Performance Review Ratings Example: Meta & Google

- Meta:
  - Meets Some Expectations (MS)
  - Meets Most Expectations (MM)
  - Meets All Expectations (MA): Need this or above to be doing okay.
  - Exceeds Expectations (EE)
  - Greatly Exceeds Expectations (GE)
  - Redefines Expectations (RE)
- Google:
  - Needs Improvement (NI)
  - Consistently Meets Expectations (CME): Need this or above to be doing okay.
  - Exceeds Expectations (EE)
  - Strongly Exceeds Expectations (SEE)
  - Superb
- Other companies will use a 1 to 5 system which roughly maps to the above, Google in particular

If you fall below MA at Meta or CME at Google, you will either immediately be put on a [performance improvement plan (PIP) or be at huge risk for one](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/7SsdpweHE4sbyTtz2kxQ/the-key-to-avoiding-the-performance-improvement-plan-how-to-figure-out-where-youre-trending/).

Related resources:
- [[Masterclass] How To Navigate Your Performance Review In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/b0B8uqIAUnBLE10jJHJG/how-to-navigate-your-performance-review-in-tech-7232022/) - This is the full video this clip was taken from
- ["What's the difference between a low performer software engineer and a high performer?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/nMxx2EMVIlJbl1oK4SGu/whats-the-difference-between-a-low-performer-software-engineer-and-a-high-performer/)
- ["How do I help my manager (who is also my mentor) be a better manager and mentor?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/LbHgSEtXcb5QR5nVu8xt/how-do-i-help-my-manager-who-is-also-my-mentor-be-a-better-manager-and-mentor/)

For context, I work in a tech lead role where I am often making recommendation to my manager regarding the projects coming down the line. The EM has the final say on this, but they respect my opinion on this matter so I don't want to mess this up. 

I also have 1:1s with my teammates whom I am responsible for about their career growth goals. My teammates are all the same eng level, but have different levels of competence and desire to learn. 

Additionally, I also know it's important for me to leave some room/ambiguity in project investigation stages to allow folks the space to grow, while it's also important for me to take on some challenging work and help our team deliver more quickly. I guess my question is really 2 parts:

1. How do I choose what to delegate?
2. How do I choose who to delegate the work to?

How do I choose who works on what project, and what to work on myself?

All Big Tech including Google, Meta, Amazon have done one round of layoffs. Interesting to hear what is your opinion is on the severance packages in the subsequent rounds. Does it get reduced? Asking because I am in interview process with Google. If they do a layoff will I get very less severance than the 1st round? My friends at Google are certain that there will be more rounds of layoffs in coming months.

Does severance package get reduced in subsequent rounds of layoffs?

Entry-Level Software Engineer [L3] at Google

Our VP keeps office hours every week (even more so recently because of the layoffs announcement). However, I see (and he often complains) that people do not utilise those, perhaps because people do not know what to ask. 

I see this as a wonderful opportunity to learn from the senior management (as well as build some visibility). However, I myself am not sure how to utilise them so that it is not a waste of their time.

I have utilised them once and it helped me understand what the work expectations look like from our VP's perspective as well as his insights on growing fast. But, I am not sure if I did it right, and any perspective on this would help.

How to make the most out of Director/VP/Exec office hours?

I am currently burnt out and looking for ways to take a break.

Looking at Google's generous severance benefits, I had thoughts to inform my manager that I am up for the chopping block if there are any foresight of next round of layoffs. Which I think should be good for the company since I am also helping one motivated Googler to not be laid off in the future.

But then, I am afraid it might get rejected and my manager's relationship with me get strained.

Are there any suggestions on getting severance package while indicating my intent to resign?

### **Additional context**

I am currently not on PIP and is considered excellent performer. I was promoted to L5 in mid 2021

Michael Lin's blog discussed on the "preemptive severance package" which is relevant to what I am hoping to do

- <https://www.jointaro.com/blog/why-i-quit-a-450k-engineering-job-at-netflix/>
- <https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/185305/is-preemptive-severance-the-same-as-being-fired>

Should I request a voluntary layoff to my manager?

Apologies in advance for a long question. Not sure how to ask this question without providing deeper context. 

