I have seen some people here on Blind saying that depending on what compensation you negotiate at Google for an L5 entry, "you're going to be expected to perform at lower/higher end of the spectrum". How can this be true? Does your manager have access to your total comp? Typically they should only see your salary when you get a raise, and they should only know the new grants you're getting, but none of what happened before. I would also expect that performance would be evaluated based on level (with maybe small tweaks depending on tenure) and not based on compensation. Anyone familiar with Google's performance evaluation practices can confirm or deny this?
I was a manager and hired someone who got a special comp (higher than the range for L5) that even required additional VP approval for the offer. Despite hearing about all of that from the recruiter, I never had access to their offer and only measured his perf against the SWE ladder.
Performance is based on level, not comp.