Passed HC and signing the offer next week. Not SWE but analytics position. Any tips on what to expect culture wise ? specifically interested on folks who went from Amazon to Google! Also how do refreshers work ?Whats the ballpark number based on initial grant? New TC :200k
Yoe? Also congrats!
Brush up your protesting skills. That's all we do nowadays.
I went from Amazon to Google. Culture difference is night and day. The big difference stems from how the companies view the employees. Amazon sees non high level employees as easily replaceable. It's the reason for lack of perks, average benefits, and lower pay for equivalent level vs Facebook or Google. It is also the reason many employees are overworked with tight deadlines, high pip culture, and a bit lower hiring bar. It's perfectly fine if employees leave. There are tons of new college grads who would love to work at Amazon. It's okay if they lose talent to Google and Facebook. They Google/Facebook rejects are good enough and they are a great bargain for the TC and work they can squeeze out of them. Notice also how there is no leadership principle related to being nice or helping each other, nor do they ever talk about imposter syndrome. They want employees to intimidate each other and work hard in fear. Only high performers get refreshers at Amazon. Also because they don't focus on tech debt, there's really bad oncall and operations, and they dont pay you more for it. Google on the other hand sees employees as valuable assets. They try to have high bar for hiring, and for people who are able to pass, tries to keep their talent and tries to keep their employees happy. They trust their recruiting heavily. This results in no pip quotas with only 0-4% getting the lowest Needs Improvement rating in any performance review. Google has amazing perks and benefits. They give a lot of swag (I average 1 swag every 1.5 months). They answer to employees concerns. It is sort of going away but Google has TGIF every other week or so where the CEO and important people answer any questions you have. Jeff Bezos wouldnt even do that once a year. Most transparent company I have worked at. Google is so good to its employees, Google employees are spoiled in comparison to Amazons. They complain about there being too much kale in their menus, lack of holiday gift, the oil they use in the food, etc. Being Googley involves helping each other out. Without a heavy pip culture, emphasis on being Googley, and happy spoiled employees results in a very friendly culture where people help each other. (Vs backstabbing culture of Amazon) Google also pays you for oncall, and the pay depends on the SLA for the team. But most teams are tier 2 for what I see which ends up being roughly about double base salary on the weeks you are oncall. Strong emphasis on adding tests for everything. If you're not working on timeline sensitive product and the product is not in a bad state, there is no one pressuring you and trying to squeeze out of you a deadline. Refreshers... You don't get one in your first year unless you perform very well your first year. For that reason I recommend joining at the end of the year rather than beginning of the year. Unlike Amazon, everyone who doesn't perform bad gets refreshers. At Amazon you get refreshers only if you do well. Every year you get refreshers at Google except first year, and they stack. Base refresher amounts last year for SWEs in West Coast were 50k for L3, 80k for L4, 120k for L5. This is for Constantly Meets Expectations rating. Multiply these numbers by 1.3, 1.5, or 1.7 for ratings above it.
Wow thanks for the insights! Culture is one of the main reasons I took up the offer.Im sure there will be bad teams but just looking for a better culture overall. With regards to refreshes :if I join in January 2020 the first refresher would be January 2022 .Is that right?
Yes. So it's better to join December so you can get refresher on January 2021.
I'd say impossible to get past hc, an offer and start before the end of the year
Hey, congrats! I’m interviewing with Google for an analytics position too. Mind if I dm you?
Sure DM me
Readability BS When you have a chance to submit a code change, you must get an LGTM from someone familiar with the codebase and your work. And code reviews at G are normally pretty tough: people read every line and suggest better code practices or even design improvements. So you can imagine the review phase can sometimes take more time than implementation. But getting LGTM is not enough. You must get a so called Approval proclaiming that your code conforms to the official G style guide for the language you've used. And such an Approval can only be given by a person who has a readability in that language. A bit less often than always a person who you send your code review to in order to get an LGTM, and the one who has readability are two different people. Sometimes the one with readability can be someone you know from another team, or there's even a default alias you assign the code review to which finds a random person with readability across the company to approve your change. So, you can imagine, that's a ridiculous pain in the ass, which significantly slows down your performance with endless nit-picks and follow ups for older diffs, that you've already used for your next changes that are also already in review. Now, you're likely asking me how would one get that desired readability and avoid all that amazing crap? First, you gotta get into the line of similar noobs and wait for a few months only to enroll into the program. Then you should submit anywhere between 10-20 diffs over the course of yet another several months. Every such diff must be LGTM'ed and Approved by someone, thus be technically ready to submit. But you should restrain from the temptation of submitting it right away, but send to a special random readability reviewer. There're anywhere between 5-30 of such reviewers per each programming language across the company. Serving as a readability reviewer is a huge privilege and is considered almost like a 20% project. People even mention that in their periodic performance reviews. But unfortunately, those chosen ones are often pretty busy engineers too, so you gotta wait for them for at least a day on average. And have no doubt they won't approve you change w/o any suggestions. No, you're gonna struggle through and fix all the nits they're gonna find. And God forbid you argue with them. Because for every diff they approve you get some points. And btw, you must collect 5 points in 5 different categories to be considered for graduation. So, if you decide to argue with a readability reviewer, he can take off some points from you at the end of the review. Yeah, baby! But anyhow, if you manage to overcome all the incredible unbelievable BS, you'll be granted that cherished readability, and you'll be able to submit your diffs with only one LGTM from a teammate. Yay!
👆 I agree with the readability bs. It does help overall code quality but it is very annoying and a huge hassle sometimes. Readability process is broken.
What’s the analytics position? What’s the breakout for your TC? Did you negotiate for a higher TC?
Data engineer. Negotiated a bit but I was satisfied with the offer
Does anyone at Google know what ladder Data engineering comes under ?Is it viewed as a tech role?
What level at google ?
L4
Thanks Total TC is 200K for L4 ? Bay Area or somewhere else ?