For folks who have moved from AWS and Azure cloud orgs to GCP, how are the products and the work culture at GCP(Kirkland & Bay area). I am looking for feedback from principals/partners(66+ for MS) who have moved to GCP. Does GCP have the same skill levels as rest of google orgs? I see a lot of ex-Oracle/SAP and trying to see how political it gets. DM me if you feel you cannot air comments to everyone. If you have moved as a IC that's a bit plus. #gcp #azure #google
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I’ve heard GCP is the most ungoogley org in Google .. Amazon culture abounds
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I was at L7 at AWS and moved to L7 at GCP. My general observations are: - TC: Approximately the same for me. $720k at AWS, $766k at Goog. Stock vests monthly at Google, whereas AWS pushes some RSU risk onto the employee by vesting every 6 months. Google has a lot of perks which might or might not be interesting to you (education stipend, excellent death insurance, etc). - Growth: I was on an L8 promo track at AWS and would be promoted by now if I had stayed. The transfer probably set my promo back by three years, but the increased breadth of experience has also been good for me. - Autonomy: I found AWS was an excellent place for people who like to get a lot done, grow their career, and have high impact. There was a strong culture of pushing decision making power as far down as possible. Google seems to be managing more to the lowest 50% of workers with menial processes. It assumes that all important decisions need to bubble up. This causes friction and slowdown in business velocity. Part of this is inertia from the history of a company that hasn’t had to move fast and compete aggressively until it entered the cloud industry. For example: if I found a great candidate at AWS with a competing offer, I could get them from initial greet call to offer sheet in under a week. At GCP, I’ve never seen a hire that took less than 4 months. - Culture : The GCP culture is different to the rest of Google. It has a saturation of enterprise leadership from Oracle, SAP, and the old dark days of Microsoft which feels very yesteryear to me. The Amazon LP’s run in my veins, and a lot of the GCP culture conflicts with my values. It feels like customers are an afterthought. I repudiated more promises to customers in my first 6 months at Google than my entire career at AWS. GCP products are frankly immature compared to AWS. I see too much short-term thinking, micromanagement, and politics. But I’ve learned some good lessons about how to run a business in a ‘challenger’ position, and there are some positive changes happening at GCP which give me little bursts of inspiration. It takes Google longer to weed out unproductive workers than AWS, and it invests a lot in mechanisms to provide workplace psychological safety (including manager time and effort) and support for people. Overall, Google cares more about its people than Amazon, and Amazon cares more about its customers than Google. Skills - They’re both two very large organizations, and it’s tough to generalize about hundreds of thousands of people. I have much more exposure to VP’s at Google and they are consistently excellent in my dealings with them. Below VP level, it’s a crapshoot and there is more inconsistency in skills and competence at every level at GCP than AWS. I’ve met plenty of subpar L8’s and L9’s at Google. Part of this is because the promo budget drifts so wildly, they hired too quickly, and the hiring processes are flawed. I have friends in Google Search, Android, CoreML, Deepmind, Waymo, YouTube, and Ads. Overall, I think the skill level is net neutral between GCP and other Alphabet PA’s. What kind of role are you in?
Thanks for detailed role info. Partner at MS targeting L8. I would say MS is somewhere midway in the employee to customer bracket. Constant reorgs and 180 product shifts are a drain sucking away the enthusiasm of the past.
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