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Ask HN: Google Salary/Promotion Tips

3 points by AvgNoogler 10y ago

I'm an incoming Noogler (coming in as L3) who's lurked on HN for a while. What are some important tips for playing the salary/promotion game, especially with respect to choice of team? Want to have some info on hand when making my choice of team.

nostrademons 10y ago
Your basic principle is that you want to get on a team that is going to launch something demonstrably important to Google within the next 6-12 months (if they launch more frequently, even better). Google normalizes salaries by level; if you negotiate a higher salary at hiring, you'll get smaller raises over time so that you eventually reach parity with others at your level. For that reason, it's more important to put yourself in a position where you can quickly demonstrate ability & contribution and get promoted than to get the best deal going in. Some more specific tips: #1: Go for a core product - something under the "Google" umbrella rather than the "Alphabet" umbrella. #2: Ideally, go for a moneymaker: Ads, Search, Cloud, Android/Play, or YouTube. They get a lot more attention then divisions that make productized versions of Google's internal tools (GMail, Inbox, Calendar, Docs, Drive, etc.) or those that are part of Google's moat (Chrome, Toolbar, Fiber/Access). #3: Be wary of anything experimental, unless you really believe in what they're trying to build (at which point, you're doing it for its own sake and not playing the salary/promotion game). The vast majority of these never launch, and so they count for nothing at promotion time. There's a bit of a tradition at Google where really senior engineers who have generated more money for the company than they will ever cost basically get one freebie project to do whatever they want - that's how we got Google Wave, Hello.com, Google Scholar, and a number of projects that never launched. These projects can be very personally rewarding & educational to be on, but they're unlikely to lead to promotions or higher compensation. #4: Try and gauge the political clout of the manager (often very hard to do unless you've been there for a while). The managers that are best at getting their people promoted are usually not the best technically; don't necessarily be wowed by someone with a great track record (see #3) or who seems like a real coding genius. Instead, look for someone who you feel really has your back and wants you on the team. Also, good managers like this will have really good other individual contributors on their team; they may not be great technical folks themselves, but they will attract great technical folks to work for them.

3 points by AvgNoogler 10y ago

nostrademons 10y ago

Your basic principle is that you want to get on a team that is going to launch something demonstrably important to Google within the next 6-12 months (if they launch more frequently, even better). Google normalizes salaries by level; if you negotiate a higher salary at hiring, you'll get smaller raises over time so that you eventually reach parity with others at your level. For that reason, it's more important to put yourself in a position where you can quickly demonstrate ability & contribution and get promoted than to get the best deal going in. Some more specific tips: #1: Go for a core product - something under the "Google" umbrella rather than the "Alphabet" umbrella. #2: Ideally, go for a moneymaker: Ads, Search, Cloud, Android/Play, or YouTube. They get a lot more attention then divisions that make productized versions of Google's internal tools (GMail, Inbox, Calendar, Docs, Drive, etc.) or those that are part of Google's moat (Chrome, Toolbar, Fiber/Access). #3: Be wary of anything experimental, unless you really believe in what they're trying to build (at which point, you're doing it for its own sake and not playing the salary/promotion game). The vast majority of these never launch, and so they count for nothing at promotion time. There's a bit of a tradition at Google where really senior engineers who have generated more money for the company than they will ever cost basically get one freebie project to do whatever they want - that's how we got Google Wave, Hello.com, Google Scholar, and a number of projects that never launched. These projects can be very personally rewarding & educational to be on, but they're unlikely to lead to promotions or higher compensation. #4: Try and gauge the political clout of the manager (often very hard to do unless you've been there for a while). The managers that are best at getting their people promoted are usually not the best technically; don't necessarily be wowed by someone with a great track record (see #3) or who seems like a real coding genius. Instead, look for someone who you feel really has your back and wants you on the team. Also, good managers like this will have really good other individual contributors on their team; they may not be great technical folks themselves, but they will attract great technical folks to work for them.