I left Google Cloud almost 2 years ago to join a different org in Google. My experience in Cloud was disappointing, and not a day goes by where I don't regret leaving earlier. My current team, while not perfect, treats me with respect; it really goes to show how huge the variation can be across Google.
Here are many lessons I've learned in my previous team which I hope will benefit you:
- If your project is not listed as part of an OKR (Objective & Key Result), no one cares about your project. While most managers will make sure you have a project that can grow your skills and career, many won't and may even try to mislead you into believing your project is more meaningful than it is. Voice your concerns, and firmly ask for a meaningful project. As an L3 engineer, it is not your duty to come up with projects, so your manager has the responsibility to find a good one for you.
- If you feel your career is going nowhere, transfer to a different team (which can be done without manager approval after 1 year). Do not fall into the sunk costs trap of refusing to leave because you didn't get what you wanted out of your 1 year on the team. For my first half year at Google, I fixed bugs, set up system health monitoring, did deprecations, refactorings, migrations, etc but never had a genuine project. I thought that after a half year of BS work, I would be given better opportunities. Then, I was assigned a monolithic project. I worked long hours to move the project forward. However, our sibling team repeatedly bailed on their responsibilities in the project, and I had to continuously adapt the design accordingly. Eventually, it became clear that our sibling team was not going to contribute anything, and I felt I could no longer leave the team because the project would require significantly more work than initially anticipated. After one year of working on this project, our management decided not to launch without any basis. If you're not treated well after a year, don't think your coworkers and boss will suddenly start treating you well in your second year or even third year. Don't be idealistic or loyal because Google was rated #1 in employee happiness; it's a big company and not every team is the same.
- Management is perfectly fine wasting 1+ years of your time rather than have an honest conversation about the relevance of your project. On my previous team, this was the norm, not the exception. See the previous bullet point for one example, but this had also happened to my next project, as well as many of my coworkers' projects. The reality is: Managers don't face as much penalty for cancelled projects as engineers. Some managers have 30 reports working under them on a variety of projects, and the performance evaluation has a word limit and a limit of 5 projects. If a project fails, managers can just add more words to the other projects. However, as an entry-level engineer, you may only be working on 0-2 projects, so a cancelled project is much more detrimental to you. The same applies for cross-team collaborations. Make sure the partnering team has a tangible investment in your project. People have a tendency to promise commitments for a reputation boost, but when it comes to actually doing the work, they will flake if there's nothing in it for them. One way to reduce the chance of your project getting abandoned is to make sure your project is part of your team's (or the partnering team's) OKRs. Managers have an explicit responsibility to fulfill their OKRs.
- In 1-on-1 meetings, do not believe everything your manager says about your career path. Actions speak louder than words. Has your manager been giving you ample project opportunities for growth? Are you getting opportunities for impact comparable to your peers? If the answer to these questions is no, you're not on a strong path to promotion, no matter what your manager says. At Google, performance evaluations are done at a cycle of every half-year. In my second cycle, my manager told me I performed well, and was on track to getting promoted in the next cycle. In the following cycle though, my manager said it may take another 1 year before I would get promoted, even though I never received any indication I had gone off-track. While I would imagine most managers are honest about your career growth, some aren't. By telling you that you have a chance at promotion in the next cycle even if it's not true, they have effectively kept you for another half-year and postponed any consequences for their dishonesty until then. Also, it does not matter if you're assigned an unimportant project or your coworkers failed to do their part. No one is going to say: "Johnny's project failed to launch, but Johnny did an excellent job and deserves to be promoted anyway" because it implies someone else should be blamed, and no one is willing to make that sacrifice for you. Also, the promotion committee frankly doesn't care; they need to see measurable impact because that's one of the criteria for promotion, regardless of whose fault it is.
