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28 Year Old Staff Eng @ Google Reveals His Promotions

Ryan Peterman • 42:00 minutes • Published 2024-11-21 • YouTube

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How to Rapidly Climb the Engineering Ladder at Google: Insights from a Staff Engineer

In the fast-paced tech world, climbing the career ladder quickly at a company like Google is a dream for many software engineers. Recently, Ryan Peterman sat down with Ricky, an exceptional engineer who progressed from a new graduate to a staff engineer by the age of 28 at Google. Ricky's journey provides invaluable lessons on how to navigate promotions, work effectively with managers, and balance career growth with personal well-being.

From New Grad to Staff Engineer: Ricky’s Promotion Timeline

Ricky joined Google in 2017 as a new grad, starting with a compensation package of around $180K. His promotions were notably fast compared to the average:

  • Junior Engineer (Level 3) to Mid-level (Level 4): Took about 1.5 years, with compensation increasing to around $250K.
  • Mid-level (L4) to Senior Engineer (L5): Another 1.5 years, reaching approximately $350K.
  • Senior (L5) to Staff Engineer (L6): After 3 years, promoted with compensation around $520K.

This rapid ascent is roughly 2-3 years faster than typical timelines, attributed to a mix of hard work, strategic project choices, and fortunate team dynamics.

Keys to Early Promotions: Junior to Mid-Level

At the start, Ricky emphasized the importance of independence—being able to unblock oneself and finish projects without much handholding. His approach to overcoming imposter syndrome was to ask many questions, even if it meant feeling "dumb" temporarily, because learning quickly was far better than stagnating.

He also highlighted the value of managing up—maintaining open conversations with your manager about your promotion goals, current projects, and what is expected at the next level. This proactive communication ensures alignment and support.

Transitioning to Senior Engineer: Ownership and Impact

The jump from mid-level to senior engineer requires more than just coding—it demands taking ownership over a specific scope of work and becoming the “go-to” person in that area. Ricky found his niche by improving a neglected part of the ads system, which allowed him to have significant impact and visibility.

To identify next-level projects, he studied how peers achieved their promotions and sought projects that pushed his boundaries technically and impacted the business meaningfully. Early on, he created a roadmap for his growth and shared it with his manager to align expectations—a proactive strategy that set him up for success.

Learning to Say No and Prioritize Growth

As responsibilities grow, engineers often face requests that don’t align with their promotion goals. Ricky advises learning to say no when projects don’t help you grow or aren’t impactful, particularly if the work comes from peers rather than your manager. When a manager assigns tasks, it’s important to discuss prioritization openly, emphasizing the value of projects that foster your growth.

The Leap to Staff Engineer: Challenging the Status Quo and Influencing

The step to staff engineer is often the hardest and most transformative. Unlike previous promotions, it involves a shift from owning projects to challenging existing processes and having a broader influence across teams and leadership.

Ricky’s path involved:

  • Deeply understanding his scope and questioning why things were done a certain way.
  • Using data and experiments to challenge assumptions and push for better solutions.
  • Building a reputation for delivering impactful ideas that others trusted.
  • Collaborating cross-functionally to drive decisions with leadership buy-in.

This level demands vision, influence, and a willingness to push boundaries, not just technical excellence.

Management: Rewards and Challenges

Ricky transitioned into management about two years ago, motivated by his passion for mentoring and helping others grow. However, he advises considering the timing carefully. Management comes with more meetings, overhead, and responsibility, which can reduce flexibility and increase stress.

He reflects that, if given a choice, he might have stayed a senior engineer longer to enjoy a better work-life balance before taking on management responsibilities.

Staying at One Company: The Power of Momentum and Fit

Unlike many engineers who job hop, Ricky stayed at Google for seven years, benefiting from:

  • A good team fit that offered career growth and interesting projects.
  • Building deep domain expertise and becoming the go-to person in multiple areas.
  • Strong relationships and trust within the organization, boosting his influence.

He advises regularly evaluating whether your current role aligns with your goals and happiness—and if the grass is truly greener elsewhere.

Final Advice: Trust Yourself and Overcome Imposter Syndrome

Looking back, Ricky wishes he had trusted his instincts more and acted with greater audacity earlier in his career. Imposter syndrome, especially common in junior engineers, can hold you back from taking risks that lead to growth.

