Career Advice About Google

Hey all,

I’ve been in my team for over a year now and I’d like to change teams. In my previous companies it took a lot (of luck) to change teams (typically would only happen when orgs restructured). I’ve heard the process in google, and tech in general, is really straight forward and I’d like to get out of my org and try a different team. Would anyone be able to provide tips or guidance on how to change teams?

Thanks!

My whole team is engaged in a design exercise for the system we will build in subsequent quarters. Since I joined 2 months ago, I don’t feel I’m able to meaningfully contribute. I also feel weak with system design questions during interviews. How can I improve here?

My friends who are there seem to be struggling quite a bit with the current culture, alongside dwindling mental health.

I love the potential of enacting a change for good.

But would it just fall on deaf ears with no one wanting to step outside the bounds and not change the status quo?

I am currently burnt out and looking for ways to take a break.

Looking at Google's generous severance benefits, I had thoughts to inform my manager that I am up for the chopping block if there are any foresight of next round of layoffs. Which I think should be good for the company since I am also helping one motivated Googler to not be laid off in the future.

But then, I am afraid it might get rejected and my manager's relationship with me get strained.

Are there any suggestions on getting severance package while indicating my intent to resign?

Additional context

I am currently not on PIP and is considered excellent performer. I was promoted to L5 in mid 2021

Michael Lin's blog discussed on the "preemptive severance package" which is relevant to what I am hoping to do

My TL recently became my TLM at the start of this quarter and we've had communication/expectation issues before. My previous manager indicated through check-ins that I was on track to receive a Significant Impact (SI) rating ("Meets All Expectations") for the last 9 months and now my TLM is hinting that I only meet partial expectations.

The feedback is that I meet my delivery and impact expectations but only with a lot of guidance and help and at my level I need to show more independence.

Even when I ask them what rating they have in mind they don't have a straight answer and it's stressing me out not knowing if it could also be an NI or a PIP in the near future. I'm ashamed because this isn't how I wanted my career to progress at Google and because my friends and family (and team) definitely expected more from me but at this point in the year there isn't much time left.

I'm stressed out of my mind and it doesn't help that I also have anxiety and ADHD that make the situation worse than it actually is due to a recent family issue. The options I see forward are

(1) take the M rating and work harder next year to get promoted

(2) take short-term leave for 1-2 months due to burnout and "freeze" my performance for this year instead of making it worse.

What would you recommend I do?

WLB also means something different to people and therefore I'm curious what the best way is to discover the "truth" of the team you are interviewing into before both applying and joining a company.

For example, when I worked at Amazon, I did not work beyond 40 hours in either of my teams, but the occasional weekend because I was oncall, and this was fine for me personally. At Google Cloud, I was working longer during the weekdays (self-imposed because this was during COVID and I never worked weekends), but other teams at Google have been more relaxed in general.

I've been told Meta, Amazon and a few others have a poor WLB balance, but then I've also spoken to managers (and experienced it myself in the case of Amazon) that this is team dependant and manager dependant. I also assume it varies by your level.

That said, I'm a DE, so likely the stress level overall is also different to a SWE, hence this post.

Just another laid-off SWE here. I have an interview coming up at a popular tech company.

How can I explain getting laid off in the interview? I am concerned that there is a stigma in tech that layoffs target low performers, especially since only part of my team got laid off. They never told us the layoff criteria, but I think I got targeted because I was more junior. I don't want to reveal my level for the company I'm applying to.

I am already working as an SDE3 in a mid-size tech company with 10 YOE, I have recently applied to a Staff-SE Role at Google, and have been contacted by the recruiter,

Now I am not sure what to study, I interviewed twice with Google around 4 years back, but that time they contacted me for L4, and I wasn't able to clear the coding rounds both times. I think I am a good Software engineer, it is just that, solving these Leetcode problems is not my cup of tea. And to be honest, with my current workload and other responsibilities, grinding leetcode feels not worth the effort.

So now I am clueless, would they still ask the same kind of coding questions even for Staff role, or how to go about preparation?

