Google Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

My team is a fairly distributed team, so I've setup monthly 1-on-1s with everyone to help build up relationships.

For 1-on-1s like this, what strategies do you use to build strong relationships quickly?

Most resources on 1-on-1s focus on ones with your manager. But I feel like there's a difference here.

I have joined Google as L4 Full stack engineer - Frontend heavy (70% Frontend, 30% Backend). I have joined the GCP Org. I have 6+ Years of Experience and I have worked in Uber for 3.5 years as SDE 2 Frontend Engineer in past.

I am working on google primarily on Angularjs, typescript, Graphql on frontend side and java, sql on backend side. I want to make sure that i perform well and able to reach L5 within next 1-1.5 years. i.e next December cycle.

I have a fair idea from Uber point of view.

But someone who has deeper insights about what to do right and how things work at google it will be great.

I've gotten some feedback from peers on my team that I should "manage up" more. So:

• What do you think "managing up" is?
• What are examples of things you do to "manage up"?

P.S. I have clarified this with the people I've gotten feedback from. But asking here to get the "taro perspective" since y'all tend to have great insights.

I've two engineers who report to me, and both are average and one is towards PiP. The problem is they don't listen easily get influenced by other engineers and frequently change what I've asked them to do.
I'm now angry because the pile of feature requests are piling on me, I tend to do some work for them but this really not at all productive for my career, like managing, I rather behave like an IC altogether, because I want to learn and do my own stuff instead of getting caught in these bad situations that makes me angry.

What is the right way to handle these stuff from leadership point of view? How much involvement should I have?

I'm currently equivalent of Google L4 in my org but I want to move towards L5

My first team didn't work out for me. I was there for less than a year and got the poorest rating, was set up for a PIP. Somehow I made a transfer at the last moment and survived. Certainly, it was the most difficult phase of my life & I am quite grateful to my new team. Now, I'm already in the new team for less than a year and got an average rating last time. The rating was partially influenced by previous manager as I spent almost half of my time there.

Currently working on multiple projects at the same time and grabbing almost whatever task is offered and somewhat gained trust I believe. But the quality of those tasks are not too much complex rather modular & takes more time. I can keep on doing this way but not sure what is the right thing to do. The team is relatively new. Recently started a promo discussion humbly and not pushing it. Manager's review is I'm operating at L3.6 now.

Now,

• What might be the mental model to forget the past?
• Sticking around for almost two years now, what might be the correct time & way to reach Next Level?

Hi folks, I have roughly 2 weeks to prepare, I wanted to know thoughts on what should be my plan to give it my best shot?

Main Problem that I am facing right now is implementing a solution correctly.

WLB also means something different to people and therefore I'm curious what the best way is to discover the "truth" of the team you are interviewing into before both applying and joining a company.

For example, when I worked at Amazon, I did not work beyond 40 hours in either of my teams, but the occasional weekend because I was oncall, and this was fine for me personally. At Google Cloud, I was working longer during the weekdays (self-imposed because this was during COVID and I never worked weekends), but other teams at Google have been more relaxed in general.

I've been told Meta, Amazon and a few others have a poor WLB balance, but then I've also spoken to managers (and experienced it myself in the case of Amazon) that this is team dependant and manager dependant. I also assume it varies by your level.

That said, I'm a DE, so likely the stress level overall is also different to a SWE, hence this post.

I've been a Data Engineer for most of my career and my observation is that scope as a Data Engineer can plateau and therefore I see a lot more L4/5 DE's than L6+. I think it is because you don't impact the bottom line directly and regularly.

At FAANG's I've worked at so far, finding new scope can be difficult even when you are working with stakeholders: it is "easier" to scope/build a product (i.e. SWE work) and show metrics of success to add value vs building a data pipeline which may be limited to them having a reporting need for example which often isn't the case especially in a more established firm.

I moved into a partner facing DE role to help more with scope/stakeholder exposure. The highest impact project I worked on so far is influencing an internal team to change the way we measure a particular metric. This involved mostly stakeholder management and nothing more complex than SQL queries from a technical standpoint. While it was fulfilling, this is also something I 'stumbled' upon and is rare due to challenges like partner scope/vision is limited/slow (their leadership can change and therefore you projects/ideas can), technical challenges of automating things because of larger concerns (e.g. privacy, lack of infra on their side which you have no control over) and so on (you generally have even less control than an internal DE).

In my current role, I am generally able to derive projects, but (in my opinion) they are limited in scope/value: i.e. build a pipeline, deliver an analysis. Therefore, even though the projects 'ticks the boxes' for an L5, it is not really driving a 'transformation' as an L6+ would. I also directly asked my manager what are some of the hardest problems we have, and have been told we have a lot, yet, I'm not hearing or seeing them.

Given the situation, would you:

1. Move to a SWE role internally at FAANG for a more established path 'up' (not sure this resolves the scope problem especially at FAANG as I think SWE-DE's can almost be even harder to get to L6+ on because they generally lack stakeholder visibility and focus on more top down work?).
2. Seek roles outside of FAANG where the scope of the work is already scoped to L6+ e.g. Airbnb so the 'heavy lifting' has been done in terms of scope.
3. Refine your scoping strategy within you own team, and if so, how?