His key takeaway: Ask questions, seek feedback, trust your judgment, and don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. Success is a combination of preparation, persistence, and sometimes, just plain luck.


If you want to learn more about Ricky’s day-to-day life as a staff engineer or get additional insights, check out his YouTube channel Finding Ricky.


About the Author

Ryan Peterman hosts career-focused podcasts and videos, exploring the journeys of successful engineers to share actionable advice on career growth, promotions, and workplace strategies.


Have you experienced rapid career growth or faced challenges in getting promoted? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below!


📝 Transcript Chapters (10 chapters):

📝 Transcript (1072 entries):

## Intro [00:00] numbers don't lie right for me it's just Revenue at the end of the day if my idea makes the most money no one's going to say anything to me I don't know I thought I was like a personality hire or something hey everyone it's Ryan Peterman here with another episode of the podcast today we have a guest who went from a new grad at Google all the way to staff by the age of 28 he did it very fast he has a lot to say about how to get promoted in Google's culture and how to work with your manager but I think the thing that was most interesting to me about him was that he's the first person whoever told me that he wishes the opportunities for for promotion to staff came later in his career and he explains why that's the case if that sounds interesting to you let's get into the conversation Ricky welcome to the Pod so today I want to go over bit about your career I know you were at Google pretty much your entire time so you did an internship at Google you committed full-time and you went from Junior all the way to staff in your 20s and I just felt like there's a lot to learn from that so I want to lay that all out today yeah I'm super excited to be here and I hope that this podcast is very helpful to everyone else can you ## Promotion timeline [01:08] walk me through the overall Arc of your career can you just lay it all out I'm kind of curious about the compensation and also how fast you got all the promos at Google I started as a new grad in 2017 and around then I was making 180k and I had some sign on bonus and I think that's pretty normal for a new grad offer from Google and then after that I got promoted in a year and a half to level four or what we call like a midlevel engineer and at that point my compensation was around 250k which is again about average for an L4 and a year and a half after that I got promoted to L5 so I made it from 3 to 5 in 3 years that's very fast I got very lucky very fortunate with my team on average I would say it would take maybe like four or five years to get that done so I did it you know maybe a year and a half or two years faster than average so at level five my compensation was 350k which is again about average it was a little bit higher because of my initial stock Grant and then 3 years after that I got promoted from 5 to six so from senior to staff level and at the staff level my compensation was around 500 or it currently is around 520 maybe more but it's around there and again that's also pretty average I think these numbers really align with what you see on levels.fyi so hopefully it's no surprise to anyone so let's go into the ## Junior to Mid-level [02:34] first one that Junior to uh mid-level promo you said you did a year and a half at Google what did you learn along the way can you tell us more about the ratings that you got and also a little bit more about the process maybe we can start with the ratings yeah Google does ratings on a six-month cycle so the very first half I got a me expectation which is pretty normal for anyone who's only worked there there for 6 months and then after that I exceeded expectations and then after that I got the promo with the level higher than that I was really nervous about going for this promotion just because it was like really ahead of schedule so I was really unsure at the time if I was going to get it I definitely had all the attributes I felt like for the next level in terms of my impact and how well I was doing at work but I just wasn't sure if my tenure would support that and I was a little bit worried being docked about that but luckily my manager was supportive helped put me up for uh promotion and I ended up getting it it sound like you knew about it is it initiated by the employee or the manager at Google at Google it should be definitely initiated by the employee I would say though more than anything it should be an ongoing conversation between you and your manager just making sure expectations are set of when you plan on going for promotion what projects you're working on and what's going to move you to the next level I was asking my manager hey do you feel like the these projects that I'm currently doing are for the next level and making sure my own expectations were set making sure the projects I were doing were indeed for the next level I see so you were fully aware that the promo was happening and you were managing up throughout the whole process yeah definitely I fully support managing your manager I think it's something that you have to do if you want an accelerated promotion time line what was it that you you did that ## Finding independence [04:24] actually made the difference at this level I think just being able to have Independence and finish projects on your own is really the Hallmark of what people are looking for when you're getting promoted from 3 to four or Junior to midlevel that you just don't need that much handholding you can unblock yourself on your own is there anything that you did that helped you unblock yourself anything you'd recommend for someone that is Junior to become more independent on the project I would say what helped me the most was just asking a lot of questions I think a