Career Advice About Google

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

Hi everyone,

I just recently accepted an offer at Google as an L3. The thing is I have 4.5 years of experience full time and have done a number of internships (that I'm not counting in the 4.5). I didn't do super great in the coding rounds and couldn't get cleared for L4 but managed to get approved at L3. The coding rounds (specifically, algorithm optimization) was the specific reason they gave for the down level.

I firmly do believe I'm of L3 level, my manager did as well. I'm not great at leetcode so that part was off but my performance was very good at my previous company and I hope to get promoted to L4 as quickly as possible.

Anyone have advice specific to someone that was down leveled? I see a lot of discussion on a promotion from L3 to L4 in general which I've been reading a lot on. But I was curious about the down leveled case specifically

Also another thing to note - I'm about halfway through the L3 to L4 course and I'd say my skills line up virtually entirely with what Alex is describing as L4 (I used to do a lot of the L3 stuff but have improved). Is this just a matter of coming in and making sure I perform as highly as I can to speed up the process?

First of all, thank you guys for making these wonderful courses on Taro. The courses on Onboarding, Internships, Code Quality, and Promotions really helped me shine in my internship.

After my internship, my manager gave me "Strong Hire"; however, I was scared that headcount will be an issue so I applied to some other internships from different companies as "backup" (I planned to graduate an year later if I didn't get the return offer).

Luckily, I received a full-time return offer from Amazon. Now, I am in the interview loop for Google Internship. I am wondering what I should do:

1. Tell my Google Recruiter that I got an Amazon offer and don't waste their time.
2. Do the Google interview, and if I get the offer, go to Google for an internship before joining Amazon full time
3. Do the Google interview, and if I get the offer, reject the offer.

Additional context:

• My team at Amazon is amazing. I love working with software architecture, and the hours are really good. However, promotions are on the slower end. It seems like people from my team are getting promoted in 2.5-3 years.
• The location of Amazon will be in Vancouver (where I grew up - I don't need to pay rent), the location of Google is either Toronto or Montreal (where I will need to pay rent)

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).

A quick TL;DR of my career, I started off at Lockheed Martin doing Linux C++ and Java development with a bit of SRE work building out Jenkins+Docker CI/CD infrastructure for my team. I then went to do frontend web development on Google Cloud. However, after around eight months, I wasn't too confident on my trajectory within the team, so I moved over to a team outside of Cloud. In this role, I did Android development with some C++ backend work mixed in. Looking at my background, I've worn several hats and more or less had multiple different roles during my ~4 year career.

This is all because I care more about the end result of my work instead of the work itself. The language, tech stack, etc that I am using is not what gives me fulfillment. Unfortunately, it seems like I'm getting punished for this mindset, as every employer wants someone who has been using the same stack their whole career. It's not surprising given how recruiters and anyone in the hiring process is seeking to find any reason to say "No" to you. They have become adversaries that one has to take down, since passing Google's hiring bar now no longer carries weight. Each interview I fail to pass just appears to perpetuate a narrative that I was nothing more than a COVID overhire and deserved to be laid off.

Is there a gainful role out there for me, or am I going to just have to settle for some dead-end job that will just drag these career woes on?

I’d like to convert my internal system of progress into a checklist and then share it with my manager. For example, I’m learning about logging. A question to measure my own progress is to check if I know what information should be logged? What about security considerations? If someone asks me about logging in 2 months, can I unblock them?

All Big Tech including Google, Meta, Amazon have done one round of layoffs. Interesting to hear what is your opinion is on the severance packages in the subsequent rounds. Does it get reduced? Asking because I am in interview process with Google. If they do a layoff will I get very less severance than the 1st round? My friends at Google are certain that there will be more rounds of layoffs in coming months.

For the past 3 months, the primary activity on my team has been to debate and discuss the architecture design of the large system our team will be developing in Q3. It feels like we’re in gridlock and I don’t see a clear path to a decision. How can we move forward productively?

• What do you do to find someone to mentor?
  • Anything that's worked really well?
  • Anything that's not worked well?
• What do you do to qualify a potential mentee to make sure both you and they will be successful?

I recently saw a talk by someone L8 at my company. They believe everyone should mentor someone. It's not only a great way to improve at growing others, but also a great way to grow yourself.

So I'd like to try it out but am not entirely sure how to get started.

P.S. Yes, I've Googled this already. Asking a more vague question here because I've found all you tend to give really good insights that I'd never think of even asking for.

