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From what I understood from friends who are Googlers, is that 20% projects on other teams, can be rewarded with a transfer, sometimes sooner than later. Google

From what I understood from friends who are Googlers, is that 20% projects on other teams, can be rewarded with a transfer, sometimes sooner than later. Google is one of the few companies where the 20% is a real thing for most people branch out, on either their own project, or another teams project. As far as most companies, the side-project with other teams is simply not an option.

michaelochurch 14y ago
If you start at Google at a lower level (SWE 2 or SWE 3) your manager can unilaterally shut you down. If you get a bad "calibration score", which is set quarterly by the manager, peer feedback won't matter. No other team will want you, and you may face a PIP, which ends your career even if it doesn't get you fired. Thus, your manager decides if you have 20% time or not. There are good managers at Google who value 20% time and will encourage you to work cross-hierarchically with other teams or on personal side projects, and there are others who are absentee so you can pull that off furtively. If you get a hard-ass with a lot of project-specific ambition, you're not going to get away with 20% time. Google inadvertently makes it worse by conflating project leadership with people management, which means that your boss is also held responsible for the performance of a specific project. That creates a huge conflict of interest, because the employee might be a better fit for another project, but the manager has to eat a loss on the project where he is.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Has this been getting better or worse over the past couple of years?
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Of the folks who I knew when I worked there and have been leaving, it seems to still be an issue. But a number of them were also somewhat off put by the evil/not-evil issues. In those cases they were definitely leaving the company and not the manager.
- nostrademons 14y ago
  If a team has direct evidence that you'd be valuable to them (i.e. you've 20%ed effectively on one of their projects), I can't imagine that they weight the calibration score more highly than that. People know what their own eyes tell them. There's an escalation path if your manager is outright forbidding you from taking 20% time, and the manager can be disciplined by the Powers That Be for that. Google also doesn't always conflate project leadership with people management (it depends on the team, and the org chart is explicitly setup so that this is not a given). There're pros and cons to both: if you're on a project where your manager is the tech lead, he'll know your work better (which can help you get promoted faster), but it also means that if you disagree with him on the technical direction of the project it can be harmful to your career. Out of my 4-year Google career, I've spent 2.5 years on teams where my manager was directly involved in the project, and 1.5 years basically doing my own thing or on loan to other teams with minimal involvement from my manager. I don't have a clear preference for one or the other, as I've found that my manager was always supportive of me as a person even when his primary responsibility was managing the project, and willing to let me move to another team when I'd outgrown his area of interest. (It probably helped that I would work like hell to help my manager's project succeed first, and then transfer off once it launched. Most people are more inclined to help you succeed if you help them succeed.)

michaelochurch 14y ago

If you start at Google at a lower level (SWE 2 or SWE 3) your manager can unilaterally shut you down. If you get a bad "calibration score", which is set quarterly by the manager, peer feedback won't matter. No other team will want you, and you may face a PIP, which ends your career even if it doesn't get you fired. Thus, your manager decides if you have 20% time or not. There are good managers at Google who value 20% time and will encourage you to work cross-hierarchically with other teams or on personal side projects, and there are others who are absentee so you can pull that off furtively. If you get a hard-ass with a lot of project-specific ambition, you're not going to get away with 20% time. Google inadvertently makes it worse by conflating project leadership with people management, which means that your boss is also held responsible for the performance of a specific project. That creates a huge conflict of interest, because the employee might be a better fit for another project, but the manager has to eat a loss on the project where he is.

Evbn 14y ago
Has this been getting better or worse over the past couple of years?
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Of the folks who I knew when I worked there and have been leaving, it seems to still be an issue. But a number of them were also somewhat off put by the evil/not-evil issues. In those cases they were definitely leaving the company and not the manager.
nostrademons 14y ago
If a team has direct evidence that you'd be valuable to them (i.e. you've 20%ed effectively on one of their projects), I can't imagine that they weight the calibration score more highly than that. People know what their own eyes tell them. There's an escalation path if your manager is outright forbidding you from taking 20% time, and the manager can be disciplined by the Powers That Be for that. Google also doesn't always conflate project leadership with people management (it depends on the team, and the org chart is explicitly setup so that this is not a given). There're pros and cons to both: if you're on a project where your manager is the tech lead, he'll know your work better (which can help you get promoted faster), but it also means that if you disagree with him on the technical direction of the project it can be harmful to your career. Out of my 4-year Google career, I've spent 2.5 years on teams where my manager was directly involved in the project, and 1.5 years basically doing my own thing or on loan to other teams with minimal involvement from my manager. I don't have a clear preference for one or the other, as I've found that my manager was always supportive of me as a person even when his primary responsibility was managing the project, and willing to let me move to another team when I'd outgrown his area of interest. (It probably helped that I would work like hell to help my manager's project succeed first, and then transfer off once it launched. Most people are more inclined to help you succeed if you help them succeed.)