lot of people when they first start because of imposter syndrome they don't want to seem dumb and I didn't want to either but I kept telling myself and I kept reminding myself hey I'd rather ask questions and look dumb and learn something and maybe I'll get fired cuz people think I'm dumb then to do nothing not learn anything not ask any questions and get fired I really try to overcome my imp passive syndrome with that mindset and I think that's what helped me learn a lot from others um because in general a lot of people are really willing to help really um wanting you to succeed and grow grow um so through that I was able to learn how to do things on my own and move my projects forward by asking people questions rather than asking my manager to figure it out for me you don't want to ask too quick because then you don't learn anything and someone just gives you the answer yeah but you also don't want to block for too long cuz you're just going to be sitting there and not learning anything and it's not productive especially when I had interns or people who are new the industry I feel like you should reach out if you spend more more than half a day on something if you spend 4 hours on something and you make no progress nothing's going to change you might even want to reach out sooner than that but of course you want to give it a good try before you ask the questions yeah 100% And I think definitely if you're asking the same question multiple times then is maybe a red flag you get stuck after working a while and you ask the question that's totally fine it's normal and expected definitely yeah there there's got to be this upward trajectory if your diffs they constantly get tons of feedback back and that doesn't change after months of work on the same code phase something's off there but it it's totally okay if there's the iterations are coming down there's a lot of questions but it's getting better over time that's that's ideal growth so you got that promo pretty straightforward honestly in the industry that promo is just a matter of turning out code and just doing it more independently so makes sense that is like aligns with what I think as well um let's talk about the senior promo I think you know on this promo there's a little bit more change in your behaviors and it's not just shipping more code so I want to dig into that for you what did you feel was the biggest shift and how you were going about your work that that helped you get promoted to senior at Google I think the biggest shift is probably just taking more and more ownership and getting to a point where I could confidently say I owned a certain scope uh or certain area and the buzzword is the go-to person for a scope of area so I was able to get to that point by really understanding a portion of the code base and pushing out a lot of projects that had a lot of impact in that special area was that something that you you explicitly planned like you you maybe with your manager you thought okay that area there's not a good owner yet I'm going to go into that area or how did you become the go-to person I think I got pretty lucky on this so I work in ads and um this go of area that I chose to invest more time in the ad just didn't look that pretty and I wanted to make it better and by making it better uh I was able to also have a lot of impact so I just picked kind of the most interesting um scope of area that I kind of dipped my toes a little bit into and I just kept working on it and I continued to find it interesting um and slowly became more of an owner uh by doing more and more projects and taking my time to explore that area I think some people in depending on the team structure they have to compete for scope or they worry about that so in your case you you didn't run into anything like that is that right yes my team is a little bit special because we usually pick our own projects of course you can still have projects handed down by your manager or your manager can help you pick projects but I really made an effort to find my own projects making sure that they had reasonable impact because I feel like the best projects that you can find are the ones you find yourself um because your manager might not always always give you a project that's at the next level so I really looked for projects that were at the next level had big impact push my boundaries and put me outside of my comfort zone so I had to learn um and improve my technical skills too one of the most important parts of getting promoted is getting some Next Level scope to actually execute on how did you know that the things you were looking at were at the next level how did you find those was there some tech lead that you were discussing things with or did you do it more by yourself I think what I did is I looked around my team and looked at how other people might have gotten promoted to senior and tried to understand oh this is what exactly a senior level or lfi project look like and thinking about how I could create something or find something of that same scope or complexity and then after that I took my ideas to my manager and asked him for feedback asking him hey do you feel like this is next level of complexity do you feel like um this is a reasonable place that I can push the boundary on and that's also kind of how I set myself up for success to get a promotion really early because a year before I actually got promoted I went to my manager and I said hey these are all the things that I think are interesting that I'm kind of working on um and here's a road map for the next year of what I'm planning on doing do you feel like this is enough for the next level so already a year before my promotion I did my best to set expectations with him in terms of what I'm doing and if it's at the next level or not so that was after so right after you got your your promo to your to the midlevel you put together that road map and you showed it to him is that right so after I got ## Mid-level to Senior [10:39] promoted from 3 to 4 I had about 6 months where I was just like trying out different projects seeing what was interesting to me and slowly like figuring out what might a L5 scope look like uh and then I put together that one-year road map by myself and then showed it to my manager and got my manager's Buy in got it okay and so as you were going along and executing on this road map I mean inevitably at work like things come up people might want to give you work that is not on that road map or I don't know there's some partner asss that come in what did you do in that case how did you handle it when work was not at the next level but someone was asking you to do ## Learning how to say no [11:20] it I think you just have to learn how to say no obviously if it's a bug that you caused and someone's bringing it to you you better fix it cuz you know it's your bug or like if it's your scope of area and someone finds a bug you should still fix it but if it's a whole new project that someone else wants to take you on maybe it is like the next level scope and you do think that is a good project and you work on it but most of the time I feel like um people will just kind of like see who might want a project or who's interested in a project and you have to decide for yourself hey is this at the next next level or not do I have time for this um and I said no to a lot of products that I felt like were not at the next level um sure they might have impact but they weren't going to help me grow you have any tips for people say no cuz I think a lot of people they don't feel comfortable especially if the work's coming from their manager what's the right way to say no without causing issues if it's someone else giving you work and you don't want to do it I would escalate to your manager immediately and be like hey this person's giving me work I don't want to do it like I what why why is it being handed to me and trying to understand like oh maybe it is just like a bug that you cause so you do have to fix it and if it's work given to you by your manager I think I would just try to push them and be like hey is this something I have to do I have my own projects here that I feel like would have more impact and also help me grow more can I just do these projects instead and I think a manager's job and this is coming from someone who is a manager is to find projects that help you grow and succeed and projects that you actually want to do because otherwise people might give you a project and you're forced to do it you're just going to do a crappy job on it so it's better for a manager to find a project that their reports actually want to do so hopefully your manager is not giving you projects that you don't want to do makes sense so sounds like you had pretty good managers throughout this process seems like they were pretty receptive to what you were saying yeah I think I just built up um like very early on this ability to find my my own projects and have impact my manager I felt was not too worried about the projects I was doing and just trusted that I'd find my own projects to push on obviously he still gave me a lot of feedback to help guide me um and help me understand oh these type of projects might be good or bad for me but for the most part my ideas were bottom up rather than top down and I think that's one of the ways that I was able to succeed and get promoted really quickly that makes sense you talked about knowing which ideas are impactful and which ones aren't how did you develop that skill I think maybe the first thing you have to do is figure out what exactly impact means within your org for me I was an ads so it just meant like how much money is this going to make does this actually help the user help the advertiser help the publisher but if you were on a different team maybe it's like increasing the number of daily active users or interactions with a certain product so really thinking about what exactly that impact number meant so again for me it was revenue and I was able to find projects by running a lot of experiments to figure out oh here there's a gap where I can probably have a lot of impact and drive a lot of Revenue here's another Gap that I found where I can probably drive a lot of Revenue here too and I think the best part about this is that numbers don't lie right for me it's just Revenue other people might have ideas but at the end of the day if my idea makes the most money no one's going to say anything to me yeah yeah for sure there are metrics and there are our projects with well-known Milestones that the whole org knows is valuable so when you move those metrics obviously revenue and ads yeah that there no one can argue if you have the biggest metric movement let's say you're a junior engineer that moves it more than the whole team like okay obviously that's going to be something something huge okay so when it actually got to the the senior promo what what was that like I would say that from 3 to four it was a little bit scary but then from four to five it was even scarier cuz I knew I was really going against the grain like I was getting promoted really fast it's a really expedited timeline I heard that like the average time that it takes to get promoted can be like 2.5 years 3 years 3.5 years so doing that 1.5 years was really really aggressive and I was just worried that um I'd be docked points for not showing that I was performing at the next level for an extended amount of time so I knew it was a pretty big stretch um luckily my manager still supported me and said that we can go can go for promotion though you know like he set my expectations he was like I'm not sure like we'll really have to see again you might be docked but you know let's just try to go for it and see what happens so I did end up going for it I was able to make it it was a really big surprise to me very fortunate that my manager supported me even though it was a very aggressive