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The main thing is that Google prefers to downlevel people who have external experience. I (male) had 5 years of experience, still was hired at L3. I know many o

The main thing is that Google prefers to downlevel people who have external experience. I (male) had 5 years of experience, still was hired at L3. I know many others who have the same story. So the L4 person probably had some better story/negotiation which allowed them to start at L4. It of course could be bias. It was really frustrating for me to be at the same level as new grads, though on reflection, I was not at a the same level as other L4 employees around. Some transparency around these processes I think could help candidates a lot. I think the bigger issue is that new-grad phds are almost always hired at L4. They are often less experienced at software engineering than someone with a bachelors and a few years of experience. So unless the person is being hired into an area that actually makes use of their phd, it seems that Google is just willing to pay for the title.

rafiki6 8y ago
Can I ask why you might think that you were not at the same level? Why is Google a special software snowflake and none of your external experience is transferable?
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  To use a sports analogy: Two people could each have 5 years of experience playing baseball, but one is in a AAA league and the other plays for an MLB team. Years of experience doesn't necessarily say anything about actual skill.
  - rafiki6 8y ago
    You just told me that Google is the MLB. I don't see any evidence for this. Many great software companies exist. You are working on the assumption that everyone applying to Google is coming from low-rate companies. Further, if I get hired into the MLB from an AAA team, it's likely I am playing at a professional level. I might get a rookie contract upfront, but that doesn't mean that my skill level is that of a rookie. The key difference here is that in the MLB it's much harder to quantify skills whereas that's not the case with software engineers. If I was part of a team that released a solid piece of software, even if it's from a non-giant software company, I'm not entirely sure why my experience isn't transferable to Google (outside of a different stack). By that logic, since people are stuck in the proprietary stack at Google, they would have similar struggles moving out of Google and should be down leveled.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      You're reading way too much into my comment. It wasn't meant personally. I'm simply pointing out that years of experience by itself doesn't mean much. It's possible to spend lots of time doing something and nevertheless not be particularly good at it relative to others, for a variety of reasons. I've interviewed plenty of people with 10+ YOE who've sucked. They wouldn't get a position at a top-end employer at all, let alone a senior one.
    - carlosdp 8y ago
      I don't think a lot of L4 and higher engineers at Google are very concerned about stack, that's what makes them the "MLB". At a certain point, the tooling shouldn't really be very important, it's the ability for someone to jump in on a problem and use critical thinking and efficient engineering methods to solve it. Say what you will about Google, but I don't think it's a very controversial opinion to say they do hire a lot of the best software engineers, and they are very good at it.
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        And none of this is particular to Google, either. There's other top-tier employers with similarly high salaries and talent. YOE at these kinds of employers is just not straight-across comparable to other employers, hence the baseball analogy. I know, I've worked at both kinds of companies -- the people at Big N companies are getting paid more for a reason.
    - vp8989 8y ago
      "The key difference here is that in the MLB it's much harder to quantify skills whereas that's not the case with software engineers. If I was part of a team that released a solid piece of software, even if it's from a non-giant software company, I'm not entirely sure why my experience isn't transferable to Google (outside of a different stack)." I'm sorry but that is completely the opposite. In MLB and a lot of other sports now, every single play is tracked. Every player has rate and counting stats to measure efficiency and overall production in every category. Anyone in the world can subscribe to the tape library and watch your entire career on loop and analyze every single moment of your professional career. No one can do anything like that in closed-source software. Infact, that is the big unsolved problem in tech hiring. No one can tell who the good devs are because your "track record", your resume is just not a reliable indicator of your ability.
- crazygringo 8y ago
  From what I've seen, Google is just a different technology stack. Much of what you've done at other companies, other on the Microsoft stack or open-source stack, doesn't transfer. Little of your tooling experience matters. While you can jump from one Linux-and-Python-and-git-and-JIRA-based startup to another and hit the ground running, you'll be spending months ramping up at Google unless you've worked there before. I'm not saying this is justified, especially when it comes to other ladders like graphic designers (where you see the same thing happening), but there does seem to be a certain logic to it.
- colonelxc 8y ago
  My previous experience, though I wrote software, was more like "research code" instead of "software engineering". We didn't have formal processes (no testing, testing fixes in prod, etc). Our focus was more on the (cool) analysis we were doing and not on the reliability of our systems. One of the reasons I chose to join Google over another security-related company (that would have done little coding) was that I wanted to learn how to write software better. I've learned a lot about testing, understanding the reliability of distributed systems, writing code for maintainability, etc.
- munchbunny 8y ago
  The major tech companies in general down-level you on the way in. It's because the skills that lead to success within Google and success elsewhere are different skillsets that intersect on common engineering skillsets. I tend to think of it this way: Google has tens of thousands of engineers. That's an ecosystem the size of a few thousand startups, except stuffed into one company. It has its way of doing things, and to move up in this ecosystem you don't just master your own startup, you master the ecosystem around you. That and a noticeable amount of elitism.

rafiki6 8y ago

Can I ask why you might think that you were not at the same level? Why is Google a special software snowflake and none of your external experience is transferable?