How do I get better at technical design review and presentations? I go into these tech review meetings and get a ton of questions from senior engineers that aren’t directly related to the project and the raw volume of questions derails the whole thing. It always feels like something is missing. What should the preparation phase of a project look like?

Adding on to this, I do go into these meetings with a technical design document. Ideally people will comment on that well before the meeting, so we can get more of the discussion done async. However, people often don’t have time so they don't do this, making the tech review meeting the first time they see the tech planning materials, hence all the questions.

Constantly struggling with recognizing my contribution and promoting my work, as an introvert it almost is like my mind rejects self-appreciation and promotion. What are some small first steps I can take to get comfortable with self-promotion?

I'm part of a team of 10 and my team is barely 3 months old, with many of us having joined this team very recently. I would love to start some initiatives to help our team bond and get closer as a team. For context, the team very distributed (3 different locations) and travel budgets are tight :(

What are some of the most effective tools you've used and/or seen to cultivate a sense of camaraderie amongst teammates?

Context

I did a few interviews in the last months for some software engineer, and in the end it came down to 2 companies: Google (started loop as L4 but got downleveled to L3) & DoorDash (L4). I'm L3 at another tech company (smaller than these), already scheduled for promotion for L4 as I've been performing accordingly for some time. Per my understanding, levels (L3/L4/L5 or E3/E4/E5) are similar between these companies.

I have around ~4 YoE now and graduated 2 years ago, though only 1.5 YoE on larger projects at US companies (i.e. roles that I suppose would be closer to a FAANG environment), as I worked on smaller local products and consultancies before. This is my first time actually preparing for this format of interviews, so I'm kind of glad that I at least passed L3 for Google.

Offers

DoorDash already extended an offer and Google said that HC approved for L3, but still have to go through team matching. DD's offer has significantly more TC (like >30%).

Doubts

I really wanted to join Google at first since I have tons of friends and family working there, but at L3, seems that I would be taking a step back just for the sake of being able to say that I worked at Google, so I'm actually biased towards going to DoorDash, here's my rationale:

• Significantly more TC
• Remote-friendlier
• Already worked (and enjoyed) with a lot of people that I would be working with at DoorDash (also likely why they accepted me as L4 instead of L3, because I had some 'advocates' there). While at Google I still have to go through team matching and I don't have a clue on what I'd be working with.
• Would start as L4, with a higher performance bar and expectations, and aiming for 1~2 years later would be looking at L5, instead of still looking at L4 at Google.
• Even if I got promoted quickly at Google, would likely be at the lower band of L4 salary, so not only 1~2 years of lower TC and possibly smaller scope, but likely even more.
• This is my first time preparing for this type of interviews, so even if I want to join Google a year or two down the line, I would have not only more experience under my belt for both behavioral and technical interviews, but also more time and resources to prepare.

What flaws can you find in my train of thought? I find this very confusing to take a decision, seems that it is a common situation as I searched for it a lot and everyone seems to call FAANG in general as "kings of down-leveling".

In anticipation of my , we can collect questions here. I can also answer questions afterward.

Work history

I've worked in leadership positions at companies like Netflix (2013 - 2017), Google (2017 - 2021), and now Disney. I'm currently a Director of Software Engineering at Disney as part of Disney Streaming (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Star+).

Happy to talk about mobile development, engineering management, and career growth.

Other

I have a deep background in music and audio, having received a Masters in Music & Audio Technology in 2003, and then working with Dolby for more than 5 years.

After I left Google, I took a career break to learn, explore, and recharge. I traveled to Ghana, learned about accounting, became a startup advisor, and read a lot.

I'm on LinkedIn here: .

In particular, I am about to have a team fit call with a senior manager at Google for an L5 role. The corresponding team/job description from the careers page looks a bit ambiguous (it's a role in google distributed cloud hosted).

I am already HC approved post my interviews.

