Most Googlers who are faced with bad managers are timid and many seem to be putting up with really bad managers. Their strategy was to leave to another team or leave Google altogether. Well you do not have that option any more with fewer opportunities both inside and outside. Please, please 🙏 raise your voice against unscrupulous and ineffective mid management. The recent hiring boom has brought in a lot of trash 🚮 as managers from outside (and a few promoted from within). What should you do? - make sure to talk to your skip about these problems. (If skip isn’t responsive, then go further up the chain). - explicitly ask what protections against retaliation they have in place, given you have raised your concerns. - keep your points sharp to and to the point. - raise your concerns to people ops. Google has amazing protections for SWEs. There is absolutely no need to suffer useless mid management. I can’t reveal too much l, but suffice to say, Google does take managerial competence seriously. But people need to speak up though. TC 500k Yoe 15 #google
Instructions unclear. Got laid off. But OP is being genuine so I’ll be serious: I would think hard before taking this advice. It _can_ work but it hasn’t for me. I would analogize it to dating someone who insists that they want you to be direct and brutally honest. They almost never actually do. They want to be that type of person but they’re not. And you find that out the hard way.
Sure. Not saying to provide feedback to the shitty managers. My recommendation is to provide feedback to the skip. Most ICs are holding back on feedback.
I understand and I appreciate your effort here. My situation was going to the skip. I was told it was likely a “mismatch in communication styles”. Skip just spoke to the manager about the situation. I ended up worse off. Maybe Google was better off? Maybe the manager was put under a more watchful eye? But it was largely treated as a betrayal from my side and I ended up leaving the team after six months. Retaliation doesn’t have to be overt, it can be subtle enough to make you feel your upside is now capped. And *you* are now under a more watchful eye as well. Your manager is recording your behavior more closely so they can make the case that they aren’t the problem. The problem is it is a one-way door. You can’t reverse it. And going to the HR rep is just going to embroil you further in issues. I think the fundamental disconnect is that it’s good for the company and everyone overall if ICs do it. Minimal downside for Google. For the IC the probability that it’s a net negative is a lot higher. But, as Google makes it harder to transfer/change teams I think it makes more sense to speak up instead of just suffering bad manager. I still think exit is the better option for the individual.
Ever read the "48 Rules of power" ? Never trash your manager. never.
Then you have to put up with trash as manager.
That's life, bro. It is well known that people don't quit jobs. People quit managers. If you can't fake it , move on.
I don’t think this post reflects the current situation. Managers today have way more power than they had 2+ years ago, and that’s by design.
GRAD certainly put more power into the hands of managers. You are right shitty managers are now thriving.
Retaliation is real at Google and the rot usually goes all the way up the chain. Malicious incompetence begets malicious incompetence. And a reminder that HR is not your friend and they will be complicit in any retaliation. Google also doesn't hire dummies so you can expect this retaliation to be very quietly implemented. If you find yourself in a bad situation, assume the entire chain of command has been compromised. They're all body snatchers now. You're better off just getting the hell away from it all.
This hasn’t been my experience though. HR does try a fair job, especially at Google. Just FYI, several managers have been terminated at Google post HR investigations in the last couple of years.
Yeah, I spoke up and Google actively tried to ruin my career and then promoted the most abusive man I've met at the company. I only survived by managing to switch teams. Now that some time has passed? I'm out. Google actively supports abusive managers because it wants to shift the balance of power toward management, away from engineers, and reduce headcount. Google is dead. If you want what it's culture once offered, go start a company and beat the shit out of Google. If you're only in this because your parents forced you to become an engineer, if you're only in it for the money, by all means stay. You'll continue to fit right in while talented people leave. You'll continue to fit right in while the people who know that competing to efficiently meet customer needs is both fulfilling and lucrative? Leave. Google is now a husk for old men who want to collect without working.
It's funny because it used to be an engineering heavy company. When I joined I reported to a director with like 50 other people. After years of toxic incentives and inane perf demands like "leadership" requirements at every level and countless layers of management, now they're getting rid of the ICs and promoting the worst of the too many layers of management. I'm sure this will end well.
You are on point. My team hired a incompetent manager a few months ago and I started applying internally and externally. You may think that complaining to skip will work but probably not in my case. Skip keeps praising this guy everyday with generic statements like He is really good. Clearly skip is biased.
Got to defend their hiring decision
Yeah think about it. A poor VP inherits or builds organization and ensures his kind of people are in positions of power. Well "his kind of people" are at least as terrible as he is. And then those people hire more people like them. A fish rots from the head. Now imagine trying to go talk to your skip or your director and complain about your toxic manager. They'll just look at each other and say "he's me!"
Reading the meek answers from Googlers here is quite surprising. But I suppose that's what you get when you have a rest-and-vest culture where expectations for managers is very low as well and job security is very high.
Actually the rest and vest don't apply to a large part of Google. I work at technical infrastructure where my colleagues and I work super hard. But from time to time, bad managers get into these teams as well. The rest and vest is mostly in money printing teams and you could argue they earned their keep. True some teams exist outside of these as well, but it is mostly because they never learned to work hard.
Fear of retaliation is real...
The fear is real indeed. But retaliation is a very serious offense for a manager and can lead to termination. When strong ICs don’t speak up, it’s sad.
Will the IC be terminated before or after the manager ? Most will say before Plus why would any other manager want to risk working with someone who has a history of speaking out There is no win for an IC to speak out except in conditions where they have another job lined up and are planning to never return under any circumstances