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Most importantly, my team's success is no longer defined through an arbitrary and often broken peer review process, which applies to pretty much everything that
Most importantly, my team's success is no longer defined through an arbitrary and often broken peer review process, which applies to pretty much everything that matters in the academic world.
Oh boy. Don't even get me started on broken processes. When managers can use secret calibration scores to blacklist reports and keep them captive for 5+ years on undesirable projects, what else should it be called exactly?
Matt Welsh was hired above the Real Googler Line, so he has a rosy-eyed view. He's also comparing it against the nightmare of post-PhD academic politics. He also seems, from his account, like a decent guy. He hasn't seen yet what Google turns into for young engineers who don't have external credibility yet, and who end up with managers who aren't decent people... It'd be interesting to read his opinion after he sees that.
If you're above the RGL (~10%) you have the credibility to represent your contribution to the company independently. Peer review gets you promotions, managers are a higher-ranking peer and can help you a little more, but you have enough independent credibility above the RGL that you can't be extorted. If you're below RGL, you have the extortive manager-as-SPOF nonsense of typical rank cultures, and you get none of the upsides of working at Google.
Also, I think the TLM concept is broken. The whole reason closed allocation is a fistful of fail is that, rather than resolving the conflict of interest between project leadership and people management (the best thing for a person might be to change projects) it tends to double down on that.
The only part of people management (aside from HR, at the company's interface) that has any value for 120+ IQers doing convex work is the mentoring aspect... which ought to be project-independent.
What is the Real Googlers Line? This is the first I'm hearing of it. I don't work at Google though, so maybe this is well known.
> I would guess he was hired at Senior SWE (which is respectable; unlike the title-inflated startups out there, it actually is fairly senior) or Staff SWE. The Real Googler Line is somewhere within those two tiers. It's not just about title, but location and project play a role. Most Staff are Real Googlers, some Senior are, SWE 2-3 are not unless they're hired as proteges (which is rare).
I didn't know the term either but he answered it in a post below.
It's not an official designation, obviously. It's where your bozo bit starts. If you're a Real Googler, people approach you with BozoBit := false.
Here's the Google engineering ladder:
SWE 2 (fresh college graduate)
SWE 3 (fresh PhD or 5+ years experience)
Senior SWE (manager-equivalent; first acceptable "terminal" level.)
Staff SWE (serious engineering chops)
Sr. Staff SWE (rare; candidate for Director/Principal)
Principal SWE (Director-equivalent)
Distinguished SWE
Eng. Fellow (VP equivalent)
I'd say that 5% of SWE 2-3 are Real Googlers, 35% of Senior are, and 85% of Staff are.
Real Googler means you have freedom of the castle. If you want to work on Search, you work on Search. If you want to dedicate the next 6 months to the maintenance of a module on which your work depends, you do it. It's like an open-allocation environment, and similar to what Google was before it got Too Big.
Below the Real Googler Line, you actually sweat performance reviews because your manager can unilaterally reduce your credibility to zero. Above it, projects and managers compete for you. There's probably some room for play (when you're slightly above RGL, you might still worry) but it has a binary feel to it. When you're a Real Googler, you have independent credibility. You don't sweat Perf.
Traditionally, the RGL was the Senior SWE tier. That was the level at which you were trusted to choose projects, and even manage if it were needed.
You're expected to make Sr. SWE in 3 years from SWE 3 and 5 years from SWE 2. If you don't, it's like being denied tenure and your project options (which probably weren't great, since 99% of getting promoted is getting on the right projects) continue to decline.
If you have Real Googler credibility, you can get away with a lot. There are people who start strong and get promoted, then go along for 3+ years without committing any code before they get fired. That's what RG gets you: a 3-year audit cycle. On the other hand, if you're not above the RGL, while it's not technically speaking hard to stay employed, it's extremely competitive to get into a position where you can have a real impact.
Something the OP made up.
To the extent that I've ever heard people talk about "Real Googlers" the criteria have nothing to do with title, level, background or what college you went to.
The criteria are:
1) Get st done
2) Don't be a dick
You've never heard of it because MChurch is the only one that uses it. It is something he made up to explain the fact that he came to Google and people didn't recognize his "genius", despite his many high-profile attempts to explain to everyone what we were doing wrong.
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I often wonder how someone who was only at Google for 5 months, and never went through the semiyearly review or transfer process could spout so much inaccurate BS about it.