---

I’ve been working with my current manager for the last 1.5 years. While they have recently helped me get promoted to Senior, it’s been a constant struggle. I dread our 1:1 almost every single week because it always run overtime and we are often still not on the same page. 

I see two major issues that haven’t notably improved in the times I’ve reported to them.

(1) My manager isn’t able to coach me, or any of the SWEs on the team. My manager doesn’t seem confident when we have career discussions - I recently asked them what they thought was the difference between good TL and a great one, and they struggled to coherently answer this. Instead, they said they would know better after the next performance calibration.  Additionally, none of my teammate has gotten proper coaching either.  For example, a teammate struggled to submit code due to their poor code quality and thus had low CL velocity, so my Manager simply told them to submit more CLs, which only made them more stressed without a legitimate way to improve. 

(2) My manager lacks technical understanding of our projects and constantly pushes for speed. My manager was externally hired, and to this day, they don’t really understand the complexity of the work our team does. I understand EMs don’t need to contribute code directly, but my manager almost always underestimate how complicated the projects our team takes on are. As engineers, we frequently have to defend our timelines, which is not only frustrating but also pressures some teammates to favor suboptimal design or hastily done CLs that just causes even more churn. 

The weird part is, my manager often seem unaware of their own actions, and when I talk to them about these issues, they are always receptive to feedback and seem willing to improve. However, I simply haven’t seen enough improvement in the last 1.5 years. 

I could leave, since this is having an impact on my emotional well-being. But I do have good standing w/ my own team and the overall org, and I want to use this situation to learn as much as I could. I know that I myself have a lot to learn as a tech lead (Thanks for [this article](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/uHqZZ15SK19MatEvLSO6/what-makes-a-truly-great-tech-lead/), it’s really helpful), and I know I can probably get a bit ahead of our projects and start estimating/de-risking earlier, so my Manager doesn’t get overly aggressive with timelines. I know I can also take this chance to more closely mentor my teammates and help them succeed, since they aren’t really getting it from our manager. 

I want to stay, but is it the wrong decision because I have little career support from my manager? If I do stay, what should I focus on so I can really help my team and at the same time learn something valuable for my career?

What should I do in a situation where my manager is well-meaning but incompetent?

Hi everyone,

I am currently a software engineering intern in Google. My main goal is to get a return offer after I complete my internship.

Based on my conversation with my intern manager, the high level metrics for success as an intern are definitely technical problem solving, collaboration and feedback etc. This is highly aligned with Alex's videos on the Internship series, where he described that an intern's main performance metric is code volume. I have also learnt that finishing a project drastically increases one's chance for a grad offer based on interns who converted to FTE.

However, I noticed that there are a lot of opportunities for events and mentoring. My current strategy is to focus most of my time in the project while networking mainly in the team to make sure I have a great relationship with them. Occasionally, I meet another employee once a week or so. At the same time, I noticed that most interns are using most of their time to meet with other FTEs from all over the world and other teams.

I personally find that a large codebase with so many contexts and 12 weeks to be the main factors on why I am a bit more conscious of my own time.

Is my current strategy to focus on the project and networking mostly with my current team optimal for a return offer? If not, are there anything else that I should be focused on?

I am a new grad Software Engineer who has completed 6 months ago. There's a lot of internal tech stack and plenty of codelabs. Lately, I have realised that I am not prioritising learning about the stack my team uses (but I do not currently use directly). 

I understand it would be helpful in one-off occasions when I have to interact with a new part of the codebase or during on-call, which I am expected to begin soon. However, I always end up prioritising my current work that I have in hand. (It is also because of the fact that I find the codelabs pretty slow and boring)

How should I prioritise learning new things? I remember Rachel's video where she said she spends 20% of her time learning new things and that seemed like a good strategy to me.

How should I set time apart for learning new things?

I just got promoted to senior engineer level (E5) at Google and I just switched into an infra team 2 months ago. In order to succeed as a senior engineer, I know I need to mentor and influence other engineers, specifically helping newer and more junior folks on the team. 

How can I do that quickly, acknowledging that I’m not their direct manager?

