I have noticed a lot of GPM/ principal PMs with several years of industry experience at companies like ebay, PayPal joining google as L5- it baffles me as to what is so amazing about this transition that people are willing to be downleveled? I'm personally contemplating leaving google after being here for 4+ years but I wonder if I'm missing something ...
Reason for leaving?
TC is better and Google on your resume does have an impact
This
Lol u work for a 100 year old manufacturing company dJhy49...
I was downleveled when hired. The recruiter convinced me that I could level up quickly with Perf every 6 months. 3 years later, no promo. Does it mean I was hired into the right level at Google? No, that means that I was fooled.
Was your TC more than previous?
Yes. That's why.
The levels are made up anyway. Who cares if you get a L5 at Google versus a 6 at a bunch of no name companies, when Google's pay will be higher and the opportunity to work at a world class engineering organization is there? When you leave, everyone will essentially know your level is worth more.
Money is made up too but enough people believe in it for it to matter :p. To be less facetious, title matters to anyone who wants to quickly grow their career and titles are used as a proxy for ability, knowledge and responsibility across organizations and teams.
My point is a 5 at google could be a 4 at apple could be a 7 at lyft. They're pretty meaningless numbers to compare from one company to another.
Pay > level
Really ?
Would you rather be a principal engineer of a small company making $150k, or a mid level employee at a big company making $300k?
Not a PM, but joined for a 60% TC bump.
What level of downlevel you had to take?
L6-> L5
I joined because pay was good. I also thought Google on resume would help.
@op why are you leaving G?
Been here 4 years and while I have learnt a good deal I'm also tired of this evergrowing thick middle management layer that makes career progression just so hard. I'm at L5 I don't see any growth to L6 for several years. It's a vicious cycle with good projects going to more senior ppl and lack of good.projects slowing down growth.
Build a new platform/ framework ...get people to buy into that .... Get promo ...leave the tech debt to someone else to clean up so that they can get their promo :)
I did. No regrets. Pay is good and culture with all its problems still better than any other company I’ve been at.
What size companies are you comparing?
1k-10k employee public companies in tech
G Pay is better even at l5
Exactly the same reason I came to G but then work isn't that great
Can you expand on that? What makes it.not great? Just boring stuff, poor wlb, or something else?