If you are performing well and get poor calibration scores (which aren't secret), then that's something to bring up with HR and your manager's manager. The sad truth is that your poor calibration scores were an accurate reflection of your poor performance (I'll spare you the embarrassment of posting evidence of this). Your inability to transfer teams was a combination of that and the fact that it's almost impossible to transfer teams before you've spent at least 1.5 years on that team.
I often wonder how someone who was only at Google for 5 months, and never went through the semiyearly review or transfer process could spout so much inaccurate BS about it.
Six, and I saw more of Google than most. I'll leave it at that.
If you are performing well and get poor calibration scores (which aren't secret)
You get a range for your calibration score. Whether your manager tells you the specific number is up to him, and you have no way of knowing whether he's telling the truth. Most Googlers will get Meets Expectations (3.0-3.4) which ranges from the 2nd to 70th percentile. For most, it means "solidly OK, but not yet promotable". 3.5-3.9 is Exceeds (70th-95th percentile) and means "on track for promotion" and 4.0+ is Strongly Exceeds (95+) which means "promotable". Almost never are numbers below 3.0 or above 4.5 used, because sub-3.0 requires PIP/termination proceedings (which are a lot of work for the manager) and 4.5+ makes an employee eligible very large cash bonuses (and, occasionally, double-promotes).
If your manager gives you 3.0's but positive verbal feedback, you'll think you're getting 3.3-3.4 (which is perfectly respectable) but you won't be able to transfer. Except for the first quarter, 3.0 means, "you suck but I'm too busy to deal with the PIP/termination process"; 2.x requires the manager to do a bunch of extra work so 3.0 is understood as the "he's awful but I don't feel like doing anything about it" score.
However, there are managers who give positive verbal feedback and 3.0-3.1 ratings to keep good people captive. You didn't see what I saw. I have data but I'm not allowed to share it because I'm not supposed to have a lot of that stuff myself. It's not most managers who do that shit, but it's a sizable contingent and executives are aware of the problem. They don't do anything about it, in my opinion, because they're afraid that it would sacrifice project expediencies to reduce managerial power.
then that's something to bring up with HR and your manager's manager.
Try this out. In any company. Please, I encourage you to do it. You sound like just a wonderful person and I'd love to see you take a crack at it.
Nah... I'll tell you what happens, not because I give a shit about you, but because other people are reading.
If you go to HR, you get fired. Not "officially terminated" because the company doesn't want the lawsuit risk, but HR and your manager will make it look like (a) no one else in the company wanted you so (b) they can PIP and eventually terminate you. You won't be able to transfer because "you have to solve the problem where you are before you move on" and because there will be feces smeared across your personnel file. This known in HR-speak as "passive firing". With passive firing, the employee is technically permitted transfer but it is made impossible. It's a way to give managers unilateral termination without the lawsuit risk.
If you go to your boss^2, you are similarly fucked, because your boss^2 picked your boss, idiot. Who do you think he'll side with? If you seriously think that a boss^2 is going to take the side of an underling, then please, try to make it happen the next time you are checkmated. If you have a shitty boss, your boss^2 knows and is tolerating him because it's expedient, if wrong.
If you want to jump your boss, you have to go to the boss^3 or higher, and the probability of that working is low because the social distance and credibility gap is high. But you have much better odds with a boss^3 than a boss^2. The boss^2 will tip off your boss and you are fucked; the boss^3 will just say, "Who are you?", and tell you to get back to work.
it's almost impossible to transfer teams before you've spent at least 1.5 years on that team.
At least you admit to that problem. Yes, that is correct.
SWE 1 is for interns.
Slotting was abolished. Originally, software engineers were hired at mid-levels and "slotted" about a year in. Downslotting was more common (60-70%, IIRC) than upslotting. Some people even got double-down, which essentially ends your career.
Downslotting doesn't end your career (again, most people go down) but it does send a signal that you're considered to be part of "the rest" rather than "the best" and the scent of mediocrity will follow you.
It's a dishonest HR trick that enables Google to recruit people with the "Senior Engineer" title but then tell them, once they get in, that they're actually "SWE 3.5" who will be evaluated for SWE 3 vs. Senior at some later time.
So, in effect, you have to get a promotion in order to get the job title you were promised. That said, it's fairly harmless if you know about it, because HR will confirm your pre-downslotting title (and titles matter most of all externally in any environment). It's only evil if you go in with half-knowledge and think you're going to be 2/3 of a level higher than you actually are.
Slotting no longer applies, unless they've re-instituted it. It was abolished around March 2011. It was terrible for morale and HR eventually realized it was shitty idea.
