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.
Bonus is that these kind of jobs are often located outside of Silicon Valley, so your living costs will be much lower.
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).
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
Easy to say but those "soul crushing meat grinders" can pay literally hundreds of thousands more in total annual comp than some dinky startup.
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.
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.
Y’know, there is a whole world of companies out there that don’t depend on venture capital to survive...
If you are awesome only at cranking out code, you are stuck at L4.
same as it ever was.
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!
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.
But if your message is "it's better than elsewhere", then yes, it probably is.
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.