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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 pr

• dmitrygr 8y ago
  "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.
  • ptd 8y ago
    Can entry level applicants do this?
    • dmitrygr 8y ago
      Your success in any negotiation will usually depend on what your leverage is
      • ptd 8y ago
        What if you don’t have any leverage? Just take what you’re offered and work on becoming an invidial with leverage?
• BossingAround 8y ago
  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.
  • hrktb 8y ago
    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.
    • brown9-2 8y ago
      What you describe sounds like an equally broken process.
  • empath75 8y ago
    I’ve literally gotten 1 promotion in a 15 year career. Every other title and salary change was from switching jobs.
    • tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y ago
      What was your longest stay at a company?
      • empath75 8y ago
        5 years at the one that promoted me.
    • scarface74 8y ago
      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.)
• alkibiades 8y ago
  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.
  • forgotmyhnacc 8y ago
    > 99 pct of people reading this would never get to that level. Wow, that's fairly presumptuous of you. Most software engineers make senior (L5) after they've worked in the industry for a few years. Source: worked at Google and Facebook before.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • hopler 8y ago
      That's only true when you ignore all the people who quit or get manager out for non-promotion.
      • eecsninja 8y ago
        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.
    • cmrdporcupine 8y ago
      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.
• jlebar 8y ago
  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?
  • pfortuny 8y ago
    Nope: playing politics mean talking corporatesse and a promotion commitee only understands that. Like when asking for scientific funds.
    • elcomet 8y ago
      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.
      • dandellion 8y ago
        I'd say that is correct. Unless you work alone you are going to be playing politics to some degree.
      • coldtea 8y ago
        >You can call almost anything 'playing policits'. Except what does matter, and should be counted: your code, your design decisions, and the quality of your project output...
        • brownbat 8y ago
          Getting along with people actually matters. 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.
• akvadrako 8y ago
  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.
  • cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    It makes sense for a company of Google's size, where there's an endless pool of candidates. What I don't understand is why so many small companies are eager to copy Google's interview process. It's not for them.
• ignoramous 8y ago
  I can't speak if it was indeed true, but this was/is what engs at Amazon thought about the promotion process in place there, too. Frugality is a core leadership principle at Amazon, after all, however misunderstood it may be.
• talltimtom 8y ago
  That sounds nothing like politics. Politics would be if you promotions depended on how Well your manager likes you.
• 3xblah 8y ago
  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.
  • TravelAndFood 8y ago
    "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."
    • hoaw 8y ago
      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.
  • darkerside 8y ago
• drewg123 8y ago
  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..
  • wdr1 8y ago
    The process has changed in significant ways since you left.
    • asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
      Not all that much for ->L6 and above. Just for L5 and below.
      • sowbug 8y ago
        Yes, also for L6+ in ways that would have affected key parts of drewg123's experience.
        • ptd 8y ago
• e40 8y ago
  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.
  • uuwp 8y ago
    650 is L6 which is maybe 5% of the Google's population. The median pay would be around 300.
• coleifer 8y ago
  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?
  • ummonk 8y ago
    Google has an IC ladder. You don’t need to go into management when you get promoted.
  • cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    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.
    • tway2391426 8y ago
      Reread the ladder, L4 is now the growth expectation. You're safe, comrade.
• cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  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.
• BurningFrog 8y ago
  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.
• i_am_nomad 8y ago
  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.
• tway2391426 8y ago
  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.