When I was at IBM, I was hired in as a STSM (band 10; the next level up was DE). One of the huge handicaps I had for being parachuted into a very large company at a relatively high level was that I had to work extra hard to establish my "network" with other STSM's and DE's. There was a certain amount of automatic "if you are a STSM, then automatically your BozoBit is false"), but since there were stories of STSM's who had retired in place, it certainly wasn't an automatic grant of credibility.
So your concept of "Real Googler" is (a) not as binary as you make it out to be, and (b) it is a reality in any large company, and indeed, in our entire industry. (You think someone like Guido van Rossum worries about promotions, or doesn't get the pick of which jobs he wants? :-)
If you don't have a good network, where your competence and your work is known outside of your local team, then yes, you are largely dependent on your manager in terms advocating for you for your promotions, and it will be harder to convince another manager in another team to advocate for an exception to the general rules of thumb of transferring early after being hired (yes, it does happen, and yes, it is an exception, and yes there are some really good reasons for that guideline to be in place). I can't speak to whether or not you had a good manager or not[1], but for someone who is more junior, of course your experience at a company is going to be more dependent on whether you had a good manager or not --- that's true everywhere! I can say that all of the managers I've had at Google have been excellent, and they all have had a very similar attitude that which was expressed by Matt Welsh --- the attitude of "servant leadership", where your goal is to remove obstacles that are getting in the way of those who work for you, and for whom you are very glad to shower credit upon them, because a high functioning team reflects well on the manager and on the tech lead.
[1] I can't speak to this because I'm not familiar with your local team or who your manager was; I only saw your behavior on a company-wide engineering mailing list.
Bottom line? If you want to get ahead, you need to establish your competence and your value to other technical people in your company, and in your industry. You don't do this by putting down people who are well known in the company and in the industry, and you don't do this by asserting that you have executive level vision and bemoaning the fact that no one is willing to listen to you and willing to grasp how brilliant you are. No, you put your head down, and you do good work, and you help other people.
I may be the ext4 maintainer, and I may be well known, but far more often than not I'm reviewing other people's code, fixing up other people's code, fixing bugs, and helping users. There's a huge amount of grunt work involved, and I'm happy to do it and I'm happy to shower credit on people at other companies who have invested time and energy making ext4 better. That's how you get ahead in the world, not by asserting how great you are and by putting down other engineers and/or other companies. Other people will be able to very quickly draw their own conclusions.
Telling Google to "Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint." [1] is also not nice, in any universe, not even HN. Not that two wrongs make a right, but I don't agree with your read on the "STFU" line. I think Googler123 meant it conversationally and casually, not like a not-nice direct challenge to Michael like you read it.
Your argument about management is flawed: a company is made up of people, who ALL have to act the way they want employees to act, and expect the same out of each other. Michael absolutely has a right to express himself, and since he was a Google employee, he had the duty at that time to try to make it the best place in the world to work. That he didn't even confront his manager about his real number doesn't speak well to his willingness to try to improve the place. Especially since he had a safety net job offer. What was his risk?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5508058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5508058
> Telling Google to "Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint." [1] is also not nice, in any universe, not even HN.
Maybe this is just me, but I think hyperbolically telling a for profit corporation to stuff it (e.g. screw AT&T), is far more socially (normatively) acceptable than making a personal attack against an individual.
Neither are _nice_, clearly.
That he didn't even confront his manager about his real number doesn't speak well to his willingness to try to improve the place.
I don't know where people get this idea. There's a lot of story and I haven't told most of it.
My boss promised a 3.4, then gave me something lower (probably 3.0-3.1). When I confronted him, he said it was because Google+ out in California wanted me to suffer for criticizing a product (that later failed, as I predicted). So I asked him to put a note on the HR file noting that the ding was political and not related to performance. I didn't care what the score was (the difference in bonus between 3.0 and 3.4 is minor) but I wanted the record to show what had happened, and an agreement on 3.4+ for the next 4 quarters to compensate for throwing me under the bus. That's all I wanted, and it's a small, reasonable, request. Everyone knows that "performance" reviews are about politics anyway, so I have no qualms about using one as a negotiation token. It's a game, so play it.
In response to my request, he went and revised my calibration score downward. He also made speculations about health problems (I have very-high-functioning hypergraphia, which is often a symptom of something else but in my case it's just standalone hypergraphia) that were irrelevant to work performance-- just to label me. I was in the process of deciding whether (a) to get attorneys on the case-- most attorneys don't want to appeal performance reviews because there's no money in it-- (b) to offer a side bribe to someone with performance DB access, or (c) to just get another job. The winner was (c); (a) and (b) meant $10k+ for something that might not work and would only pay itself off if I were there for 5+ years.
