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Comment by m0zg | Hacker News Reader

You know, I'd even believe you if I did not observe with my own eyes, at Google, how people get promoted despite not really doing much themselves other than gaming the visibility, and people who are literally one of a kind and who delivered world class, pivotal work get denied promotion repeatedly.

It's still a human-based system. It's still vulnerable to nearly the same political bullshit you see elsewhere: cliques, favoritism, backstabbing, etc. Heck even your boss still affects your promo (there's a "private" section in the feedback you don't see). If you don't see this, then you're probably not getting promoted either.

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A good friend of mine from university is a Googler. He is a nice guy, but incredibly political and technically not very capable. A master of making himself look good, schmoozing and talking the talk. He has done rather well at Google.

Yet another friend, a brilliant, straight-talking techy, struggles at moving up the ranks Google.

Only one data point, but given the comments here, perhaps it is somewhat accurate.

The solution is to work for a smaller company where your output is directly tied to the market success of the entire organisation, and where its small enough that the CEO/Founder can directly appreciate your efforts. Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go.

Bonus is that these kind of jobs are often located outside of Silicon Valley, so your living costs will be much lower.

> Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go.

That is a pretty big "just". Bonuses aren't common everywhere, and unfortunately it seems like management being directly involved in the company can also go the other way. Since they have a larger incentive to short change you on salary as it is their own bottom line.

That said I think looking at the promotion structure is something underappreciated and should really be part of these "how to be successful" post rather than maxing out you credit card (or whatever).

You're saying to walk away from $250k+ at Google so you can pull in 120 at a failed startup?

If someone doesn't have the weaseling skills to weasel up the ladder at Google, they're going to be horribly exploited at a smaller company too

No, from my experience what is meant is to join a small and medium-sized enterprise and become a part of their success. $200k is a lot in salary, but it isn't that much for a company as such if they sell or provide high value products or services.

This is false. I’ve been at 4 different startups and the ones I made myself key to market success were way better than working in these soul crushing meat grinders like Goog or FB. There’s more to life than TC.

What does TC stand for?

total compensation

Total compensation

> There’s more to life than TC.

Easy to say but those "soul crushing meat grinders" can pay literally hundreds of thousands more in total annual comp than some dinky startup.

Just for what it's worth, my experience is the opposite; I've found Google less of a meat grinder and less soul crushing than startups. But I think it's possible that a lot depends on where - both in the country and in the org chart - you're located.

Some smaller companies (including startups) pay really well, too. And I agree with the poster below, there's more to life than total comp.

I don't get this statement. Google doesn't force anyone to work overnight. It doesn't force you to work at all, to be honest. Some people can spend a workday skiing and then arrive at 6 pm for dinner. TC is 400K. And once you're bored or feel undercompensated, you just go to FB, Netflix or Snapchat and get a 30-50% pay rise.

But you're an inconsequential cog, and in order to get a decent bonus and _any_ RSU refresh at all (which is the majority of that 400K btw) you have to jump through insane hoops and shave yaks all day. At some point it feels like Dostoevsky's labor camp description: you dig a hole and then you fill it back up. Except this is a very comfy labor camp, with 3 meals a day, and you can leave if you want to.

But some of us like to actually make things, and have a sense of purpose, and other things higher up on the Maslow's pyramid of needs. For them Google of 2019 is mostly not a good place, unless they end up on teams (and in positions on those teams) where they can do work that's meaningful to them, rather than copy proto buffers in some soon-to-be deprecated backend. Meaningful work is scarce there, and has been for at least the last decade, and a lot of people are competing for it.

> But you're an inconsequential cog

In the grand scheme of things everybody is an inconsequential cog. You, me and everybody you know are average people who will grind away at whatever thing we happen do. You aren't gonna change the world. I'm not gonna change the world. Accept this and move on.

> Meaningful work is scarce there

"Meaningful work" is in the eye of the beholder. Learning to find joy in whatever task you are working on is an important skill to learn.

