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"Don't focus too much on promotion" - A Billionaire Google Exec https://goomics.net/228/ https://goomics.net/228/

marcosdumay 5y ago
"Exercise sheets to practice quickly spotting other contributor names and easing them" If the place looks like a Paranoia game, is it evidence that an AI has already took over the place?
- gravypod 5y ago
  (Opinion is my own) It's very different between teams. My personal experience: everyone I've worked with is trying really hard to put me in a position where I can succeed. I've been put on very visible projects (from day one) and I'm getting constant help from my TL to keep me on a track to get promoted. Everyone I work with directly is amazing. Google is a magical place but the standard deviation in experiences are large. I've personally been very happy with my experience/team.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Agreed. I never got the sense Google knows how to train managers... It favors a very self-organizing approach, and the feedback loops seem structured to deal with under-performing management by freezing them out of promotion (and hoping they either fix the problem or quit), not replacing them. The consequence is that teams are fiefdoms, and the experience varies wildly based on whether a manager knows what the hell they're doing.
- mattzito 5y ago
  As the other respondent said, that's not my generalized experience at Google. I am aware of one situation where I heard that someone who was planning to go up for promo was recreating important documents with only their name on it and then soliciting feedback from people in leadership to beef up their packet. It was not great, but it was successful. But that was the only one of those that I've seen - after 14 years, I would imagine I would have seen more. In general, the big weakness in Google's promo process is that projects that are visible to leadership get more attention than those who are grinding it out behind the scenes. There's been genuine attempts to address that, but it's hard from a practical standpoint. (Obligatory: opinion is my own)
- random314 5y ago
  This is more or less the norm at every FAANG. New hires are trained by their managers to pee and mark their territory. This is how you pee 1. Don't verbally discuss project ideas with peers 2. Write up a nice beefy document even if the core idea can be expressed in 2 paragraphs 3. Do some vaguely relevant data analysis etc. 4. Circulate among leadership Doing the above only protects you from theft within your team. Even if you do all of the above your ideas are liable to be stolen, by someone from other teams. Typically, some one else will prepare a document with a very different title that for the first 2 paragraphs might look like something different. The details will be virtually identical except for some subsections where some arbitrary changes will be made. They will be very eager to not discuss the timelines of when each document was prepared. Why do they do this? Aren't they paid enough to do the decent thing? The problem is that most FAANG hires are career climber high GPA folks who can't accept the idea that they got into FAANG by grinding on leetcode, not because of any depth in CS knowledge and understanding. Their brain is programmed to ladder climb at all costs. For the untalented hacks that end up at a FAANG, eventually stealing becomes the only option.
  - random314 5y ago
    One more way things get stolen. Someone quickly implements the key idea in your document and plays dumb about the plagiarization. To be "fair", the project might get split into 2 parts or be completely handed over to the one who "executed".
DoreenMichele 5y ago
I have no problem interpreting that as both humor/irony and also completely serious advice. It's potentially like saying "Make sure your priorities are in order. If you aren't actually adding value, you won't be a success. You can always be fired if you manage to get promoted and then can't actually deliver after tooting your own horn enough to get there." It may be important to set a goal of getting promoted but you also need to qualify for the promotion and that's, at least in theory, about actually doing good work, not buttonholing the right people and having the perfect resume.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  "appearing very visibly to add value" I occasionally wonder if Google exists primarily to herd smart-ish people towards mostly useless make work.
deanCommie 5y ago
Counterpoint: At a top company like Google, full of some of the most talented people in the world, there simply won't be enough promotions to go around. And yet, an "average" performer who is happy to build, scale, maintain, and not re-launch a new chat product every 5 years should be rewarded and encouraged to stay and not leave to a competitor. How do you do it? You have to create intrinsic motivation. Twist: You can't give someone intrinsic motivation. They have to choose it themselves. But you have to give them the space and the options to find it. "Don't focus too much on promotion" is still bad advice - like "Don't be angry" to someone who is angry. But the sentiment is correct. If you're focusing too much on promotion it means you don't have intrinsic motivation and are focusing on the extrinsic. If you are well paid, well respected, well supplemented with additional benefits, and well challenged with hard problems (and at Google all of these should all have been YES by all accounts), then it's true - you SHOULDN'T focus too much on promotion. I welcome counter-counterpoints.
- fossuser 5y ago
  IIRC (don't work at Google myself, but friends do) - you start out of college as an L3 and are expected to make promo twice to L4 and then L5. Once at L5 it's okay to just stay there and do good work, the pay is still really good and you're not expected to go beyond that unless you want to (and you're capable of it). The main issue I've heard is that to go from L3 -> L5 there are incentives around 'impact' and launching products (or leaving for another company/startup and getting hired back). This means people are incentivized to ship something to get promo, but working on an already shipped thing is bad for career progress. An oversimplification, but seen through this lens Google's many chat apps make sense.
  - lrem 5y ago
    I work with many brilliant engineers who have been in Google for 5-10 years and are at L4. The pay is good enough if you don't have a large family to support and they simply can't be arsed to play that game.
    - ganafagol 5y ago
mypalmike 5y ago
Haha.. I like "move to competitor then back at L+1 route". And that's not just a Google thing.
milkers 5y ago
Focus on succeeding not winning, rip coach(https://www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_the_difference_between_winning_and_succeeding?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_the_difference_between...). One can win by chance but success is a more profound, long term thing which is less susceptible to chance.