Note: my motivation is to thrive at work, this isn't for a promo, just incase the post comes across as promo-focused. :)

In particular, I am about to have a team fit call with a senior manager at Google for an L5 role. The corresponding team/job description from the careers page looks a bit ambiguous (it's a role in google distributed cloud hosted).

I am already HC approved post my interviews.

I wish to gain understanding for the following topics in the role:

1. Domain specific knowledge requirement for the role
2. Whether my previous SWE backend experiences (in Ads Search and in ML Infra) could be aligned with the role
3. Work load

Of course, I do realise that its a fitment call and I need to leave a strong impression on the manager.

But need advise as to how can I balance the two aspects given its a short 30min call. Thanks!

• What do you do to find someone to mentor?
  • Anything that's worked really well?
  • Anything that's not worked well?
• What do you do to qualify a potential mentee to make sure both you and they will be successful?

I recently saw a talk by someone L8 at my company. They believe everyone should mentor someone. It's not only a great way to improve at growing others, but also a great way to grow yourself.

So I'd like to try it out but am not entirely sure how to get started.

P.S. Yes, I've Googled this already. Asking a more vague question here because I've found all you tend to give really good insights that I'd never think of even asking for.

In anticipation of my , we can collect questions here. I can also answer questions afterward.

Work history

I've worked in leadership positions at companies like Netflix (2013 - 2017), Google (2017 - 2021), and now Disney. I'm currently a Director of Software Engineering at Disney as part of Disney Streaming (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Star+).

Happy to talk about mobile development, engineering management, and career growth.

Other

I have a deep background in music and audio, having received a Masters in Music & Audio Technology in 2003, and then working with Dolby for more than 5 years.

After I left Google, I took a career break to learn, explore, and recharge. I traveled to Ghana, learned about accounting, became a startup advisor, and read a lot.

I'm on LinkedIn here: .

I'm in the process of transferring teams right now.

What topics should I discuss with my new manager in our first 2-4 1-on-1s?

Topics that come to my mind:

• Working styles
• Strengths, weaknesses, interests
• Career goals
• Onboarding expectations (30/60/90 days)
• The team's mission / goals / KPIs
• Things on the manager's top of mind
• People to meet with / get to know

I'm thinking there are a few options:

1. Get a role on an AI project/team (internal transfer), learn AI specific engineering expertise on the job (not research)
2. Do part-time masters, land a role in AI research
3. Self-learn, land a role in AI research

My TL recently became my TLM at the start of this quarter and we've had communication/expectation issues before. My previous manager indicated through check-ins that I was on track to receive a Significant Impact (SI) rating ("Meets All Expectations") for the last 9 months and now my TLM is hinting that I only meet partial expectations.

The feedback is that I meet my delivery and impact expectations but only with a lot of guidance and help and at my level I need to show more independence.

Even when I ask them what rating they have in mind they don't have a straight answer and it's stressing me out not knowing if it could also be an NI or a PIP in the near future. I'm ashamed because this isn't how I wanted my career to progress at Google and because my friends and family (and team) definitely expected more from me but at this point in the year there isn't much time left.

I'm stressed out of my mind and it doesn't help that I also have anxiety and ADHD that make the situation worse than it actually is due to a recent family issue. The options I see forward are

(1) take the M rating and work harder next year to get promoted

(2) take short-term leave for 1-2 months due to burnout and "freeze" my performance for this year instead of making it worse.

What would you recommend I do?

I just did but we can also collect questions here that I'll answer afterward.

Work history

I recently joined Databricks as a Senior Director of Engineering. Most of my career has involved Machine Learning, and I've managed teams ranging from 2 to 200 engineers/research scientists.

Previously, I was the Head of FB Reels and Video Recommendations (Director of Engineering) at Meta, from 2019 - 2023. Before that, I was a Senior Staff Software Engineer and Tech Lead working at Google in Mountain View. I hold a PhD in Computer Science from Penn State, and my publications during that time have accumulated almost 9K academic citations.

Some questions I've heard:

• How Fair is Performance Evaluation for Tech ICs vs Managers?
• Can you give some examples of effective communication? What channels are used, level of abstraction, tone, etc?
• Any advice for a new grad to progress faster in their career?
• What are interviews even like for Director+?

Other

I've started writing detailed notes in blogs titled TLDR0. Slightly cheesy, but it stands for Tech Leadership - Direct, Respectful, Zero Ego. See the full details on my .

• Substack:
• Medium:

I have been working at FAANG companies for 5+ years and would love to consider changing my industry to algo trading / hedge fund firms such as Capital, Jane Street, etc. I heard these companies offer amazing compensations and learning opportunities.

I was wondering what is the best way to break through the industry? Any tips or learning experiences for those that have undergone this transition?

Thank you