Based on Rahul's answer here, he mentions that you should move to a location where your team is based :

I am interested in moving to Seattle if I get an offer from one of the FAANG companies. I would like to know what are the teams in those companies that have a center of focus in the greater Seattle area?

I am an L4 engineer with decent knowledge of my team's stack.

What are some actions I can take to meet expectations in my current role for the next few years, while minimizing the amount of time I spend on work?

Given that I'm not shooting for a promotion, does that change how I should approach relationship building with senior folks on the team? There is a lot of advice on Taro about relationship building, but it appears to be aimed at folks who wish to promote quickly.

How do you choose a team at Google or Meta? There might be a ton of internal teams that you would have no idea about if you are not working there. Most people only know about Instagram, YouTube and other user facing products. How did the folks working at those companies select which team they want to join? I was asked which team I would like to join in my first conversation with a Google Recruiter.

I'm in the process of transferring teams right now.

What topics should I discuss with my new manager in our first 2-4 1-on-1s?

Topics that come to my mind:

• Working styles
• Strengths, weaknesses, interests
• Career goals
• Onboarding expectations (30/60/90 days)
• The team's mission / goals / KPIs
• Things on the manager's top of mind
• People to meet with / get to know

I am a new grad Software Engineer who has completed 6 months ago. There's a lot of internal tech stack and plenty of codelabs. Lately, I have realised that I am not prioritising learning about the stack my team uses (but I do not currently use directly).

I understand it would be helpful in one-off occasions when I have to interact with a new part of the codebase or during on-call, which I am expected to begin soon. However, I always end up prioritising my current work that I have in hand. (It is also because of the fact that I find the codelabs pretty slow and boring)

How should I prioritise learning new things? I remember Rachel's video where she said she spends 20% of her time learning new things and that seemed like a good strategy to me.

I have been working at FAANG companies for 5+ years and would love to consider changing my industry to algo trading / hedge fund firms such as Capital, Jane Street, etc. I heard these companies offer amazing compensations and learning opportunities.

I was wondering what is the best way to break through the industry? Any tips or learning experiences for those that have undergone this transition?

Thank you

When I build something, I get the task done and then move on. However, I feel the best engineers are able to create deeper value. If someone has a question about that topic in the future, they make the info easier to find. So everyone benefits from this resource first, before pinging the engineer.

I've two engineers who report to me, and both are average and one is towards PiP. The problem is they don't listen easily get influenced by other engineers and frequently change what I've asked them to do.
I'm now angry because the pile of feature requests are piling on me, I tend to do some work for them but this really not at all productive for my career, like managing, I rather behave like an IC altogether, because I want to learn and do my own stuff instead of getting caught in these bad situations that makes me angry.

What is the right way to handle these stuff from leadership point of view? How much involvement should I have?

I'm currently equivalent of Google L4 in my org but I want to move towards L5

For context, I work in a tech lead role where I am often making recommendation to my manager regarding the projects coming down the line. The EM has the final say on this, but they respect my opinion on this matter so I don't want to mess this up.

I also have 1:1s with my teammates whom I am responsible for about their career growth goals. My teammates are all the same eng level, but have different levels of competence and desire to learn.

Additionally, I also know it's important for me to leave some room/ambiguity in project investigation stages to allow folks the space to grow, while it's also important for me to take on some challenging work and help our team deliver more quickly. I guess my question is really 2 parts:

1. How do I choose what to delegate?
2. How do I choose who to delegate the work to?

Hi my software engineer friends,

Want to ask what is the requirement for design skills at different levels.

I am a software engineer, and for each project I always write a design doc, most time I am listing different options for some implementation. But that is mostly about different ways of data flows, the pros and cons of each data flow. It is not related to design patterns, nor architectures, but it seems enough to move on with my project and team is generally OK with design doc like this way. To make a good design, I feel right now it is more about context, about familiar I am with team's tech stack and all the data flows, and make good judgement about how to implement something.

I also have that in mind "do not try to apply design patterns for the sake of applying it, use it organically".

So a few questions I have

1. Is it normal that in software engineer's daily job, the design is just about how to implementation something? Or I need to try to apply any design pattern or architecture? Is the general design concept same as object oriented design? Want to see am I under design stuff or I am overthinking about this
2. How to you learn the design skills, especially to the space of web application?
3. Any books recommended for designing web apps?
4. What is your opinion about design skills at different levels?
5. Do you think design is the core skill of a software engineer?