Google Performance Reviews
I will be joining Google shortly. Got down-leveled to L3, it is what it is, I'm just happy I matched to a team and looking forward to starting. I want to gun for L5, hoping to shoot for L4 in 12-18mo, L5 in I suppose 2-3 years after that, we'll see. That's at least the goal. 1) From reading various posts, sounds like the challenge to a good performance review is being able to a) deliver a product that has b) impact. And this is dependent on your manager (and team) giving you such projects. Is this still the primary source of your performance review? How do other politics come into play in the 360 reviews? 2) How hard is it to succeed in performance reviews? I get that the levels are NI, CME, EE, SEE, and S. How challenging is it to achieve each one? Is that solely dependent on #1, your ability to deploy products that have impact? What about WLB? I'm not looking for WLB, any thoughts on hours/week necessary to achieve each grade? So I don't get shit for it later: Old TC: 150 New TC: 195 (I know, low for L3 according to you folks, don't really care)
L3-L4 should not be too hard. But 12-18 months may be too optimistic as you will get CME in your first review and you need to demonstrate sustained performance after that (e.g. at least a couple SEEs). You will need to do with a lot of BS which will get in the way like reorgs, cancelled projects, delayed launches, endless reviews and you will be stack ranked against more experienced people who were there longer. If your project gets cancelled (for me happened twice in my first year), it is hard to show impact...
And how hard would you say is it to hit EE or SEE?
Interested in this as well. Does your work need to be user facing to show impact?
Whet matters is your yoe
PhD with 4 years of experience. I accepted L3 because neither are in pure software or CS, and my interview performance wasn’t high enough for L4 I guess. But I remember being a new grad coder nearly 10 years ago and I’m def well beyond that level. I think I should be able to perform at high L3 low L4 level.
Happy for you mate !!