(dead man's switch: Discussing perf with you on hackernews is going to be a waste of time, I'll personally pay you $10K USD [or EFF, if you refuse] if I respon

(dead man's switch: Discussing perf with you on hackernews is going to be a waste of time, I'll personally pay you $10K USD [or EFF, if you refuse] if I respond). An "occasionally misses" expectations is by no means career ending. It's just a warning sign. It's not by itself a fireable offense (as an aside, even being fired by Google won't ruin your career, a friend of mine with a bad manager at Google got fired. He ended up pre-IPO at Twitter, and he is definitely doing well). I had an occasionally misses as L4. For me, I took it as implicit permission to get more attention from my manager. I'd bring problems to him sooner and make sure to be less stuck, including burdening him with more mundane problems I was having, and giving him more status to make sure I was moving in the right direction. I quickly hit meets, and I eventually hit L5.