L3 offer at Google after masters + 3 years of experience
How bad is this offer? Being offered L3 at Google India after 3 years of experience. I also have a masters degree. My main concern is whether I will look like an old guy working with 21-22 year old btech grads? TC: 40 lacs INR (24 base + 12.25 stocks + 3.60 target bonus)
I've seen L5s who are 25 and L3s who are 30+. Tenure plays a huge role in deciding your level at Google. They care a lot more about it than how much external experience you have. Spending 5 years at Google gets you at least one level higher, sometimes even two, than those 5 years being somewhere else.
This is one of the best things about any private company I have heard so far. Most companies play it the other way round. Easier to get a higher level and higher pay if you're coming from outside. For internal candidates, they increase your pay and grade just enough to ensure you don't go away.
Atleast they take care of their own!
When I was hired, it was also L3 with years of experience. I was 29. You don’t really feel like the “old guy” because, well, Google is notorious for down-leveling and so you’re not the only one. I had friends that were L4 and early 40s. (L4 is terminal btw so you can coast at L4.) Only exception was when someone on my team reached his 1.5yr mark and made L4, y’know, 1.5yr out of college, and was senior to me. I did feel a bit bitter about being given a new-hire leveling and perhaps also because I accepted that offer in lieu of several senior eng offers. But it’s Google, and its name boosts a resume something fierce. Ultimately I left after little over a year for L+2 and 2x TC at another FAANG.
Thanks a lot. :) So what happened at Google after you joined. It must have been immediately obvious to everyone that you are performing way beyond a junior engineer. So did they give you tasks and responsibilities commensurate with your skills?
Kinda. Google has a huge infrastructural learning curve, so each team is expected to give you some time to ramp up on that with smaller tasks. Afterwards I was owning projects. Except for some exceptional teams, your first perf is a CME (consistently meets expectations), aka the “Noogler CME”—it’s default, most managers don’t consider otherwise, and it does nothing to boost your case for promo. For next perf, my manager told me that CME -> SEE (strongly exceeds) is too big of a jump for calibrations, and that progression should look like CME -> EE (exceeds) -> SEE for L3->L4 promo. So for this team and for many other teams at Google, minimum time from L3->L4 is ~1.5yr. Funnily enough, many of my L4 coworkers made L4 after 1.5yr/their 3rd perf cycle. There are exceptions, I have heard of some teams giving EE on first perf. It’s much rarer. In my team, that was not even a consideration—it’s CME no matter how good or bad you do as a Noogler.
You're being lowballed maybe, but its not that crazy to see an L3 in the second half of their twenties. Worst case you're experienced so you can get L4 fast.