Also, HR investigated and found out there was no ding from California. Completely made up.
So, I dug around and found out that a mysterious departure of someone (a serious CS heavyweight) who had this same manager was a case of outright bullying that had gone on between approximately Oct. 2010 and July 2011. More digging found a pattern; this particular manager had a pattern of lying. In one case, he was actually reported to HR for repeatedly (and probably intentionally, though he denied it) using last-minute 1:1 reschedulings to conflict with someone's therapy. That was before I came to Google. Predictably, HR did nothing that time, too.
This was a manager who had a years-long history of bad behavior, especially toward people with (otherwise manageable) health problems. It wasn't even hard for me to piece together the story, because so many people knew that it was going on. If he didn't see you as vulnerable, he was very affable and supportive, but if he smelled blood, he attacked. He actually admitted, in one proceeding, that he enjoyed "testing" an employee with panic disorder to find triggers. In my case, I'm fairly normal but I do have hypergraphia and can tell a decade-long story (with increasingly high levels of function; from 2002-09 I had a serious trolling problem, now I focus on writing coherent and useful stuff) about that.
I don't blow whistles over small shit. This was a big fucking rat.
When Google stops allowing Evil, I will stop attacking it.
Official policy (when I was there) is 18 month minimum before you can transfer. There can be exceptions, but they are exceptions.
About 3 months in, I talked to my manager about transferring off a project I disliked. His response a month later, which I believe came from the site director, was literally "We don't care."
Which is fine, I just think it's important to know that Google is not generally flexible about initial allocation, and you will generally be expected to stay on your first project for 1.5 years--regardless of how you feel about it. And you may not know what your first project will be until after you're hired, or even after orientation.
It's because it makes YOU look bad.
After Google, I worked for a company with the most unethical management I've ever encountered. True evil. (Calibration scores are just criminal stupidity; not the same class.) Also, that company is notorious in NYC for having unethical management. Furthermore, I was there for 3 months... after a 6-month period at Google. Now that is a blotch on my CV.
I'm done worrying about cosmetic shit. I already fail on that front. Too much substance, and it's too visible by now.
I also don't buy into the "never make an employer look bad". If you're there for 2+ years, then I agree and would say that the rule applies, even if you were laid off or had a crappy manager at the end, because there's nothing embarrassing about a 2-year stint. If you are at a company for less than 12 months, either you or they like horrible. Make it them by airing enough to prove them the bad guys. (Then you still look bad, but not horrible, because you show it to be their fault.)
Can I ask a question? You keep complaining about closed allocation. What EXACTLY would you want them to have, instead? And I don't mean just say "open," say specifically what you mean, how you think it would work in practice. At a company with 55,000 employees.
Actually, being large makes it much easier to afford open allocation. If you're small, you often have real technical deadlines that put the business at risk, so full-on open allocation isn't always possible.
If you're at Google's size, your moral responsibility to your engineers is open allocation, because you can afford it. It's the 20-person companies that have deadlines and clients that have good reasons not to do full open allocation.
So, that's easy, at least for the engineering organization. That's where you start, and you branch out from there as you build a knowledge base.
Companies record what managers think of their employees. How ELSE would you want a company to do it?
Well... for starters, take that garbage out of the transfer packet.
Does this seem radical? Actually, the law is on my side, here. Until about 1995, most companies didn't have performance reviews in the transfer packet. At all. Those were separate and only came out when someone actually needed to be fired. Enron changed that. It was Enron that made stylish the "innovation" of making performance reviews part of the transfer packet, and Google is carrying the torch.
A manager who interferes with internal mobility is guilty of harassment (plenty of legal precedent here) because internal mobility is considered part of a worker's job performance, and interference with job performance is...? Well, it's one of the most common subcategories of workplace harassment. Ergo, a manager who communicates anything negative about an employee (except a breach of law or professional ethics) is guilty of harassment and can be charged.
That's why the calibration scores and manager-level-only feedback are secret. It's to allow Google (or, more specifically, managers) to break the fucking law.
Yes, companies need to fire severe underperformers, unethical people, and law-breakers. That's true. Performance review for mutual benefit also has some value. Creating a system where performance reviews are part of the transfer process is, while not technically outlawed, essentially giving managers the right to break the law.
When I say that closed-allocation management in the Google/Enron-style company is often extortion, I'm not exaggerating. It's technically civil rather than criminal extortion, but now we're getting into details.