CydeWeys 8y ago
To use a sports analogy: Two people could each have 5 years of experience playing baseball, but one is in a AAA league and the other plays for an MLB team. Years of experience doesn't necessarily say anything about actual skill.
- rafiki6 8y ago
  You just told me that Google is the MLB. I don't see any evidence for this. Many great software companies exist. You are working on the assumption that everyone applying to Google is coming from low-rate companies. Further, if I get hired into the MLB from an AAA team, it's likely I am playing at a professional level. I might get a rookie contract upfront, but that doesn't mean that my skill level is that of a rookie. The key difference here is that in the MLB it's much harder to quantify skills whereas that's not the case with software engineers. If I was part of a team that released a solid piece of software, even if it's from a non-giant software company, I'm not entirely sure why my experience isn't transferable to Google (outside of a different stack). By that logic, since people are stuck in the proprietary stack at Google, they would have similar struggles moving out of Google and should be down leveled.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    You're reading way too much into my comment. It wasn't meant personally. I'm simply pointing out that years of experience by itself doesn't mean much. It's possible to spend lots of time doing something and nevertheless not be particularly good at it relative to others, for a variety of reasons. I've interviewed plenty of people with 10+ YOE who've sucked. They wouldn't get a position at a top-end employer at all, let alone a senior one.
  - carlosdp 8y ago
    I don't think a lot of L4 and higher engineers at Google are very concerned about stack, that's what makes them the "MLB". At a certain point, the tooling shouldn't really be very important, it's the ability for someone to jump in on a problem and use critical thinking and efficient engineering methods to solve it. Say what you will about Google, but I don't think it's a very controversial opinion to say they do hire a lot of the best software engineers, and they are very good at it.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      And none of this is particular to Google, either. There's other top-tier employers with similarly high salaries and talent. YOE at these kinds of employers is just not straight-across comparable to other employers, hence the baseball analogy. I know, I've worked at both kinds of companies -- the people at Big N companies are getting paid more for a reason.
  - vp8989 8y ago
    "The key difference here is that in the MLB it's much harder to quantify skills whereas that's not the case with software engineers. If I was part of a team that released a solid piece of software, even if it's from a non-giant software company, I'm not entirely sure why my experience isn't transferable to Google (outside of a different stack)." I'm sorry but that is completely the opposite. In MLB and a lot of other sports now, every single play is tracked. Every player has rate and counting stats to measure efficiency and overall production in every category. Anyone in the world can subscribe to the tape library and watch your entire career on loop and analyze every single moment of your professional career. No one can do anything like that in closed-source software. Infact, that is the big unsolved problem in tech hiring. No one can tell who the good devs are because your "track record", your resume is just not a reliable indicator of your ability.
crazygringo 8y ago
From what I've seen, Google is just a different technology stack. Much of what you've done at other companies, other on the Microsoft stack or open-source stack, doesn't transfer. Little of your tooling experience matters. While you can jump from one Linux-and-Python-and-git-and-JIRA-based startup to another and hit the ground running, you'll be spending months ramping up at Google unless you've worked there before. I'm not saying this is justified, especially when it comes to other ladders like graphic designers (where you see the same thing happening), but there does seem to be a certain logic to it.
colonelxc 8y ago
My previous experience, though I wrote software, was more like "research code" instead of "software engineering". We didn't have formal processes (no testing, testing fixes in prod, etc). Our focus was more on the (cool) analysis we were doing and not on the reliability of our systems. One of the reasons I chose to join Google over another security-related company (that would have done little coding) was that I wanted to learn how to write software better. I've learned a lot about testing, understanding the reliability of distributed systems, writing code for maintainability, etc.
munchbunny 8y ago
The major tech companies in general down-level you on the way in. It's because the skills that lead to success within Google and success elsewhere are different skillsets that intersect on common engineering skillsets. I tend to think of it this way: Google has tens of thousands of engineers. That's an ecosystem the size of a few thousand startups, except stuffed into one company. It has its way of doing things, and to move up in this ecosystem you don't just master your own startup, you master the ecosystem around you. That and a noticeable amount of elitism.