I wish to gain understanding for the following topics in the role:

1. Domain specific knowledge requirement for the role
2. Whether my previous SWE backend experiences (in Ads Search and in ML Infra) could be aligned with the role
3. Work load

Of course, I do realise that its a fitment call and I need to leave a strong impression on the manager.

But need advise as to how can I balance the two aspects given its a short 30min call. Thanks!

Our VP keeps office hours every week (even more so recently because of the layoffs announcement). However, I see (and he often complains) that people do not utilise those, perhaps because people do not know what to ask.

I see this as a wonderful opportunity to learn from the senior management (as well as build some visibility). However, I myself am not sure how to utilise them so that it is not a waste of their time.

I have utilised them once and it helped me understand what the work expectations look like from our VP's perspective as well as his insights on growing fast. But, I am not sure if I did it right, and any perspective on this would help.

I recently got an opportunity to switch teams and am evaluating whether this is the right move for me.

To help me decide:

1. What's your thought process when deciding when to switch teams?
2. What's your thought process to decide which team to switch to?
3. What lessons have you learned from when you've previously switched teams?

P.S. I'm purposely leaving this extremely vague to not bias your answers. My goal is to discover blind spots in my thought processes, so I don't limit the discussion to revolve around my current scenario.

Something I want to get more efficient at is promotion trajectory, and team selection is a big part of that. If I were to switch teams, how can I find one that's important for the business and has a good amount of L5 scope? My goal is to move up to L5 soon and have scope to start making progress to L6 as well afterwards.

What should I think about and focus my efforts on when I get a project and a role that's of (1) bigger scope and (2) tighter deadlines than I'm used to?

Context

A reorg has suddenly thrust me into the TL role for a very high-profile project on a new team. This project is part of OKRs 4 levels up the chain and has the eyes of several director level people across different functions. From what I've heard, this project already suffered from "too many cooks in the kitchen" syndrome, and on top of that, this project has delivery date set in Q3, which is quite aggressive from our org's standards.

I've landed in this position because I was transitioning to this team prior to the reorg, AND the EM/TL/PM/2 L5s has been reorg'ed out, and they needed someone who had previously TL experience and was willing to do it.

I've previously TL'ed a team of 4 people, with important but "normal" priority projects. This is clearly a great opportunity for me, but I am afraid I'm not ready to handle it and I'm at a bit of loss as to what I should be focusing most of my effort on. With the tight deadlines I have, I feel like every day will be a battle so any advice on how to approach this will be appreciated.

I have one other L5 supporting me who I trust very much and a new EM who's rumored to be very good. We currently have 4 SWE including me and we'll be getting more at least 4 more engineers, with lots of adjacent teams helping out. I do also have good standing and connection in the org overall and I know how to get a "normal" project in our org over the line (I did an in-org transfer).

What I'm thinking about right now

1. Knowledge Transition: since a lot of critical members of the team are leaving and I am taking over, I feel the biggest priority in the near term is to absorb as much knowledge from them as possible. So far, they have some prototypes, and I wanted to get my hands dirty, so maybe I should focus on is to understand the work that's been done really well, and the design choices that's been made already?
2. Gather support: I feel like biggest personal risk is that I don't know how to show up in higher-stake meetings with directors. Is it any different? Where do you all see the risk is?
3. Enable the team: I know the biggest responsibility I have, more than anything, is to make sure the team is able to work on the project and help us deliver this. Aside from the L5, I don't know a lot about the people. I feel I should putting my focus on ensuring they are as successful as possible, not focusing on my own technical knowledge as much, for us to succeed. Is that a good way to think about it?
4. Self-management: I anticipate I'll be very stressed and pulled in many directions. I already feel this way. What are some tools I can leverage in "crunch time"?

Going into Q4 there seems to be a lack of projects allocated from planning to our team. I think this is related to our manager being on parental leave last quarter and not having an advocate at the higher level planning meetings.

My question is also around how to deal with a situation where projects are strictly determined from the top-down (aside from engineering/maintenance + backlog issues, which are less valued).

