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Present Googler. Been here 7 years. As with all these things, this depends largely on what you are looking for. This comment applies to engineering exclusivelyq
by throwawayblue 6y ago
Present Googler. Been here 7 years. As with all these things, this depends largely on what you are looking for. This comment applies to engineering exclusivelyq. A good number of teams and products at Google are very mature with large teams working on them. This leads to slow growth and obviously less challenging work on one hand. On the other hand, if you would like an easy job with time to focus on personal priorities, it makes this possible. A good number of these teams also consist of engineers who have hit a certain level of growth equilibrium which prevents other junior and newer engineers from growing beyond a certain level. In fact, such engineers are labelled the "rest and vest" engineers.
However, with a company this large, this is not generalizable to absolutely all teams. There are smaller teams building new products and working on interesting and challenging things. In case you are interested in Google, my advice would be to look for the right team and ask a lot of direct questions to understand the team dynamics and the actual day to day work. It might also be worth considering non-Google Alphabet companies as they tend to have newer things to work on.
- vp8989 6y ago"A good number of these teams also consist of engineers who have hit a certain level of growth equilibrium which prevents other junior and newer engineers from growing beyond a certain level." Unsure what you mean here. Do you mean because teams can only have so many heads at certain levels, the people who are holding those seats block others from getting promoted?
- throwawayblue 6y agoThat's right. Also, as with most hierarchical engineering teams, the senior engineers are expected to push the boundaries of a project and define new stuff for the junior engineers to work on. However, the senior engineers might not care about growth anymore and end up maintaining the status quo. This could hamper the growth of the junior engineers on the team.
- erickj 6y agoIt's unfair to say this is due to senior engineers refusing to push boundaries. A team (eng + product + management) collectively defines its vision and strategies. I'm on my 3rd team, and 2nd PA in 9 years at Google and I've never seen a dearth of upward mobility opportunity for any junior engineer who wants it. There are almost always new an innovative projects beginning and available to work on.
- vp8989 6y agoI don't think these problems are exclusive to Google or Google-sized companies. Once devs have worked on a particular system for long enough, they become a nuisance because they know all the (good) reasons not to do something. Not necessarily because they are lazy / don't want to grow.