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A good friend of mine from university is a Googler. He is a nice guy, but incredibly political and technically not very capable. A master of making himself look
by osrec 8y ago
A good friend of mine from university is a Googler. He is a nice guy, but incredibly political and technically not very capable. A master of making himself look good, schmoozing and talking the talk. He has done rather well at Google.
Yet another friend, a brilliant, straight-talking techy, struggles at moving up the ranks Google.
Only one data point, but given the comments here, perhaps it is somewhat accurate.
- beerlord 8y agoThe solution is to work for a smaller company where your output is directly tied to the market success of the entire organisation, and where its small enough that the CEO/Founder can directly appreciate your efforts. Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go. Bonus is that these kind of jobs are often located outside of Silicon Valley, so your living costs will be much lower.
- hoaw 8y ago> Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go. That is a pretty big "just". Bonuses aren't common everywhere, and unfortunately it seems like management being directly involved in the company can also go the other way. Since they have a larger incentive to short change you on salary as it is their own bottom line. That said I think looking at the promotion structure is something underappreciated and should really be part of these "how to be successful" post rather than maxing out you credit card (or whatever).
- VRay 8y agoYou're saying to walk away from $250k+ at Google so you can pull in 120 at a failed startup? If someone doesn't have the weaseling skills to weasel up the ladder at Google, they're going to be horribly exploited at a smaller company too
- hoaw 8y agoNo, from my experience what is meant is to join a small and medium-sized enterprise and become a part of their success. $200k is a lot in salary, but it isn't that much for a company as such if they sell or provide high value products or services.
- mmmBacon 8y agoThis is false. I’ve been at 4 different startups and the ones I made myself key to market success were way better than working in these soul crushing meat grinders like Goog or FB. There’s more to life than TC.
- osrec 8y agoWhat does TC stand for?
- spookthesunset 8y ago> There’s more to life than TC. Easy to say but those "soul crushing meat grinders" can pay literally hundreds of thousands more in total annual comp than some dinky startup.
- sanderjd 8y agoJust for what it's worth, my experience is the opposite; I've found Google less of a meat grinder and less soul crushing than startups. But I think it's possible that a lot depends on where - both in the country and in the org chart - you're located.
- spiritcat 8y agoso they keep the smart people doing useful work, rather than convert them to useless managers? same as it ever was.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y agoIf Google could distinguish between smart people and useless people, why keep the useless people?
- spiritcat 8y agoI guess i should clarify. Useless in a technical sense, not in a bureaucratic sense. You still need them of course. And I'm sure even the worst at google are far from 'useless.' Figure of speech. Edit: Possibly better than the alternative overall though. So frustrating to have competent people promoted as you're trying to put out a working product. Cancel those meetings and fix this code!
- spiritcat 8y agoBut just to be clear for when this comment gets mined by some future HR department. It is of course very important to have good people making the high level architectural decisions, and you should absolutely hire me for your senior technical positions to maximize the output of all those around me! It's just the whole needing to give blunt assessments of underlings that may have consequences for their and their families livelihood that I'm not suited for.
- skj 8y agoPromotion at Google does not mean management.
- candiodari 8y ago... until you figure out that maybe comparing numbers of high level technical engineers to numbers of high level managers would be the correct way to gauge this. Your chances of becoming a high level manager are very slim, but your chances of becoming a high level engineer are much slimmer. But if your message is "it's better than elsewhere", then yes, it probably is.
- extropy 8y agoHigher levels at Google inevitably mean getting people organized. Convincing that your design is worth investing resources into. If you are awesome only at cranking out code, you are stuck at L4.