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Great Company, Slow Promotions

Software Engineering Manager
Current Employee
Has worked at Google for 6 years
July 23, 2017
Mountain View, California
5.0
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEO
Pros

Great company with excellent products, high ethics, employee benefits, and pay.

Managers are rated on employee satisfaction, so pay attention to this.

Coworkers are very smart, generally pleasant, and good to work with.

Cons

Very few cons. Mainly, it's getting a bit large, so it's hard to have a sense of how you are contributing. The promotion system is designed to be fair by having anonymous committees review written packets, and you can self-nominate. As a result, the burden of proving you are promotable is extremely high. You (or your manager) really have to be focused on promotion, find and work on projects with the right demonstrable complexity and impact, and have extensive written documentation and peer statements to validate. The entire process can take years.

Advice to Management

Simplify the promotion system. Still allow people to self-nominate, but allow for more input and influence by people who actually work with the person, rather than handing it to an anonymous group of people who are mostly encouraged to be conservative and not promote unless they are unanimously and absolutely certain.

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