Being a very highly paid "inconsequential cog" at a mega-corp and working below market at some dinky startup can be the difference between actually affording to buy a house. It can mean you get to retire years earlier than you would have otherwise. It can mean putting your kids through a top notch education program. It buys you a lot of things.

The entirety of one's world view is defined by their perception. If you can convince yourself you're not a cog at Google, hey, more power to you, enjoy those golden handcuffs. But if not, there are plenty of options out there which let you pay mortgage, put your kids through college, and "buy a lot of things". It doesn't have to be FANG.

So Google is bad for promotion and startups too are bad. I am not sure what other options people are looking to suggest.

...the obvious answer to that would be “non-Google companies that are also not startups.”

Y’know, there is a whole world of companies out there that don’t depend on venture capital to survive...

The other option is to realize that in the world of people, your people skills can be even more valuable than your technical skills. I think that L5 is the tipping point where people skills start to dominate.

Technical skills are the skills to make machines do whatever you want, they get no say in the matter. People skills are the skills to make people do whatever you want. You can see why many are reluctant to get involved in that.

so they keep the smart people doing useful work, rather than convert them to useless managers?

same as it ever was.

If Google could distinguish between smart people and useless people, why keep the useless people?

I guess i should clarify. Useless in a technical sense, not in a bureaucratic sense. You still need them of course.

And I'm sure even the worst at google are far from 'useless.' Figure of speech.

Edit: Possibly better than the alternative overall though. So frustrating to have competent people promoted as you're trying to put out a working product. Cancel those meetings and fix this code!

But just to be clear for when this comment gets mined by some future HR department. It is of course very important to have good people making the high level architectural decisions, and you should absolutely hire me for your senior technical positions to maximize the output of all those around me!

It's just the whole needing to give blunt assessments of underlings that may have consequences for their and their families livelihood that I'm not suited for.

Promotion at Google does not mean management.

... until you figure out that maybe comparing numbers of high level technical engineers to numbers of high level managers would be the correct way to gauge this. Your chances of becoming a high level manager are very slim, but your chances of becoming a high level engineer are much slimmer.

But if your message is "it's better than elsewhere", then yes, it probably is.

It usually means "tech lead" which is management without the labor relations legalities (except where NLRB calls the bluff?.

Specifically, there are two job ladders in this area, one for management and one for engineering. People are welcome to switch ladders, though there's some friction in the process because they actually are different jobs. The idea is that people shouldn't sacrifice talents to progress in their careers, as often happens when talented engineers are pushed into people management at other companies.

Like a lot of jobs in tech, there is overlap. Managers can write code, and senior engineers can manage people if they want. Everyone needs at least some technical skills, and everyone needs at least some people skills. But the intent is to provide a good long-term path for people who want to focus more on one or the other.

That is true, but what's also true is that it's _way_ easier to get promoted beyond L5 as a manager, and darn near impossible to get promoted beyond L6 as an IC. Google values managers more, just like any other company. That's why you see like 7 layers of management there by now and directors reporting to directors and VPs reporting to VPs: people want more money but can't get to the next level as ICs. Fun fact: when I left Google, I was 1 level deeper in the hierarchy than I've ever been at Microsoft, a company that at the time I left was twice the size of Google I left 7 years later.

I wouldn't say it's easier to get promoted in the sense that the work is easier. A company with 85,000 employees needs a lot of managers (who themselves need managers, and so on), so there's definitely demand. But that demand need not change the stringency of the job requirements.

Google could let half its managers go tomorrow and things would only improve. And you know it, even if you are a manager. :-)

Higher levels at Google inevitably mean getting people organized. Convincing that your design is worth investing resources into.

If you are awesome only at cranking out code, you are stuck at L4.

I've seen it go both ways. Definitely agreed that it's a human process and it can be gamed a bit. There are (or had been in the past) some checks on that with secondary committees that re-reviewed primary committee results (not just appeals of negative cases). I think the removal of those checks and move to org based promos has allowed more of what you described to take place in unfortunately.

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