If you work at Google, keep your head down for 12-18 months. Don't pay attention to big-company politics and (unlike me) stay the fuck away from eng-misc. Work hard and (unless you're on a good project) figure out what transfer opportunities will be available, and which ones will be good. At the 18-month point, try for a promotion. It makes it easier to transfer. If you don't get the promo, you can still transfer; it's just somewhat harder. If your performance ratings are still at "Meets Expectations" you should have a good story as to why. In that case, you need to find that middle ground of (a) making it obvious that your manager's appraisal of you is boneheadedly wrong, (b) without throwing him under the bus.
The objective sign of a decent manager is whether his or her reports get promoted. Good managers (at Google) get their reports promoted and bad managers don't. It's that simple. Look into this when you're evaluating transfer opportunities. If you find that a group has a lot of really good people stuck at SWE 3, stay away from it, even if the work sounds interesting. The truth about Google is that no one will consider you qualified to do anything actually interesting (i.e. you won't be considered a Real Googler) until you climb that ladder a bit, so your first few years should be focused on making Staff SWE. (The Real Googler line is somewhere between Senior and Staff.)
If you work at Google, keep your head down for 12-18 months. Don't pay attention to big-company politics and (unlike me) stay the fuck away from eng-misc. Work hard and (unless you're on a good project) figure out what transfer opportunities will be available, and which ones will be good. At the 18-month point, try for a promotion. It makes it easier to transfer. If you don't get the promo, you can still transfer; it's just somewhat harder. If your performance ratings are still at "Meets Expectations" you should have a good story as to why. In that case, you need to find that middle ground of (a) making it obvious that your manager's appraisal of you is boneheadedly wrong, (b) without throwing him under the bus.
The objective sign of a decent manager is whether his or her reports get promoted. Good managers (at Google) get their reports promoted and bad managers don't. It's that simple. Look into this when you're evaluating transfer opportunities. If you find that a group has a lot of really good people stuck at SWE 3, stay away from it, even if the work sounds interesting. The truth about Google is that no one will consider you qualified to do anything actually interesting (i.e. you won't be considered a Real Googler) until you climb that ladder a bit, so your first few years should be focused on making Staff SWE. (The Real Googler line is somewhere between Senior and Staff.)
Piaw Na wrote some excellent material on the promotion process at Google: http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/08/tips-for-noogler-engineers....