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I've personally been through this twice at Google. The company definitely provides a very attentive set of resources to help you find a new position within the

• onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  So... Like... What do you do in the interim? Not work, look for teams, and still get paid a shit ton of money? Do you do some training on the side? Work on a side project? How long does it take to find the new team?
  • sdenton4 7y ago
    From the couple people I know who have done this, I think it's pretty choose-your-own-adventure... Get paid to look for your new job, with very few actual responsibilities. It's worthwhile to compare this relative downtime to ramp-up time for new hires... who also generally spend a couple-few months being fairly useless (though working hard at it). And googlers being googlers, there's a decent chance that the 'down' time turns into interesting learning or side project time.
    • wyclif 7y ago
      So...it's kind of like being Big Head working at Hooli? Hanging out on the roof, or building potato guns and piezoelectric sensors?
      • dvirsky 7y ago
        Finding a new role inside the company actually requires some work though.
      • discordance 7y ago
        This practice isn’t uncommon. In some cases, I’ve seen FAANGMs give people up to 6 months of ‘window viewing’ time to find new jobs
        • Macha 7y ago
          After a recent merger at my employer, had some people in of the teams at my office with very little responsibilities for most of a year. The first six months they had minimal work because the company hadn't told them yet they were dropping them for a competing team on the other side of the merger, then they did inform them and gave them 3 months to find a new role in the company and apart from the odd production incident on their system, there was basically no work incoming to their former team. I think 3-4 moved within the company, 3 left on their own time before the deadline, and 4 waited out for the redundancy payment.
      • paxys 7y ago
        Finding a job can itself be a full time job though
      • WoahNoun 7y ago
        Lots of networking over coffee. You don't just blindly apply on the internal job board. You talk to people you know in other parts of the company, you schedule meetings with managers with open roles. You reflect on what you actually want to do next. You reach out to mentors on if they know anyone who has interesting open roles or just on advice for next steps. Also interviewing with other companies. The next best job for you may not be with Google even if you could easily get an internal transfer role. And teams don't just blindly accept you because you already work at Google (although it helps). You still have to go through a somewhat more informal interview loop that you will definitely want to prepare for. Of course this is up to the individual, you can definitely just screw around for awhile and apply for an interal role with much less care.
        • ericd 7y ago
          Do they have you whiteboard asinine college CS algo problems in the internal version?
          • WoahNoun 7y ago
            Entirely dependent on the team and hiring manager. And the technical requirements of the role you want to move into versus your prior role. If you want to move from working on gmail to working on the android kernel, I imagine there's gonna be some whiteboarding. (Not that gmail is simple software, but just picked two examples that came to mind with different domain expertise).
            • ericd 7y ago
              Sounds reasonable. I was referring more to the gatekeeping type, like a heavy focus on things like balancing trees and recursion for roles that clearly involve neither trees nor recursion.
              • mav3rick 7y ago
                It's really not that at level. Once at Google you really get the benefit of doubt of clearing a high bar. It's mostly a talk around your work / perf / CLs and then team fit.
      • dboreham 7y ago
        You do realize that show is based on reality, right?
      • danans 7y ago
        Not really. It was pretty stressful for me last time since I needed to find a project whose commute allowed to get home in time to take care of my kids, since my spouse's job has no flexibility in that regard.
  • tdhoot 7y ago
    When I saw this at Google, the employee had 60-90 paid days to find something new within the company. Some people waited til the last few weeks to find something because they essentially got two months paid vacation.
  • formercoder 7y ago
    Keep in mind this is going to screw your performance rating / bonus / promotion situation. You’re incentivized to love fast.
    • K0SM0S 7y ago
      Yes, love fast and make things. An engineer's ethos.
      • joejerryronnie 7y ago
        Google engineers - single-handedly increasing the bay area's birth rates Edit: Wow, just realized that could be a veiled reference to artificial insemination
      • deleted 7y ago
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  • birdyrooster 7y ago
    I took a vacation to Tokyo on a whim when I heard about my defrag. Checked out Google Tokyo (just have to find a Googler near the tower in Rappongi willing to take you up where your badge can matter) and enjoyed another month or so of relaxation back here before starting a new job at a different company. In my case, they were paying a multiplier of my salary due to the circumstances of my "defrag". In all I was paid an entire years salary in one quarter while I enjoyed a sabbatical.
• mikelward 7y ago
  This is why I live and work in Sunnyvale, and rejected offers to move elsewhere. I've worked away from the head office at other companies, and it's limiting.
  • dkdk8283 7y ago
    I left Sunnyvale (and the bay area) never looking back. I worked on Castro in MV and it was a 30 min drive 9 years ago. For me the quality of life is so much better outside of SV.