3 ms·

This is even a problem (for many people surprisingly) at L6: you have your specialization, and very few directors will agree to get L6 with unmatching specializ

by vl 5y ago

This is even a problem (for many people surprisingly) at L6: you have your specialization, and very few directors will agree to get L6 with unmatching specialization. But there could be only so many Android projects, or iPhone projects, or ML at any given site. So if you try to change teams, you quickly learn that there are just couple potential positions for you.

ozzythecat 5y ago
This is almost certainly not a problem at every FANG company. I’m at Amazon now and heads down in interviews. I work with a few different teams on both mobile apps and services. I don’t particularly care for specialization and I know as a company we’re looking for engineers across the board. If you can code, you’ll be smart enough to ramp up on whatever stack a team is working on.
neilv 5y ago
Is this due to how budgets are allocated to teams? Or something else?
- vl 5y ago
  Taking a high-level employee which may turn out not to be a good fit is a huge risk for any manager. So unless your specialization is a good fit and on top of that you have stellar feedback (or they just can’t find any people at all) they are very reluctant to agree to your transfer. Naturally this limits options for high-level employees (L6+) at any given work site. Effectively highest-level employees at Google don’t have a choice to what to work on at all. I.e. top-level directors are told what projects to lead.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Yep. The issue is that high-level employee may be a big net positive for the company in the abstract, but they may simultaneously be burning a few hundred $K hole in your group's budget without really producing much in furtherance of what you're being measured on. In an ideal world, this all gets settled out somewhere up the line but of course we're not in an ideal world.

3 ms·

This is even a problem (for many people surprisingly) at L6: you have your specialization, and very few directors will agree to get L6 with unmatching specializ

by vl 5y ago

ozzythecat 5y ago
This is almost certainly not a problem at every FANG company. I’m at Amazon now and heads down in interviews. I work with a few different teams on both mobile apps and services. I don’t particularly care for specialization and I know as a company we’re looking for engineers across the board. If you can code, you’ll be smart enough to ramp up on whatever stack a team is working on.
neilv 5y ago
Is this due to how budgets are allocated to teams? Or something else?
- vl 5y ago
  Taking a high-level employee which may turn out not to be a good fit is a huge risk for any manager. So unless your specialization is a good fit and on top of that you have stellar feedback (or they just can’t find any people at all) they are very reluctant to agree to your transfer. Naturally this limits options for high-level employees (L6+) at any given work site. Effectively highest-level employees at Google don’t have a choice to what to work on at all. I.e. top-level directors are told what projects to lead.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Yep. The issue is that high-level employee may be a big net positive for the company in the abstract, but they may simultaneously be burning a few hundred $K hole in your group's budget without really producing much in furtherance of what you're being measured on. In an ideal world, this all gets settled out somewhere up the line but of course we're not in an ideal world.