timeline you one last last thing on this level is for senior promo you need to lead a bit more than in the past levels is there anything that you did that some people there's like growing pains to like becoming like a leader on your team like how was that experience for you did you have impostor syndrome at any point it definitely was a little bit scary and as you said Growing Pains it takes some time to get used to almost being confident in yourself for example like I had some project ideas that I ultimately handed off to more Junior Engineers but I was pretty anxious that they wouldn't pan out or that the experiments that I gave them wouldn't do so well and honestly some of them didn't but I think my batting average was still higher than than most people and that definitely helped but you definitely have to get used to Leading and just being comfortable mentoring people and I think in in buzzwords you would say you'd have influence on others in their projects ## Senior to Staff [17:26] let's go into the staff promo you know I think it's natural for promos to take longer later in your career did you feel stuck at any point honestly I wish I could have stayed at the senior level a little bit longer um I feel like being a senior engineer you of course don't make as much as if you're a staff or higher level engineer but you have great work live balance like I really miss taking a nap at like 2:00 p.m. or going to the gym at 3:00 p.m. when there's no one there um and I think as as you become more senior you're just involved in lot a lot of bigger projects that require more meetings and your structure the structure of your schedule just becomes more and more rigid so I think for people that do want to go to staff really think about is this something you actually want like looking at how other staff Engineers are on your team or on adjacent teams and looking at what they are doing and at Google do they have a up or out policy so you can stay at senior as long as you want is that right yes I think maybe you can even stay at midlevel as long as you want but I'm not 100% sure there's no expectation for people to go to staff I think becoming a staff engineer is very much a choice um that to you know go past Senor go to staff uh because it is a lot more responsibility and a lot more work um and I think some people just don't want to make that tradeoff if you were to take you at the senior level versus you at the staff level what's the biggest difference in your mind I feel like at level five or as I as a senior I definitely started owning a space I had a scope that I was like well versed in and I did a lot of projects and had impact there and I think what helped me go from senior to staff is now that I really knew a scope of area how can I push the boundaries of that scope of area challenge the status quo and have a larger influence over that scope of area I think I got a lot of points for leading and pushing the boundary of that area and through that I was able to have a lot of impact and just like being a leader in that space rather than someone that just knows the space I see so you were creating scope and influencing across teams yeah definitely just like both cross functionally across org like it involved a lot of um at some points like very high leadership Buy in so I think once you start being the one to kind of like make those decisions and like push those decisions up I think that starts to show very clearly staff level influence one of the things to getting a staff is that you need to find that staff level project and in a lot of cases the manager can't just hand that to you that's something you need to find ## Finding next-level work [20:18] yourself how did you find your anchor project that got you promoted to staff I think what helped me find my staff project is just working in a space and then being like why why are we doing things this way this doesn't make sense to me and then starting to challenge you know how we've been doing things for a while so there's definitely a status quo and uh like one specific example is we had a lot of support backed by user research that showed you know this one thing to be true but then when we actually ran the experiments it conflicted with user research and I was able to push that and show that you know despite what user research shows we can do this instead to have a lot of impact so I would say what really helped me have that staff level project is knowing a space so well that it can start to challenge the boundaries or the rules that may have been set up and pushing it towards almost like this new frontier for a specific scope and I think we talked a little bit about influence and how important it is for staff how do you usually go about influencing other people I think at work I just kind of already established a brand of being someone who was able to find imp ful projects or just find impact in general and then I would kind of pitch my ideas to other people um you know obviously not trying to step on anyone's toes but just giving ideas and collaborating with others and I think a lot of people trusted my ideas at that point and they also panned out really well fortunately so I think that's how I kind of established influence with other teams or cross functional Partners just building a relationship ship um cross-pollinating ideas with other people and ultimately getting those uh ideas to become projects and ultimately succeed in launch you had been at the company for a while and you had already evidence of past results that gave you credibility and so that made it that it made it so that you could influence people a lot more easily is that right yeah I would definitely say so if your projects keep flunking then you know people might not be as willing to try out your projects or trust your word as much that makes sense I think that's one thing that is unique about your career compared to a lot of our friends is that you have been at