"Exercise sheets to practice quickly spotting other contributor names and easing them" If the place looks like a Paranoia game, is it evidence that an AI has already took over the place?

gravypod 5y ago
(Opinion is my own) It's very different between teams. My personal experience: everyone I've worked with is trying really hard to put me in a position where I can succeed. I've been put on very visible projects (from day one) and I'm getting constant help from my TL to keep me on a track to get promoted. Everyone I work with directly is amazing. Google is a magical place but the standard deviation in experiences are large. I've personally been very happy with my experience/team.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Agreed. I never got the sense Google knows how to train managers... It favors a very self-organizing approach, and the feedback loops seem structured to deal with under-performing management by freezing them out of promotion (and hoping they either fix the problem or quit), not replacing them. The consequence is that teams are fiefdoms, and the experience varies wildly based on whether a manager knows what the hell they're doing.
mattzito 5y ago
As the other respondent said, that's not my generalized experience at Google. I am aware of one situation where I heard that someone who was planning to go up for promo was recreating important documents with only their name on it and then soliciting feedback from people in leadership to beef up their packet. It was not great, but it was successful. But that was the only one of those that I've seen - after 14 years, I would imagine I would have seen more. In general, the big weakness in Google's promo process is that projects that are visible to leadership get more attention than those who are grinding it out behind the scenes. There's been genuine attempts to address that, but it's hard from a practical standpoint. (Obligatory: opinion is my own)
random314 5y ago
This is more or less the norm at every FAANG. New hires are trained by their managers to pee and mark their territory. This is how you pee 1. Don't verbally discuss project ideas with peers 2. Write up a nice beefy document even if the core idea can be expressed in 2 paragraphs 3. Do some vaguely relevant data analysis etc. 4. Circulate among leadership Doing the above only protects you from theft within your team. Even if you do all of the above your ideas are liable to be stolen, by someone from other teams. Typically, some one else will prepare a document with a very different title that for the first 2 paragraphs might look like something different. The details will be virtually identical except for some subsections where some arbitrary changes will be made. They will be very eager to not discuss the timelines of when each document was prepared. Why do they do this? Aren't they paid enough to do the decent thing? The problem is that most FAANG hires are career climber high GPA folks who can't accept the idea that they got into FAANG by grinding on leetcode, not because of any depth in CS knowledge and understanding. Their brain is programmed to ladder climb at all costs. For the untalented hacks that end up at a FAANG, eventually stealing becomes the only option.
- random314 5y ago
  One more way things get stolen. Someone quickly implements the key idea in your document and plays dumb about the plagiarization. To be "fair", the project might get split into 2 parts or be completely handed over to the one who "executed".

DoreenMichele 5y ago

I have no problem interpreting that as both humor/irony and also completely serious advice. It's potentially like saying "Make sure your priorities are in order. If you aren't actually adding value, you won't be a success. You can always be fired if you manage to get promoted and then can't actually deliver after tooting your own horn enough to get there." It may be important to set a goal of getting promoted but you also need to qualify for the promotion and that's, at least in theory, about actually doing good work, not buttonholing the right people and having the perfect resume.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
"appearing very visibly to add value" I occasionally wonder if Google exists primarily to herd smart-ish people towards mostly useless make work.

deanCommie 5y ago

Counterpoint: At a top company like Google, full of some of the most talented people in the world, there simply won't be enough promotions to go around. And yet, an "average" performer who is happy to build, scale, maintain, and not re-launch a new chat product every 5 years should be rewarded and encouraged to stay and not leave to a competitor. How do you do it? You have to create intrinsic motivation. Twist: You can't give someone intrinsic motivation. They have to choose it themselves. But you have to give them the space and the options to find it. "Don't focus too much on promotion" is still bad advice - like "Don't be angry" to someone who is angry. But the sentiment is correct. If you're focusing too much on promotion it means you don't have intrinsic motivation and are focusing on the extrinsic. If you are well paid, well respected, well supplemented with additional benefits, and well challenged with hard problems (and at Google all of these should all have been YES by all accounts), then it's true - you SHOULDN'T focus too much on promotion. I welcome counter-counterpoints.

fossuser 5y ago
IIRC (don't work at Google myself, but friends do) - you start out of college as an L3 and are expected to make promo twice to L4 and then L5. Once at L5 it's okay to just stay there and do good work, the pay is still really good and you're not expected to go beyond that unless you want to (and you're capable of it). The main issue I've heard is that to go from L3 -> L5 there are incentives around 'impact' and launching products (or leaving for another company/startup and getting hired back). This means people are incentivized to ship something to get promo, but working on an already shipped thing is bad for career progress. An oversimplification, but seen through this lens Google's many chat apps make sense.
- lrem 5y ago
  I work with many brilliant engineers who have been in Google for 5-10 years and are at L4. The pay is good enough if you don't have a large family to support and they simply can't be arsed to play that game.
  - ganafagol 5y ago

mypalmike 5y ago

Haha.. I like "move to competitor then back at L+1 route". And that's not just a Google thing.

milkers 5y ago

Focus on succeeding not winning, rip coach(https://www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_the_difference_between_winning_and_succeeding?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_the_difference_between...). One can win by chance but success is a more profound, long term thing which is less susceptible to chance.