Advice to new google T5?
I'll be joining Google soon as T5. Super excited and also nervous. I have 15+ yoe but mainly on microsoft stack. My team will be using Java which I only used to solve algorithm problems (ie leetcode) 🤣. Know nothing about the framework/ecosystem in Java world (but I'm very solid with Ms stack internals). How long should I expect to catch up? My new google team manager said 6 months. Really? Google is willing to pay me for 6 months just for training? Is it that hard to catch up? What's the experiences of you who changed tech stack? TC $311k. Not bay area.
Depends on the team. If it's a well established team, they'll have processes in place.
Also, look for docs and mentors for new L5. As L5, after the 6 month honeymoon, you are expected to lead a small team or be a clear owner of something reasonably big. Owning means planning, designing, building it, and making sure it launches and has impact. 6 months is not that long... Hopefully your manager can point you to a problem, instead of letting you find a problem that you will be solving.
TC or GTFO
Added in the original post.
Location and Can you give the breakdown ?
I’m in interested in this as well. I’m joining as L4, definitely will not have as much responsibilities as OP but wondering about best ways to ramp up efficiently.
Ex .net consultant with a little less yoe. 6 months is about right. Read “effective java” and “java concurrency in practice”.
6 months is a wild overestimate. This might have been true 10 years ago, but companies are converging on conceptually similar stacks (it helps that a lot are converging on Google's open source options). You can be productive after a month. Learning whatever business area you're in might well take the longest.
Being productive and performing at level are two different things. Things at google are... different. Lots more to learn. Lots of things are different. A lot of code is quite complex because... Could’ve been made simpler, but why? You’re smart, you’re supposed to figure it out. The refactor can come later
Can confirm you need 6 months. Focus on understanding your org, read tons of code and understand the frameworks and systems. Understand who the key influencers are. Java stack is wildly different than in the industry outside of Google so you are on a similar footing compared to most. Best of luck!