TL;DR: Title My team is in ML, so we've been reasonably safe from the layoffs. The team's working conditions have degraded significantly over the past year. I've been able to fly under the radar enough to avoid the worst mandatory OT though. It's still time for me to go. My team in kept growing through the layoffs, despite not delivering any meaningful results. Somehow my managers just kept inventing work without any customer-facing deliverables. The rampant empire building has caught the attention of our new senior director, though, and I think there's >50% chance my team gets either eliminated or at least cut down to size. I want to leave on my own terms. Like everyone, I miss the "old Google". A lot of what I admired when I first interned here is now gone. I've already made peace with that so I won't labor the point. But I would like my next role to have some of that optimism, excitement, and openness that we used to have, without the awful WLB that's quickly become the new normal. Frankly, I'd even take a pay cut to hate my job less. It's just depressing to be surrounded by so many people who are hopelessly burned out. So that brings me to my question: is it actually better anywhere else? If you worked at Google recently and left for somewhere else, do you actually like it better where you ended up? Or should I just count my blessings and find another team at Google that's not going to get chopped? Blind tax: $380k TC, 5 YOE (all on current team)
How does empire building work? Do managers get rewarded for having more reports without any direct impact? See the same in my team where we keep hiring outsiders who take years to ramp up while managers don't have time to talk to current reports.
> Do managers get rewarded for having more reports without any direct impact? The short answer is yes. Every exec wants to be able to say they're building out an ML team, and they reward managers who can come up with proposals for more work/scope. Nobody is checking to see if the work correlates to any business value.
Echo, there is no real check on deliverables until vps are told to layoff people.
I would don’t leave of your own accord. Stay there but take no stress. Make sure you get that sweet severance and then leave
Those early severance packages from last year were solid. Severance typically gets worse over time. I think folks getting laid off recently are just getting 60 days to find a new team within Google. There are many more applicants than there are listings, so internal transfers are ridiculously competitive. But because they could have _theoretically_ found a new role, they don't get any severance on top AFAIK. 60 days to job hunt full-time isn't awful, but my friends in the market are taking longer than that to get an offer these days.
Same. I am still waiting but it isn’t that bad once you calm down
Who doesn't love the easy life of 20 hour work weeks? Do you expect Blind to sympathize with your narcissistic disappointments? Grow up and be real. You are lucky you are still under radar. That team needs to be eliminated for sure.
Ex-googler here, same situation back in 2020. Empire building manager hire tons of engineers w/o delivery and made the team lost direction. For the sake of GSU I waited for my 4 year mark and immediately left .
Where did you jump between? Did you sell the gsu
Yeah, fair enough. I have a bunch of GSUs from a retention offer that pushed my cliff out. Waiting for my next comp cliff is definitely an option on my mind. Do you like Snowflake any better?