How do promos work at Google?

Amazon
charmedone

Go to company page Amazon

charmedone
May 4, 2020 35 Comments

I'm joining Google as an L3 in a month, but do want to get to L4 in about a year (was a borderline case according to my recruiter).

What's the process at Google? The one at Amazon is painful and I made the mistake of not documenting my work as I went. Don't want to do that again.

Thanks!

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TOP 35 Comments
  • Splunk
    koolaidd

    Go to company page Splunk

    koolaidd
    Lol "borderline"..

    You fell for their tricks
    May 4, 2020 22
    • Your share of the rent doesn’t count as rent

      I don’t have roommates. My rent is 1.1k. Meals also free
      May 4, 2020
    • Google / Eng
      ad_fontes

      Go to company page Google Eng

      ad_fontes
      That's a 28k after-tax difference. If I want to live alone, I can do that (and still come out ahead), but the point is I have the choice. You can't find another 28k even if you paid 0 rent, because COL doesn't scale with income. I apologize, as my tone was unnecessarily rude, but the two are simply not equivalent.
      May 4, 2020
  • Google
    πŸ§ŽπŸ»β€β™€οΈπŸ€πŸ»

    Go to company page Google

    πŸ§ŽπŸ»β€β™€οΈπŸ€πŸ»
    after 1 year they will say you need more sustained impact and it’ll probably be 18 months minimum
    May 4, 2020 1
  • Google / Eng
    dasgupta

    Go to company page Google Eng

    dasgupta
    Sorry buddy, you are at least 18 months away from a promo, no matter what you do you are getting meets or border exceeds and then you need to show sustained performance for the next two cycles i.e. strongly exceeds or super et al
    May 4, 2020 4
    • Amazon
      bobertjr

      Go to company page Amazon

      bobertjr
      It's all circumstantial. Someone who is on a growing project with good relationships/trust built will always get thrown into growing roles and they will rocket. It's why you do occasionally see 7yoe l7 at google and you see a good bunch of e6 fb in 5yoe. You will never achieve that kind of growth just externally hopping around.

      But if you are not in a booming space, as will invariably be the case for many places within any company, you will struggle to hit promos. Truth is promos are very heavily luck based.
      May 4, 2020
    • Oracle / Eng
      noogler169

      Go to company page Oracle Eng

      PRE
      Oracle
      BIO
      Googler
      noogler169
      ^Agree with a booming space in that. casechange teams, at max wasted one year of your life and that only happens for L5+ promo, epsecially for L3-L4 promo it is explicitly said doesnt matter if you were reorged that wont make a difference in the packet.
      May 4, 2020
  • Oracle / Eng
    noogler169

    Go to company page Oracle Eng

    PRE
    Oracle
    BIO
    Googler
    noogler169
    Doesnt matter if you are borderline or not you are the same as any L3.
    L3-L4 requires one decent project so it is possible to do in one year, however you will spend the first 3 months just learning basic tools/codebases so you will have to grind for the next 9 months.
    Imo not worth it, for your long term carrer 6 months doesnt matter, the relationships you build are much more important and sometimes in order to get promoted fast people damage those.
    May 4, 2020 0
  • Google
    1milTC

    Go to company page Google

    1milTC
    Contrary to popular belief it is actually possible, just unlikely. You have to perform really well right out of the gate and have a supportive management chain that is willing to let you take on important work and recognize you for it (if there are other people under your director "in line", which for you is basically any L3 with more time at Google, they might get dibs on interesting/important work and recognition depending on your managers).

    Basically you almost definitely need to get EE your first cycle and at least SEE on your second. It might be possible with CME->SEE but unlikely. And getting EE on your first cycle actually requires a lot more work than getting an EE after a few perfs since you will not be very productive for the first few months and your manager needs to get special permission to rate you that on your first cycle.

    Source: I know someone who successfully got the L3->L4 promo after two perf cycles and my manager is putting me up for promo on my "second" cycle.
    May 5, 2020 0