicoburns »

rockemsockem wrote: post #36
r0ze-at-hn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> author seems like they were only there for a promotion It is more the other way around. Internally google taught/teaches engineers that their only goal is promotion. All parts of this used to be very very public. There are whole presentations, decks, docs, and more. What level you are and what level the person you are talking to ~mattered~. The goal isn't to be a good engineer, to make good products, or anything li…

This is not true. Google is so large that I'm definitely willing to believe that there are parts where people are like this, but I found that people generally did not care about my level and while there are many docs/slides about how to get promoted it was largely oriented towards helping people advocate effectively for themselves and was not "thou shall be promoted". There was/is the expectation that eventually ever…

> There was/is the expectation that eventually everyone can reach a certain level within a certain (very generous) amount of time, but I don't see that as the same thing at all.

The fact that you are expected to reach a certain level in a certain time period, and going up levels involves a largely arbitrary process that is disconnected from your actual work performance seems pretty problematic to me. Seems like it'd be hard to focus on actually doing useful work in such an environment.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#43

Post by tdeck »

rockemsockem wrote: post #36
r0ze-at-hn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> author seems like they were only there for a promotion It is more the other way around. Internally google taught/teaches engineers that their only goal is promotion. All parts of this used to be very very public. There are whole presentations, decks, docs, and more. What level you are and what level the person you are talking to ~mattered~. The goal isn't to be a good engineer, to make good products, or anything li…

This is not true. Google is so large that I'm definitely willing to believe that there are parts where people are like this, but I found that people generally did not care about my level and while there are many docs/slides about how to get promoted it was largely oriented towards helping people advocate effectively for themselves and was not "thou shall be promoted". There was/is the expectation that eventually ever…

I will second what the parent poster says, people definitely cared about levels in the teams I was on (2016-2021). Sometimes people would talk about other engineers using only their level. E.g. "some L3 keeps sending me these crappy CLs" or my manager introducing new teammates by saying "we have a new L5 joining the team". This seemed normal to a lot of people at Google, but since I have worked at other places where someone's level almost never comes up in any conversation I always found it a little concerning.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#44

Post by herval »

cdrini wrote: post #18

I'm not sure I agree with this. The breaking projects before completion is very annoying, but also the author seems like they were only there for a promotion? I mean a promotion is nice, but it was never really explained why that was such a dealbreaker. If the only thing keeping you at your job is the prospect of a better title, that's probably a bad sign. They then made a lifetime's worth of money at Google in four…

> the author seems like they were only there for a promotion?

Based on Blind and personal experience, the vast majority of people in big tech are literally doing that. It’s probably the most used carrot used by management in those companies too, so hard to blame them

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#45

Post by shadowgovt »

throwaway_5753 wrote: post #37
asdfman123 wrote: post #32

This is also why I'm thinking about leaving Google. I have little to sit through meetings, try to pawn necessary work off to others, and play the game while there's a hundred small tasks that my project desperately needs me to get done. I can jump ship and make $50-100k/yr more because the next place I work will actually value my experience, even though it's technically much more useful to Google.

Where will you go that will be a 50k-100k bump over google comp?

Lots of places, for two reasons

1) companies usually hire ex-Googlers up-level because they're perceived as being more valuable (Google titles tend to under-represent engineer capabilities; an L4 Googler is an SSE elsewhere).

2) Google was one of the FAANGs that fixed wages via unofficial non-competes. Their compensation ladders still reflect that.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#46

Post by shitlord »

throwaway_5753 wrote: post #37
asdfman123 wrote: post #32

This is also why I'm thinking about leaving Google. I have little to sit through meetings, try to pawn necessary work off to others, and play the game while there's a hundred small tasks that my project desperately needs me to get done. I can jump ship and make $50-100k/yr more because the next place I work will actually value my experience, even though it's technically much more useful to Google.

Where will you go that will be a 50k-100k bump over google comp?

Google doesn't exactly pay top of market.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#47

Post by rockemsockem »

nicoburns wrote: post #41
rockemsockem wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Google is so large that I'm definitely willing to believe that there are parts where people are like this, but I found that people generally did not care about my level and while there are many docs/slides about how to get promoted it was largely oriented towards helping people advocate effectively for themselves and was not "thou shall be promoted". There was/is the expectation that eventually ever…

> There was/is the expectation that eventually everyone can reach a certain level within a certain (very generous) amount of time, but I don't see that as the same thing at all. The fact that you are expected to reach a certain level in a certain time period, and going up levels involves a largely arbitrary process that is disconnected from your actual work performance seems pretty problematic to me. Seems like it'd…

No, it really isn't.

The amount of time is very long, I don't even actually know what it was, and I personally am not aware of anyone this happened to and have never heard of anyone this happened to. In the past you were expected to hit L5, 2 promotions from hire, and now the expectation is L4, so only 1.

An L5 engineer at Google is someone who is expected to be able to handle any medium-large difficulty task with some amount of cross-team coordination and get it done without much oversight. IMO every software engineer should be able to get to that point in their career eventually otherwise it indicates a pretty big problem.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#48

Post by rockemsockem »

tdeck wrote: post #43
rockemsockem wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Google is so large that I'm definitely willing to believe that there are parts where people are like this, but I found that people generally did not care about my level and while there are many docs/slides about how to get promoted it was largely oriented towards helping people advocate effectively for themselves and was not "thou shall be promoted". There was/is the expectation that eventually ever…

I will second what the parent poster says, people definitely cared about levels in the teams I was on (2016-2021). Sometimes people would talk about other engineers using only their level. E.g. "some L3 keeps sending me these crappy CLs" or my manager introducing new teammates by saying "we have a new L5 joining the team". This seemed normal to a lot of people at Google, but since I have worked at other places where…

So like I said, I definitely believe that it happened, but I didn't see it and I have a hard time believing it was the norm. I was there 2016-2022. Also the "some L3 keeps sending me these crappy CLs" person sounds like a bit of a dick.

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#49

Post by misstercool »

Quote the author “To continue advancing my career, I’d need projects that were even larger in scope and involved collaboration with more partner teams. But that just meant the project could fail due to even more factors outside my control, wasting months or years of my life.”

I am sure if he looks back and reflects again, he will admit that the success of a startup relay on 100+ other factors that out of your control. It is never a wasting time in your life. You learned how the world works!

Re: I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

#50

Post by rockemsockem »

nvarsj wrote: post #40
cdrini wrote: post #18

I'm not sure I agree with this. The breaking projects before completion is very annoying, but also the author seems like they were only there for a promotion? I mean a promotion is nice, but it was never really explained why that was such a dealbreaker. If the only thing keeping you at your job is the prospect of a better title, that's probably a bad sign. They then made a lifetime's worth of money at Google in four…

Fairly sure Google has/had a cliff for engineers to reach senior by a certain time frame. That puts immense pressure to get promoted, or you get laid off.

It's no longer senior, it's only L4 (new hires are usually L3). Also I never knew the time length for the cliff, but I think it was really, really long.
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