YOE: 10 months remote at an AWS Partner (DevOps/AWS account remediation stuff)
TC: $136k

Hello, I’m in my early career and in need of some career advice. I would like to get into a SRE-SWE role at Google, preferably in Zurich (I’m a US citizen) for better career growth and new life experience. 

My background: I switched into this field a bit late... 30 years old and now 10 months on the job. I decided I really wanted to learn to code after working in product and I made the switch. I took up a Javascript course online, within 7 months studying full time  I had completed a couple portfolio projects including a full stack project. At that point I decided I didn’t like front-end and I got into learning AWS cloud architecture. My coding background + achieving an AWS Associate Architect certification quickly found me a high paying role at an AWS consulting Partner in the devopsy space.

Currently I work remotely at a tiny AWS Partner where Terraform and AWS Cloud remediation is my main work. Though I had no intention of giving up coding, the job I got into pays well but is not exactly what I was expecting...  

After the first couple months of trial-by-fire with terraform - my job stopped being challenging and I have tons of free time (which I used to get 4 AWS certs so far.) Terraform hasn’t been difficult once I got the hang of it, and most of it I don’t consider actual brain-exercising coding work like I had done when learning to code (i.e codewars). Lately, I feel my only growth has come from the knowledge I’ve gained from self-studying for my AWS certs.  Though I have enjoyed studying for my AWS certs and gaining depth about cloud services (I really enjoy research and distributed cloud architecture to make things work on a mass scale is amazing)  and I just cleared the AWS Certified DevOps Pro exam which was a significant milestone for me. BUT…

1. My coding skills are getting rusty and I never had proper programming mentoring on a professional team to begin with. I joined this company as a junior and have only really grown in Cloud Architecture (does that count as Systems Design?), AWS/Iaac Terraform, but not as a SWE.  I have never done leetcode, I don’t know DS and Algos. My interview was about a 3 tier app architecture. My company runs Terraform like a code-cowboy environment and my code almost never gets reviewed properly. And as I said, I’m not doing much here these days, which although is great if you I want to earn money and coast (or self-learn picking up the difficult cloud certs) I am definitely underutilized and not in a collaborative “team” environment. Work is siloed by customer with one senior engineer being the guy assigned to handle all the cool stuff for a customer and I receive undesirable work like dealing with logs or fixing pain in the arse security stuff that no one else wants to be bothered with. (I.E and maybe a bad example, but no one wants to be bothered with accidentally taking down production to remediate ssh ports being open to 0.0.0.0/0, so let the jr take the fall or do nothing since the customer doesn't care about it and won't pay for it)
2. Here’s what I’m thinking - I could use my copious free time to get GCP Pro certs, maybe learn Kubernetes and then decide on another programming language to main and grind 6 months of leetcode to prepare to get into a Google SRE-SWE role or maybe Airbnb as a 2nd choice. Is this plan sound? Please advise. I don’t even know if I’ll like/need to learn Kubernetes, but I’m prepared to do what it takes to team match in my current cloud specialization. Do I need to learn Kube administration for Google SRE work?  I’m ready to get back to coding and I can nose to the grindstone leetcode for as long as it takes. The AWS Pro cert was a grueling grind as well, so I know I have the discipline to do it.
3. I’m deciding upon a new programming language to main since I am not enamored with JS at all. I’m thinking either Golang or Python ( I’m already learning Godot and GDscript in my spare time as a hobby) and whichever language I go with will preferably be my main for leet code DS and Algos interviews and my career in tech. What I heard about Golang that I like is that there is typically a correct way to do something rather than a million ways to do one thing. I find that very appealing. Please advise on the language I should go with if you can as well.. My current job has been a good place to excel in self-study while being paid and now is the time to take aim for new goals  and steer the wheel on the ship of my career.

Also I really love working remotely but I would go to the office if it meant Google and a new life experience in Switzerland.

And I would really love any insight you can give about such SRE-SWE roles and if that sounds like the best fit for my current cloud specialization and interests. Thank you