Google since we graduated you've been in the same Org the entire time so all those people know you they've seen you as this rising star that has been having a lot of success on all these projects and so it's just natural that you're probably going to be more influential than if you got hired at the senior level on this team you have to build all of that credibility from scratch yeah I don't want to say rising star but I definitely you know had some successful projects that I think were able to Showcase that you know my my word had some value or some truth behind it yeah yeah yeah the rising star mile just like that you've had past success you've had past success you're believable you're credible exactly they see your name and they're like okay this Project's probably be a good idea for the staff level like you also like you were tlm for some time as well can you talk a ## Transitioning to management [23:42] little bit about you know why did you want to try Management in the first place I think that's like a common thing that everyone's thinking is IC they want to make that decision for themselves at some point so how did you make that decision why did you want to try and manage I wanted to try and management just cuz I think I already had a lot of fulfillment in helping people grow finding projects even though I wasn't directly managing people there are definitely mentees I had at work I also mentored interns at times and it was just a really fun time watching them succeed and you know it's almost like having a kid and watching them grow and I really enjoyed that so that's timately why I wanted to try out being a manager luckily my team was also very supportive of that idea and I started managing around two years ago that makes sense did your manager really vet your motivations for wanting to become a manager before you you became one how did that process go I don't know honestly um my I I I pitched idea to my manager I think even once I was at the senior level for a while I think I kind of said hey like eventually one day I'd like to become a manager um and I think just the right opportunity came up I do feel like becoming a manager really early on was a little bit awkward just because I some at times felt like I wasn't mature enough to be a manager when you say not mature enough what does that mean I think I felt a little bit awkward at times uh one example is like being in a meeting of a bunch of managers and I think a lot of the managers in our or skewed to be a little a little bit older just you know naturally cuz some of them were even like higher level managers and have been managers for a while um so there's it felt a little bit awkward there another time it felt awkward is like when I'm out at a music festival and I'm really drunk and then I see my reports out there I think at the end of the day it's probably fine but I think uh I just didn't really think that that would happen until actually happened that makes sense and you know before you came had you done um interns or any uh you did you have any management experience or did you just kind of ask your manager and he was like okay maybe one day and it just happened yeah I did not have like any special managing experience I never had an intern I was a little bit surprised for some reason I thought that there'd be more of like a textbook on how to be a great manager but I feel like a lot of people just kind of get thrown in and then uh um you know they do their best U not saying that Google doesn't have resources Google has tons of resources but I don't know I thought there'd be a little bit more structure but it seems like in general people just become a manager when you became manager what do you feel was the biggest difference between uh being an IC and and manager I think what a lot of people told me before I became a manager um and I agree with their advice even today is that when you're just like a TL you have all the fun Parts you get to help them grow you get to help them succeed and then all the harder Parts is like giving difficult feedback when people are not performing so well and a lot of almost the busy work of writing reviews and like going to calibration sessions so there's just a lot more I guess overhead when you're a manager as opposed to to being an IC but I do feel like at the same time it's a little bit more rewarding when you actually get to see your reports get promoted because you are their manager right you help them get promoted as opposed to just being a TL and helping someone get promoted definitely so now that you've tried it do you think that you regret becoming a manager I would say that I just wish I became a manager later I think at the time my team just we had like a really odd scenario where we had 20 new hires and I felt like I was helping them all and I wanted a more formal role um just so that I would only be responsible for the people that actually managed which was four people rather than 20 people so in that sense like I feel like I was able to have more time um back because I only had to really help four people but if I had the choice I probably would have been a senior engineer maybe a couple more years just because I think there are less responsibility and it's less stress and I think in your I don't know early or mid 20s when you want to just relax a little bit more it's just better to be a senior engineer than to be a staff level engineer or higher that's fair yeah and this there's a lot more meetings at the staff level especially as a manager I feel like it's it's all meetings and sometimes yeah it's definitely a skill that I feel like you have to learn or get used to just powering through 6 hours of 8 hours of backtack meetings or one-on ones some managers I think have all of their meetings in one day some of them have it like sprinkled out throughout the week but in general as you become more senior whether or not you are a manager or not a manager at the levels of 6 7 8 