How to become L5 in 3 years
I’m entering Google as an L4 after spending 1 year at Amazon as an L5. I’ve job hopped a lot so I want to stay at Google for 4+ years to cleanse my resume of job hopping. I want to achieve L5 at year 3, stay for 1 year and then check in with the market to see if it’s worth jumping. Here’s my current plan. Y1Q1: standard onboarding, get to know team, projects, team goals, team strengths/weaknesses, etc Y1Q2: Just attempt to execute current project at high velocity Y1Q3: use understanding from last 6 months to identify a couple of major problem areas in the team, identify 1 or 2 I think I can fix and start narrowing in on this. Set up learning sessions or better ops or whatever it seems the team needs, I did a lot of this stuff at Amazon Y1Q4 continue on with last quarter but also construct first promotion plan with manager. Identify area of weaknesses, etc. Y2Q1, Q2, focus on personal & team weaknesses. Y2Q3 identify a new solution or feature advancement that is original and hasn’t been considered. Something technical that has measurable benefit or the team or end users. Y2Q4 re-evaluate promotion plan with Manager and submit for promotion Y3 probably get denied, but aim for 4+ unique solutions this year, and address whatever reason they denied my promo last year —- Good plan? I’m 2.5 yoe, $236 @AWS, (in negotiation with Google)
Nice plan
This is all dependent on your team. All this planning makes no sense without team/product details.
Man proposes god disposes.
If you're aiming for promotion I would consider working with your manager earlier rather than later to identify areas which will get you multi-team or higher level impact and landing timelines. You'll ideally want 2-3 cycles of SEE or up ratings for promo case, so ensuring you land things sufficiently before to be able to demonstrate a successful project launch + ongoing success is important, vs shipping something out right before perf. Edit: If you join, also look at the SWE ladder definitions with emphasis on the scale of impact at L5. Promo case pretty much has to be that you were working at that next level for a year+ to get it.
Very good advice. But one clarification is that it’s enough if you are working at the next level for a few months prior to promo.
Appreciate the clarification, my understanding was a couple cycles at that level but good to hear it is less because maintaining that higher pace can be stressful as hell.
Write the plan in a doc and bring it to your manager on day 1
What’s your prep like to crack Google L4? How many LC questions? How many Google tagged LC questions did you do?
Wow sounds like a very methodical approach
How about “uninstalling Blind” as first step?
That’s also my plan
Once I sign an offer I’m uninstalling this app