My experience with Google has been the opposite, for what it's worth. I've been rewarded for, as an IC SWE, starting conversations with random people across the entire company to make things happen, and then executing on it. I even presented my launch at I/O this past May. I think it helps that I'm on a smaller team. So from my experience, it still very much seems like a "look for something that needs doing and do it" kind of place. Maybe too much freedom is granted, in that a lot of "boring" things are languishing that shouldn't be simply because no one is interested in (or rewarded for) doing them.
It seems to depend a lot on your team and your manager. It's the first place I've worked where the vibe is: "you're clever: find something useful to do" from my very first day.
Yes, it matters a lot. I got some great advice from a friend who was already working at a big-ish tech company (Dropbox) when I joined Google. She said the #1 concern when picking a team was to find a manager I'd get along with -- that that's more important than anything else. And it was good advice. Managers set the tone for the entire team, and I'd rather be on a friendly, collaborative, supportive team doing a meh project than be on a dysfunctional team working on something "important". Studies have shown that the #1 factor causing job dissatisfaction is having a poor relationship with your manager, and then #2 is having a poor relationship with your peers.
Yes, this matches my experience as well. I've been at Google 6 years now in various SWE roles. I can count the number of times I've been directly asked to do something by anyone in my management chain on one hand.
What are examples of things you took initiative on (without violating NDA or revealing personal details?) Are we talking about new major products/features? Did you join with past experience/at a senior level? What org/product area?
It's hard to explain, not because of NDA but because of context specific things. Almost everything I do is open source, but can't fit into a comment.
My only advice to people at BigCo is to make sure you have a good reason for doing whatever it is you're doing. Your boss telling you to do something is not always a good reason to do it.
And make sure you have some kind of metrics that show your work is important. If you're told to do something that you don't think is important, make sure you have metrics showing that your work is more important and do that.
So say my boss assigns me a task of questionable value. Should I really question it having been there for a few months, or would they take it as I don't trust their judgement?
I just started recently and was considering leaving for a startup, but have decided to stay and see if it gets better (I have only been at BigCo for few months). Mainly I feel like I'm not really needed, and it's a long existing and complex system so I can't propose some project of my own that easily. Many changes require multiple teams input etc. Feels slow.
Thanks for the advice, I will definitely keep it in mind.
I am not the OP, but IMO when you have been at the job for only a few months telling the boss that he is wrong can provide some seriously negative return. You may be right but not understood or listened to or you may be wrong (e.g., because you are not aware of something they take for granted, etc.) and reinforce the "fresh kid who needs a lot of handholding" perception.
I would either build credibility at your local team first (seems slow given the setup you describe) or find another group that is more dynamic. Look for energetic team leads that run impactful projects, talk to them (face to face) and ask what would it take to join their team. My 2c. Good luck
If your boss tells you to do something, you should do it. "Make your boss happy" is generally the way to thrive in a hierarchy, whatever the stated principles of the organization or how they formally evaluate employees. If your boss is happy with you, it will all turn out ok; if your boss isn't happy with you, nothing will save you in the end.
I understand the initial project you're assigned may not seem terribly important. But that's because you're new and you don't really know how things work yet, so they can't assign you anything really complicated. Do the initial not-quite-busywork successfully, and more important and interesting work will come along.
If you've only been there for a few months, how do you even know that the task is of questionable value? I'd take it as a very bad sign if someone who's still relatively new to the team thinks they know better than people who've been doing this stuff for years. Trust that your teammates know what they're doing, and if they really truly don't (which is possible), find a better team.
It took me around two years in to start feeling comfortable setting direction and priorities at a team-wide level. Of course, I was making my opinion heard long before that, but it was just that, an opinion.
At only a few months in you're still an unproven quantity. Don't expect to be getting the most important projects just yet. Take whatever you are given and knock it out of the park.
Previous largeish tasks were found to be of questionable value after they were completed, by other mgrs.
I like my team and manager, I just don't think they have a lot of time for me or time to think about what I'm assigned and whether it's worth doing. Lots of new ppl on the team recently. It's also possible that I'm just not asking enough questions. I think it is a bit of both.
Yes! Don't necessarily question it and get into an argument. But both you and your manager have a different set of context and view on what's really important to the team and organization. Neither of you is necessarily more correct then the other.
If it turns out your manager was right (which is likely given you've only been there a few months), you'll at least get more context to understand why. You can use that context next time
I recently joined a FANG and this is something that causes me a lot of anxiety. Our repos are hundreds of thousands of lines of code; how on earth can I, as a new hire, decide unilaterally that something needs to be added or reworked? I'm not at a startup, and the company's mission is decided at a level far above my paygrade. I need some degree of management to know what to do.
I'm also not a very social person, and randomly chatting with people around the company for project ideas is something that I'm seemingly incapable of doing.
Will this cause me to fail at my job? How do I learn to be more proactive with these kinds of things?
It sounds like you're trying to self-discover initiative. Initiative is not a first-class thing of its own; it's an outcome of, for example, staring at an inefficiency until you can't stop twitching.
But (to use my example) "efficiency" is relative. It requires a good mental model of what fits into what and how. So, to solve for that, you'd focus on absorption, and taking-in as much of the environment you can in as much detail as you can - oh, and focus on the most insignificant things the most. (The idea is to stretch your attention span and make it grow.) Endeavor to absorb at the same rate on day 100 that you do on day 1 (ie, replicating the way you react when things are new/interesting). Not perfectly achievable (I don't think), but that's the approach I've used to get my brain going in the right direction.
As for sociability, that's something that needs to be practiced in its own right to get stronger, like attention span. A bit like learning to use a new tool, you can't immediately be fast at it without some initial purpose-less practice. (Always fun to bootstrap those kinds of things...)
At a very high level you're wanting management, but really you're expecting someone else to solve your problems for you. These companies don't work like that. You have to find a problem and hammer it down.
If necessary (but only as a last resort) spend an hour each day increasing test coverage. That is just something you can do that will probably also yield further ideas.
Second, if you're at google, get a mentor. They probably have an internal tool for that, maybe even something hr-like.
