+100 to the "revolving door of external hires". I was let go in the January action after almost 8 years of doing the same thing at Google. During that time, I saw 3 Cloud CEOs and I personally had 6 directors and 9 VPs. Change isn't always bad, but Google clearly does not value leadership & management as skills in the same way most large corporations do.
I have a theory about this: middle management likes churn because it makes you immune to the consequences of their actions. You can't fail if none of your decisions are permanent and you constantly shift responsibilities. That's not an accident. It's by design.
My experience at Google was this was a huge problem.
Sorry you were let go.
https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/quotes-from-moral-ma...
(It's a rhetorical question.)
This is out of date. "Up or out" from L4 was dropped around 2015 or 2016 or so. It was considered "fine" to stay at L4.
For example: I had known at that point people who had been L4 for years. I think 8 years was the longest I encountered. So you're right there wasn't a strict "up or out" culture but that was always the case.
The problem was if you were a long-term L4 one management change could suddenly put you in the hot seat. A new director may decide they like "up or out" so even though you had 8 years of EE+ ratings, you suddenly were vulnerable if you didn't get promoted.
Back when I worked at Google L4 and L5 promos were done by committee. These are now done in-org by leadership. This is both better and worse. It also makes long-term L4s less likely to happen. Interestingly these promotions still have target percentages. The first time it was tried they had to un-promote some people because too many got promoted.
FWIW, I was there 10 years, stayed L4 the whole time because I never wanted to go for promo because the whole process stunk. Left end of last year of my own accord (never liked the place). The only place where being "still" L4 caused me grief was from a higher up inside Access (Fiber), where they got pretend to play at being their own company for a while (with their own policies etc) after Ruth's Alphabetization -- and then they got the axe.
In any case, agree about your other points. It's labour discipline coming to Google. Though I think it's less about cost and more about discipline/subservience.
For those unfamiliar, Google engineering levels generally go from L3 (new grad) to L9 IDistinguished SWE). There is an expectation of growth to L5 (Senior SWE). I'm not sure what the figures look like today but pre-layoffs the total comp for an L5 Google SWE was typically at least $350k and can be over $400k.
Everyone who has been in this sytem knows that the bar to get to the next level (L6; Staff SWE) is gotten increasingly difficult. You packet will go through multiple promo committees and has to pass all of them. What would've gotten you promoted 10 years ago certainly wouldn't today.
But here's how promo committees work: you'll basically get stack ranked. That committee might have 10-15 packets and they'll get ranked. A certain point (usually called the bubble) will differentiate between promote those above the bubble, don't below. Committee consist of higher level ICs so a L5->L6 committe will consist of L7 ICs.
There is and probably has been a target percentage for promotions. This number is opaque. One of the things that Ruth Porat did when she came in to reduce costs was simply to reduce the promotion target percentage. I'm having difficulty finding the original leak for this but it leaked several years ago.
What slots there are to get promoted at these companies are probably filled by a revolving door of external hires.
So this is just more attacks on labor costs while executive pay is astronomically high and Google made a profit of ~$60B last year.
Disclaimer: Xoogler.