you're going to have a lot of meetings no matter what because the influence you have is always going to be through other people and it's going to be less code that you actually write yourself whether or not you're an IC or a manager so for me at least I think when I first graduated from college I was like oh my God I want to be a director one day it's going to be so fun but I think as I become closer and closer to these high levels I'm understanding what it actually means and it means no more random naps at 2: or 3: p.m. whenever I want it means no going to the gym at you know 11:00 a.m. obvious obiously to a certain extent you can still have doctor appointments in the middle of day if you have to but there's definitely less flexibility and I think if you look at the calendars at work of any of these more senior people you'll also see sure they still only work 9 to5 but they are working 9 to5 they are definitely working I feel that it's there's definitely a lot more meetings I think when I when I got promoted to staff I remember my schedule was basically a large chunk meetings 9 to 5 not not entirely 9 to but meetings kind of just like fragment your focus time yeah so then every day I would have you know fragmented meetings for most of 9: to 5 and then I would start working on my stuff at 5: until like I went to bed so yeah I totally agree it's it's can can become a lot yeah um so I guess last thing you actually go for the promo of course were there any differences between the past promos or was it pretty straightforward forward I already said that I was unsure from 3 to 4 and 4 to 5 I was also very unsure from 5 to 6 honestly uh I definitely had really good ratings so that was definitely a signal like I had like you know the highest ratings possible uh for a while already but I was kind of just unsure just because I think people have said that going from 5 to six is notoriously hard three to four four to five obviously it still takes work but it's a little bit more straightforward and people say that going from five to six is almost like a complete job change in some aspects so I was pretty worried about it just cuz even if you're a superstar senior engineer and you're having tons of impact it doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to be a great staff engineer though I did end up going for a promo again I feel very fortunate very lucky that my manager was supportive and I was able to get promoted and only took me one try which is I'm also pretty thankful for to all of your promos there was never a a miss and try again miss and try again it just landed every time yes but wow I was very lucky I was very lucky forunate yeah looking at the whole career you think you could do it again or was a large part of this luck I think you definitely have to be a little bit lucky just cuz sometimes you might not enjoy the team that you're on or maybe your manager is just out on fraternity or maternity leave so they can't help you as much or they can't support your promotion as well I think where I got lucky was that my team was a product area that I ended up really liking even though I didn't pick that I didn't pick my team but they just matched me there and I've been on that team for 7 years now clearly I like it to some capacity and I think my team was also relatively stable my manager although I had some like manager shifts ultimately it was still under the same broader and larger team so nothing crazy in terms of reorgs or restructuring that might have hindered my career progress but I will say that luck is like two parts one of them is the chance of an opportunity actually coming along right sometimes you just have to wait for that and it might take longer it might not take as long I think the second part is being prepared for when that chance actually comes so just making sure that you're doing your best and doing the right thing so that when an opportunity does come along you can actually take advantage and seize the opportunity what ## Reflections [33:46] percent of your career do you think has been due to your abilities and what percent do you think was luck um I would say maybe like half half uh um like I'm pretty confident that eventually I would get to senior and I think that most people will eventually get the senior as long as they're like making sure to grow and putting work in but maybe if I was on a different team or I just really did not like the stuff I was working on it might have taken me longer cuz i' have to switch teams and then get ramped up in their code stack so I think I was just really fortunate that uh things worked out the way they did but I definitely made sure to put in the effort and was very conscious about the next level and what I had to do to get there that makes sense yeah luck is a huge part of it there could be an engineer that's better than you but they're I don't know the team they're on is like literally just the worst it's reorg every 6 months they have no consistent project and so in that case of course you couldn't do it and on flip side it sounds like you had a lot of things around it like a good manager and like the scope to continue to grow your product was like impactful and all of that so um that makes sense um one of the last things I want to talk about is um you know I think we kind of mentioned that out of all of our friends I think it's a little bit unusual to be at the same company for seven years um especially in this industry people are kind of job popping to try out new things or you know get more compensation or whatever um and so what kept you at Google for so long yeah I think it's really important to ask yourself I don't know maybe every 3 months just ask yourself hey am I still enjoying the work I'm working on do I still feel like this team has whatever I want for me it was like I really wanted some career growth I also really wanted to travel a lot I didn't care as much about what I was working on as long as it wasn't