I've always heard that it's easy to switch teams after 1 year at Google, just find a new team willing to accept you. How easy is it really in practice? Obviously if you want to join some hot ML team I'm sure it'll be hard, but what about one of the many teams in ads, maps, android, search, etc? Some additional questions - Do you need several Exceeds+ performance reviews in order to switch easily? - Is it harder if you want to switch to a different org? - Is it harder if you're L3? - If your current team is one that most googlers consider "boring/uninteresting", will that hurt you when trying to switch?
Bonus points if you are >L4
Many many teams have more open headcount that people available for them. You'll have a though time switching to sexy teams but a lot are easier to get into. As long as your exceeds expectations your fine. Truth be told many teams out there will take meets expectation (but most won't). Heck there is a program (rescue helicopter) that take people with needs improvement. L5 is the easiest to switch and there are many fewer positions for L3. That being said there are still a lot. Most teams would prefer an L3 with a year under his belt that a new grad. So even as an L3 you'll be able to find some team
Would it be hard to switch out of a team that most Googlers probably consider boring and/or completely irrelevant to hot fields like ML, distributed systems, etc?
No, unless your experience there or performance isn't good. Only your new manager and team really needs to approve.
I want to ask the same thing too. Also is it easy to switch from non-US office to HQ?
Less easy to switch ladder. If you join as O ladder going to T (SWE, SRE, etc) ladder is nontrivial
It's extremely easy. However, if you want to go for promo then you need to stick with one team to make that happen. That said, most eng never makes it beyond L5. So it's common for an L5 to bounce around looking for fun projects for 18-24 months at a time. 1 year is a bit low. It takes time to have an impact on each team.
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My team at cloud Ai is looking for engineers, if you wanna switch ping me, no formal interview process just conversation.