As a tech lead on a new team, how can I build influence among the junior engineers on the team without being their manager?

Mid-Level Software Engineer [L4] at Google

I am an L4 engineer with decent knowledge of my team's stack.

What are some actions I can take to meet expectations in my current role for the next few years, while minimizing the amount of time I spend on work?

Given that I'm not shooting for a promotion, does that change how I should approach relationship building with senior folks on the team? There is a lot of advice on Taro about relationship building, but it appears to be aimed at folks who wish to promote quickly.

How do I meet expectations while minimizing hours worked?

My sub-team was 3 people (an L5 tech lead, an L4 engineer, and me), but now it’s just me since the others left. My manager is hiring other people in the coming months. 

How can I best onboard the new people and set myself up to lead the team?

How can I position myself as a lead as my team grows?

YOE: 10 months remote at an AWS Partner (DevOps/AWS account remediation stuff)\
TC: $136k

Hello, I’m in my early career and in need of some career advice. I would like to get into a SRE-SWE role at Google, preferably in Zurich (I’m a US citizen) for better career growth and new life experience. 

**My background:** I switched into this field a bit late... 30 years old and now 10 months on the job. I decided I really wanted to learn to code after working in product and I made the switch. I took up a Javascript course online, within 7 months studying full time  I had completed a couple portfolio projects including a full stack project. At that point I decided I didn’t like front-end and I got into learning AWS cloud architecture. My coding background + achieving an AWS Associate Architect certification quickly found me a high paying role at an AWS consulting Partner in the devopsy space.

Currently I work remotely at a tiny AWS Partner where Terraform and AWS Cloud remediation is my main work. Though I had no intention of giving up coding, the job I got into pays well but is not exactly what I was expecting...  

\
After the first couple months of trial-by-fire with terraform - my job stopped being challenging and I have tons of free time (which I used to get 4 AWS certs so far.) Terraform hasn’t been difficult once I got the hang of it, and most of it I don’t consider actual brain-exercising coding work like I had done when learning to code (i.e codewars). Lately, I feel my only growth has come from the knowledge I’ve gained from self-studying for my AWS certs.  Though I have enjoyed studying for my AWS certs and gaining depth about cloud services (I really enjoy research and distributed cloud architecture to make things work on a mass scale is amazing)  and I just cleared the AWS Certified DevOps Pro exam which was a significant milestone for me. BUT…

1. My coding skills are getting rusty and I never had proper programming mentoring on a professional team to begin with. I joined this company as a junior and have only really grown in Cloud Architecture (does that count as Systems Design?), AWS/Iaac Terraform, but not as a SWE.  I have never done leetcode, I don’t know DS and Algos. My interview was about a 3 tier app architecture. My company runs Terraform like a code-cowboy environment and my code almost never gets reviewed properly. And as I said, I’m not doing much here these days, which although is great if you I want to earn money and coast (or self-learn picking up the difficult cloud certs) I am definitely underutilized and not in a collaborative “team” environment. Work is siloed by customer with one senior engineer being the guy assigned to handle all the cool stuff for a customer and I receive undesirable work like dealing with logs or fixing pain in the arse security stuff that no one else wants to be bothered with. (I.E and maybe a bad example, but no one wants to be bothered with accidentally taking down production to remediate ssh ports being open to 0.0.0.0/0, so let the jr take the fall or do nothing since the customer doesn't care about it and won't pay for it)
2. Here’s what I’m thinking - I could use my copious free time to get GCP Pro certs, maybe learn Kubernetes and then decide on another programming language to main and grind 6 months of leetcode to prepare to get into a Google SRE-SWE role or maybe Airbnb as a 2nd choice. Is this plan sound? Please advise. I don’t even know if I’ll like/need to learn Kubernetes, but I’m prepared to do what it takes to team match in my current cloud specialization. Do I need to learn Kube administration for Google SRE work?  I’m ready to get back to coding and I can nose to the grindstone leetcode for as long as it takes. The AWS Pro cert was a grueling grind as well, so I know I have the discipline to do it.
3. I’m deciding upon a new programming language to main since I am not enamored with JS at all. I’m thinking either Golang or Python ( I’m already learning Godot and GDscript in my spare time as a hobby) and whichever language I go with will preferably be my main for leet code DS and Algos interviews and my career in tech. What I heard about Golang that I like is that there is typically a correct way to do something rather than a million ways to do one thing. I find that very appealing. Please advise on the language I should go with if you can as well.. My current job has been a good place to excel in self-study while being paid and now is the time to take aim for new goals  and steer the wheel on the ship of my career.