like too boring so my team I felt always had those opportunities for me and that's why why I didn't leave but I think what I often tell people is I just kept asking myself is the grass greener here or elsewhere and it was greener on my side of the lawn so I ended up staying that doesn't mean that I wasn't thinking about leaving or if I should change teams every so often to make sure that the job was doing as much it was for me of course there's survivorship bias right I'm sure people that did not get promoted as quickly maybe they just didn't really enjoy the team where didn't enjoy the work whereas I just had a good match up that makes sense yeah and think there's pros and cons to staying at the same team there's this momentum that you get by staying on the same team and the same company you're like this snowball of of of organizational context and like the code-based knooow and after four years in the same area you're not just the go-to person in one area you're like go-to person in like many areas and you just become this uh person that just knows how to do get everything done you have all the relationships so it if you can get lucky with a good um you know or setup and all of that there is this this uh benefit to to having all that context that can give you unusually fast career growth you know on the flip side of course you can job hop and try to get promos too so that it's not uh black and white one is better than the other I guess it's like a Counterpoint to I feel like the the common opinion is like you should jump and you should switch and there is actually some value to thing as long as your Situation's good yeah okay and the last thing I want to know is if you were to talk to that that Ricky at the beginning of your career Junior engineer Ricky just end the industry what advice would you give yourself and and why I think to my younger self I would just tell him to trust himself a little bit more cuz I think for for a very long time I just had so much impost syndrome I was so anxious that um you know I wasn't going to do so well and over time I like built up that confidence like through projects my projects succeeding and working well with others and getting good feedback but I think I was like really unsure of myself and I actually feel like I could have done more if I was willing to trust my judgment a little bit more or have more of almost like audacity to um P the boundary and try new things um because I had a lot of ideas that I felt like I maybe waited a little bit too long because you know I felt like oh am I going to rock the boat too much but um I ended up doing a lot of those projects that did rock the boat and they were very successful and I wish I just you know trusted myself a little bit more to do it earlier so I'd be less anxious and stressed all the time and be Fring less over imposter syndrome in the beginning of my career when you say say imposter syndrome was that mostly about your technical skills or is something you learned that made you have less imposter syndrome I don't know I thought I was like a personality higher or something uh uh and over time I realized you know obviously like Google's not going to do that but I think I was always just a little bit worried cuz I think during my interviews too for Google I think I like did okay I don't feel like I like hit a home run and the same thing with my internship I didn't feel like I hit a home run and also think at the lower levels I wasn't really sure how to kind of gauge my performance and even though I would like bother my manager a lot and be like am I doing okay like are things going well and he'd tell me like oh yeah you're doing fine you know I would still like kind of be anxious like oh but like is it enough um is it just okay or is it like am I doing like am I passing is this like a c that I'm doing am I like doing an A+ like what's the vibe you know I was just stressing out about that yeah that makes sense that's that's Supernatural um awesome all right well yeah I think that's everything Ricky is there anything that you want to plug or you know where can the audience find you yeah so on social media I'm finding Ricky if you want to watch my content it's not really Tech related I have to warn you I feel like I'm in a very different Niche than uh Ryan here but uh if you do want to follow me or check out my socials it's finding Ricky um and I hope that this podcast was helpful to everyone and I'm so happy that I could be here today awesome all right thanks so much for your time Ricky all right thanks everyone bye hey Ryan here thanks so much for listening to the podcast I hope that it was helpful and if you want to hear more from Ricky you can go and check him out on YouTube at finding Ricky he recently posted a video about a day in the life in as a staff engineer at Google I know it sounds Sensational but actually I think he did a good job in capturing what the day-to-day is like it's not just flexing big Tech perks it's more about the daily work of a staff engineer and how things kind of become much more different as you have more and more responsibility so you can take a look at that and then two other things that I want to add is one thank you so much for the feedback on the first video I hope that you can see that I took it to heart and the production quality is a little bit better still has a long way to go but look at the background here I bought a backdrop to make it a a little bit nicer and I'll be using that for future videos and then the other thing too that I got a lot of feedback on is the jump cuts and so I tried to get rid of as many of those as possible while still removing filler words and things like that so you can see that I'm playing with the camera angles I really appreciate the feedback and if you have any more feel free to drop comments on YouTube I will take a look there and try to make then every episode incorporate the feedback that I get thanks so much for your time