Hello blind, India based folks (SWEs) who switched from Microsoft India to Google India, what difference do you see in terms of work quality, WLB, pay, politics and other perks in general? Were you downleveled when you moved? Any opinion on which one is a better choice for a SWE in India, say for next 5 years? L61 - 23 L (Base) - 3 yoe #microsoft #google #india #idc #tech
Between Microsoft and Google - Google wins hands down. No contest. Not even close. I worked at IDC for 4 years before moving to Google. Google has much better work quality. The tech infrastructure is about 10 years ahead of Microsoft imho. The tools you have at your disposal are incredible (codelabs, code search, juggler etc.) and the internal ecosystem is so well architected that I got more done in my first year at Google than I did in 3 years at Microsoft. Honestly, you gotta experience it rather than just these blanket statements from me. The pay is much better than Microsoft. New grad L3s make more than L61s do. There is no stack ranking. You get atleast 15% of your base as performance bonus if you’re not in the bottom 1% of the company. Half the people get 20%+ Stock refresh at Microsoft is a big joke. An L3 average stock refresh is same as an L65 stock refresh (35000$). I got 65000$ stock refresher as an L4 last year. I think L67 has a target refresher of 75000$ - so you get the picture. Microsoft has some of the most incompetent, political managers I’ve ever worked under. People with absolutely zero management skills get promoted to manager positions from an engineering role. Google places way more emphasis on hiring the right people managers. The role of a tech lead and manager are entirely different and you’ll have both in a team. Promotions in Microsoft are a shit show where you’re at your manager’s mercy. Promotions at Google are done by an anonymous committee who judges your work through a packet you write with supporting data. The expectations of a level are clearly laid out and you will be evaluated on those. The average Googler I work with has been as smart as the smartest Microsoft engineer I’ve worked with. Some of this has also to do with the plethora of knowledge and engineering practices in the company. Most Microsoft L63-64s are incompetent and there are so many badly designed systems (scope is a joke, jarvis is so bad and limited in functionality I can’t imagine how it made to prod, all of azure is now moving to gRPC because Microsoft realised what a debacle the vanilla http architecture they employed was. Google has been using RPCs since 2006). XML, parallax, and tedious build systems, horrible design process, the horror that people call Codeflow - all get thrown out the door. My man. You’re missing out on a world of wonder if you’re passionate about tech. Ofcourse there’s the regular perks too. You can fly out to your sister teams and the budget accommodates business class round trip. You don’t have to be a manager for that. You don’t have to worry about fighting for that. Much better and free food. Memegen. Perks like 1300$ wfh allowance, ergonomic evaluations and general care of employees as a first class citizen in the company etc. Sorry for the long rant. It’s not even a comparison. I left Microsoft as L62 and joined Google at L4. Working at Microsoft killed my passion for tech. I wondered if I was even in the right field and contemplated doing an MBA. Google is an engineer’s dream. Microsoft is a business company. There is no comparison, sorry. Google wins hands down.
Thank you for the detailed answer. That's quite a comparison. The stock refresher you mentioned for new grads (35k $) is applicable to Google India office? And how would you compare engineering culture between Google Bangalore and Google Hyderabad?
Yeah those numbers are for the India office. It’s higher in the other offices - about 50k in MTV for L3 average refresh I think Bangalore as an office is expanding much more than Hyderabad is. The culture is best experienced if you’re in a team of Googlers who have been around for 5+ years. I loved my time at Google Hyderabad personally and then moved to Bangalore for my family. I’d take G-Hyderabad over G-Bangalore - but that’s just me :) More growth opportunities are at Bangalore right now and Google is building a new office in Hyderabad so in a couple of years Hyderabad’s gonna be the bigger office again.