Also I really love working remotely but I would go to the office if it meant Google and a new life experience in Switzerland.

And I would really love any insight you can give about such SRE-SWE roles and if that sounds like the best fit for my current cloud specialization and interests. Thank you

Seeking career advice from Senior SWE’s & SRE’s to get to Google (1st choice) or Airbnb

I joined this new team in October and I'm finding it hard to demonstrate velocity as an entry-level developer. I'm sure this has been discussed before on this thread but what are some sure-shot things to do to increase my commit count?

I know this isn't the healthiest way to approach things but commits and reviews are the best way to demonstrate impact at the L3 level and I'm trying to maximize my impact until the end of this year.

How can I add code quickly? e.g. Add extra unit tests for edge cases, add logging statements, etc.

How can I demonstrate velocity as an L3 transfer hire?

In Alex's case, he met Rahul at Meta and now they're cofounders. How can I build up such deep relationships with other people at Google or any future company I work at?

How do you network effectively within a company?

Something I want to get more efficient at is promotion trajectory, and team selection is a big part of that. If I were to switch teams, how can I find one that's important for the business and has a good amount of L5 scope? My goal is to move up to L5 soon and have scope to start making progress to L6 as well afterwards.

What should I look for in a new team in terms of growth?

I am actively interviewing for companies and passed hiring committee for Google but there are barely any headcount. I have received some good competing offers and I told my recruiter I have some deadlines coming up. That has not sped up the process and my recruiter isn’t especially communicative after I told him I wouldn’t mind expanding the product area for team match. Should I just accept a good competing offer and come back to team match while working that other job? Also, does anyone have experience finding a new recruiter at this stage? I don’t feel like mine is particularly invested in advocating for my profile despite passing hiring committee.

I'm still in school, but I will be graduating in a couple months. My goal is to get promoted as quickly as possible at a reputable company like Google. However, there are so many ways to get better as a software engineer, and I'm unsure how to prioritize all of this information. What should I focus on since I'm earlier-in-career to really unlock that fast career progression?

What are some tips for quick growth when you're just starting out?

I see engineers like Alex and Rahul, and they have had many accomplishments with pretty fast trajectories leveling up. I'm wondering if there's a primary common theme among software engineers like that - What are they doing that others aren't?

What's the core insight behind quick growth?

5 Offers w/ FAANG Companies As A New Grad: Details + Lessons

In 2014, Rahul graduated from Stanford with a BS and MS in Computer Science. He received new grad Software Engineer offers from 5 companies: 
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Microsoft
4. Google
5. Square

This video outlines the exact details of the offers, and models out the increase (or decrease) in value of those offers 8 years later, in 2022. The total compensation of the offers range from $174K/year to $262K/year, and those numbers go a lot higher if you factor in stock appreciation.

If you want to better understand how compensation works in top tech companies, first watch [this video](https://link.jointaro.com/819tdsqwJj4VnaEC6).

Constantly struggling with recognizing my contribution and promoting my work, as an introvert it almost is like my mind rejects self-appreciation and promotion. What are some small first steps I can take to get comfortable with self-promotion?

How can a painfully introverted person increase their visibility and promote themselves?

I'm going to be joining Google soon, and my current approach is just to come in and stabilize as a solid L4. Over time, I’ll assess my situation and see how I should pursue leveling up. I would like to grow (i.e. eventually make it to L5), but I’m not in a huge rush - I don’t think I want to set a very concrete goal like “I want to get promoted from L4 to L5 in 1.5 years”. Thoughts?

How soon should I start thinking about promotion?

How do I get better at technical design review and presentations? I go into these tech review meetings and get a ton of questions from senior engineers that aren’t directly related to the project and the raw volume of questions derails the whole thing. It always feels like something is missing. What should the preparation phase of a project look like?

