Career Advice About Google

I see engineers like Alex and Rahul, and they have had many accomplishments with pretty fast trajectories leveling up. I'm wondering if there's a primary common theme among software engineers like that - What are they doing that others aren't?

I'm really new as a Google FTE (still doing some logistical onboarding like getting my laptop fully set up), but I want to hit the ground running and start growing at Google as fast as possible. However, I don't know what I don't know - There's a lot to take in, and I'm unsure where is best to focus and allocate my time.

In Alex's case, he met Rahul at Meta and now they're cofounders. How can I build up such deep relationships with other people at Google or any future company I work at?

I was informed by my previous manager that once we move teams, promo is "reset" i.e. only the work in the new team counts for the promo cycle (despite being on the same job ladder of TSC, DE etc).

I am currently at L4 and the role I am going into is scoped for L5 (they were targeting a L5 hire). Given I am changing team mid-year, I am not sure I can get a rating beyond SI in the Jan GRAD cycle.

What is the best way to work with my manager to secure an L5 promo and what timeline is realistic for this promotion at Google (I was targeting next August)?

I've heard 1-1.5x your full-time rate is valid. I know this will likely be context driven, I'm specifically looking for longer-term hourly rates as opposed to short-term / project-based, but would be interested in knowing the differences if there are any.

Thanks in advance folks!

I have a L6 equivalent MLE interview from a FAANG company.

Since last time I had interview for L4. I would like to understand what kind of quality difference does L6 show in an interview (coding/behavioral/system design -- ML)?

How would you demonstrate staff level quality in the interview rounds?

I have joined Google as L4 Full stack engineer - Frontend heavy (70% Frontend, 30% Backend). I have joined the GCP Org. I have 6+ Years of Experience and I have worked in Uber for 3.5 years as SDE 2 Frontend Engineer in past.

I am working on google primarily on Angularjs, typescript, Graphql on frontend side and java, sql on backend side. I want to make sure that i perform well and able to reach L5 within next 1-1.5 years. i.e next December cycle.

I have a fair idea from Uber point of view.

But someone who has deeper insights about what to do right and how things work at google it will be great.

I just did but we can also collect questions here that I'll answer afterward.

Work history

I recently joined Databricks as a Senior Director of Engineering. Most of my career has involved Machine Learning, and I've managed teams ranging from 2 to 200 engineers/research scientists.

Previously, I was the Head of FB Reels and Video Recommendations (Director of Engineering) at Meta, from 2019 - 2023. Before that, I was a Senior Staff Software Engineer and Tech Lead working at Google in Mountain View. I hold a PhD in Computer Science from Penn State, and my publications during that time have accumulated almost 9K academic citations.

Some questions I've heard:

• How Fair is Performance Evaluation for Tech ICs vs Managers?
• Can you give some examples of effective communication? What channels are used, level of abstraction, tone, etc?
• Any advice for a new grad to progress faster in their career?
• What are interviews even like for Director+?

Other

I've started writing detailed notes in blogs titled TLDR0. Slightly cheesy, but it stands for Tech Leadership - Direct, Respectful, Zero Ego. See the full details on my .

• Substack:
• Medium:

I'm still in school, but I will be graduating in a couple months. My goal is to get promoted as quickly as possible at a reputable company like Google. However, there are so many ways to get better as a software engineer, and I'm unsure how to prioritize all of this information. What should I focus on since I'm earlier-in-career to really unlock that fast career progression?

I'm going to be joining Google soon, and my current approach is just to come in and stabilize as a solid L4. Over time, I’ll assess my situation and see how I should pursue leveling up. I would like to grow (i.e. eventually make it to L5), but I’m not in a huge rush - I don’t think I want to set a very concrete goal like “I want to get promoted from L4 to L5 in 1.5 years”. Thoughts?

Hi everyone,

I am currently a software engineering intern in Google. My main goal is to get a return offer after I complete my internship.

Based on my conversation with my intern manager, the high level metrics for success as an intern are definitely technical problem solving, collaboration and feedback etc. This is highly aligned with Alex's videos on the Internship series, where he described that an intern's main performance metric is code volume. I have also learnt that finishing a project drastically increases one's chance for a grad offer based on interns who converted to FTE.

However, I noticed that there are a lot of opportunities for events and mentoring. My current strategy is to focus most of my time in the project while networking mainly in the team to make sure I have a great relationship with them. Occasionally, I meet another employee once a week or so. At the same time, I noticed that most interns are using most of their time to meet with other FTEs from all over the world and other teams.

I personally find that a large codebase with so many contexts and 12 weeks to be the main factors on why I am a bit more conscious of my own time.

Is my current strategy to focus on the project and networking mostly with my current team optimal for a return offer? If not, are there anything else that I should be focused on?

Apologies in advance for a long question. Not sure how to ask this question without providing deeper context.

I’ve been working with my current manager for the last 1.5 years. While they have recently helped me get promoted to Senior, it’s been a constant struggle. I dread our 1:1 almost every single week because it always run overtime and we are often still not on the same page. 

I see two major issues that haven’t notably improved in the times I’ve reported to them.

(1) My manager isn’t able to coach me, or any of the SWEs on the team. My manager doesn’t seem confident when we have career discussions - I recently asked them what they thought was the difference between good TL and a great one, and they struggled to coherently answer this. Instead, they said they would know better after the next performance calibration.  Additionally, none of my teammate has gotten proper coaching either.  For example, a teammate struggled to submit code due to their poor code quality and thus had low CL velocity, so my Manager simply told them to submit more CLs, which only made them more stressed without a legitimate way to improve. 

(2) My manager lacks technical understanding of our projects and constantly pushes for speed. My manager was externally hired, and to this day, they don’t really understand the complexity of the work our team does. I understand EMs don’t need to contribute code directly, but my manager almost always underestimate how complicated the projects our team takes on are. As engineers, we frequently have to defend our timelines, which is not only frustrating but also pressures some teammates to favor suboptimal design or hastily done CLs that just causes even more churn. 

The weird part is, my manager often seem unaware of their own actions, and when I talk to them about these issues, they are always receptive to feedback and seem willing to improve. However, I simply haven’t seen enough improvement in the last 1.5 years. 

I could leave, since this is having an impact on my emotional well-being. But I do have good standing w/ my own team and the overall org, and I want to use this situation to learn as much as I could. I know that I myself have a lot to learn as a tech lead (Thanks for , it’s really helpful), and I know I can probably get a bit ahead of our projects and start estimating/de-risking earlier, so my Manager doesn’t get overly aggressive with timelines. I know I can also take this chance to more closely mentor my teammates and help them succeed, since they aren’t really getting it from our manager. 

I want to stay, but is it the wrong decision because I have little career support from my manager? If I do stay, what should I focus on so I can really help my team and at the same time learn something valuable for my career?

I've hit a lot of issues pretty deep into the project's execution that hold it up. It can come as late as running the A/B test where we find a big problem that delays everything and takes weeks to solve. This messes up the initial estimates I set up.

Part of this is because I transitioned between teams recently: On my previous team, it was easier to set up components and test them early, but in this current team, it's hard to get real signal until everything is set-up and we run a full end-to-end test.

Lastly, if I hit an issue like this, how can I minimize its effect on my performance and restructure the timeline in an acceptable way?