Adding on to this, I do go into these meetings with a technical design document. Ideally people will comment on that well before the meeting, so we can get more of the discussion done async. However, people often don’t have time so they don't do this, making the tech review meeting the first time they see the tech planning materials, hence all the questions.

How can I minimize thrash when I present technical designs for my projects?

I've hit a lot of issues pretty deep into the project's execution that hold it up. It can come as late as running the A/B test where we find a big problem that delays everything and takes weeks to solve. This messes up the initial estimates I set up.

Part of this is because I transitioned between teams recently: On my previous team, it was easier to set up components and test them early, but in this current team, it's hard to get real signal until everything is set-up and we run a full end-to-end test.

Lastly, if I hit an issue like this, how can I minimize its effect on my performance and restructure the timeline in an acceptable way?

How can I better proactively account for risks in my projects?

For the past 3 months, the primary activity on my team has been to debate and discuss the architecture design of the large system our team will be developing in Q3. It feels like we’re in gridlock and I don’t see a clear path to a decision. How can we move forward productively?

My team has been doing architecture debates for months and we’re in gridlock.

My whole team is engaged in a design exercise for the system we will build in subsequent quarters. Since I joined 2 months ago, I don’t feel I’m able to meaningfully contribute. I also feel weak with system design questions during interviews. How can I improve here?

How can I better contribute to system design discussions on my new team?

Hey :)

A colleague of mine suggested talking with my manager about comp. planning at the end of the next performance cycle saying something like:

"Hey now that perf has wrapped up, I know you’ll be going into comp planning. Should there be any funding that could be applied in my situation, here are my for which bucket it goes into (base salary, GSUs, bonus). "

They also said that they always have this discussion with whoever is their manager each year.

What do you think about this tip? Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks!

How to get the best outcome out of comp. planning conversations?

I just joined a new team within a Google Infra team and have been attending many team meetings and architecture planning discussions. I’m very quiet in these meetings and don’t feel comfortable saying anything - I’m afraid I’ll say something stupid, or I’ll be exposed as someone who shouldn’t be a senior engineer.

I have anxiety when speaking up in meetings - how do I overcome this?

When I build something, I get the task done and then move on. However, I feel the best engineers are able to create deeper value. If someone has a question about that topic in the future, they make the info easier to find. So everyone benefits from this resource first, before pinging the engineer.

How can I accomplish things such that it leaves longer-lasting value?

At a huge company at Google, there's resources on everything imaginable, including other trades like product management and sales (which I'm interested in). Does it make sense at this stage in my career to spend a lot of time looking into those and learning?

Does it make sense to learn about other pillars within the company?

I'm really new as a Google FTE (still doing some logistical onboarding like getting my laptop fully set up), but I want to hit the ground running and start growing at Google as fast as possible. However, I don't know what I don't know - There's a lot to take in, and I'm unsure where is best to focus and allocate my time.

Started my 1st FTE SWE job and been on my team for just a few weeks - What should I do?

I’d like to convert my internal system of progress into a checklist and then share it with my manager. For example, I’m learning about logging. A question to measure my own progress is to check if I know what information should be logged? What about security considerations? If someone asks me about logging in 2 months, can I unblock them?

Instead of relying on the performance review system, how can I create an internal system to measure my own progress?

Security teams are typically infrastructure teams rather than product teams. Security teams make changes to existing products to make them more secure, which are usually trivial changes, not intellectually stimulating. 

The interesting part is the planning happening before. For the first few months at Google, I did routine security fixes, which was boring but impactful. Then I found a project that allowed me to develop a more complex system for about 2 months, but that project has shipped to production and has concluded.

I am working actively with my manager to find projects that would allow me to write more complex software that will also help me grow technically. So the question is: how do I find these projects?

What I am doing now: stay up-to-date on new threats and what other security teams are doing at Google to see if I can draw some inspiration from them.

How do I find complex projects that are technically interesting?

Incoming Mid-level engineer [L4] at Google

What are the common failure modes you’ve seen for new engineers at Big Tech cos, where they had to quickly exit the company due to bad performance?

What are common failure modes you’ve seen for new engineers at Big Tech companies?

I’ve only worked at startups and non-tech companies, but I’m joining Google next month. How can I make sure that I meet all expectations as an L4? When it comes to talking to my manager, how should I frame the conversation?

- Just ask something generic like “What are my expectations as an L4?”
- Ask for more specifics like how much code to write

I’m concerned that I’m not socialized correctly to operate in a Big Tech company.

Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that focuses on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing,  and much more. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies.

Google

Entry-Level Software Engineer [L3]

This is going to sound corny, but I 100% believe in this idea: **Lead with kindness.**

People like it when you help them and add value to their lives. This is the same inside and outside of work. *If you want to build deep relationships with people, figure out how to be useful to them with absolutely no expectation of your help being "repaid" in the future.*

Of course, sometimes you will get burned: You'll help someone and they never return the favor. But that's better than the alternative where you never help anyone unless they help you first, and you end up having 0 powerful work relationships and social capital.

However, in most cases (assuming you're working on a good team, which a stellar company like Google is chock full of), the person you end up being kind to initially will start immediately thinking how they can do the same for you in the future. When you have this dynamic of each of you going out of your way to help one another, that's when an incredible relationship starts to blossom and you start building a *real* network, a one that's full of people who will have your back and be honest with you.

I absolutely hate "networking" where there's a clear ulterior motive. The most common example is cold connecting with people and then asking them for a referral into their FAANG company. I'm confident that the majority of people you want to network with (talented, connected, hard-working folks) have the same mentality I do, which is why you want to *lead with kindness* as I mentioned before - It's the complete opposite of the fake "networking" where you're just in it to get something.

It's cool that you mention Rahul and I as this was literally an example of leading with kindness, haha. The context behind our friendship is that Rahul joined Meta shortly after I did. I had no idea what I was doing when Rahul joined, but what mattered is that I had slightly more of an idea than Rahul as he was literally brand new to the Portal org and company. I spent a lot of time to make sure he onboarded smoothly. I also had a running doc of "tips and tricks" I had acquired during my initial learning on Portal on how to get stuff working and navigate the environment, which I was also happy to share with him. From there, we kept in touch and got to know one another more and more - Now we're building Taro together!

Related resources:
- [Effective Communication Series](https://link.jointaro.com/kWQkRyRhLqbTWBty7) - In particular, check out parts 3, 3.1, and 3.2, which focus on building relationships.
- [My deep dive on effective mentorship](https://link.jointaro.com/vKrbioSEzmqpwnds7) - In this video, I break down a lot of the techniques I use to build trust extremely quickly and establish those deep relationships.
- ["How can I better network with other software engineers in the Bay Area?"](https://link.jointaro.com/Vcn8sVcSxAeHHRTT8)

Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal

Alex Chiou

There are professional and interpersonal sides to this. Making adult friends is difficult, and there are sometimes added challenges (I have social stuff stemming from Autism), but making a work friend isn’t that much different than in your personal life. Are you interested in their work? Can you ask intelligent questions about it to show enthusiasm? Can you find some small way to help? Having *casual* 1:1s to catch up and “have coffee” may feel like a waste of time to some people, so definitely ask before scheduling that, but others find it a relief to take a step away from regular responsibilities.

From there, being visibly effective and caring as a leader is very useful in making allies that can be friends. Are you building bridges instead of walls? Do you take responsibility and provide solutions? If people know that coming to you leads to solutions, they are going to do it. If they are coming to you, it builds trust and respect. From that position it’s a lot easier to build a deeper relationship.

Staff SWE at Google, ex-Meta, ex-Amazon

Lee McKeeman

There's more to working in tech than just shipping software. It's vital for your career to build deep professional relationships and make real friends at work, especially if you're looking to grow to senior levels.

This collection represents the best of what Taro has to offer, personally curated by Alex and Rahul. If you're short on time, go through the content here.

Almost every software engineer starts their full-time career journey here. The content here breaks down how you can start your career off with a splash and grow past this level as quickly as possible.

How do you network effectively within a company?

Google

Discussion

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