> But he can only do so because he is a staff software engineer.

I don't agree with this at all. This is how I've worked for my entire time at Google, all the way from new grad L3 joining the company till today. Ignoring the spotlight does not mean "don't get attention from other people" but "don't chase the project execs are focusing on".

Whenever I've work on a project, I make a very active effort to make sure engineers are aware of it, especially if I think they would find it useful. But that's different than going to my execs and asking "what's the highest priority at the moment" and working on that.

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raw_anon_1111 an hour ago | parent [-]

And how does that look on your promo doc?

Would you rather be working on some obscure internal website for employees to track their performance that no one cares about or something related to Google ads? Which would you suggest a new grad work on?

It sounds cynical. But I never personal tried to get ahead at BigTech, it was never my goal, I just saw the struggles that others had navigating the promo process from L4 (entry level) -> L5 and L6->L7. It seemed like L5->L6 was the easiest for some reason.

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lalitmaganti 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

I would say it's worked out pretty well for me at least given my career trajectory! Feel free to draw your own conclusions from my resume (it's on my about page).

I think you are conflating "exec attention" with "important projects": these are very much not the same thing.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Fair point. So if you are saying “get on important projects” is the lever, we are in complete agreement. You can put important projects on your promo doc and if you communicate it well, you are golden. That’s far more important than “executive attention” when it comes to the promotion committee. Just don’t be the guy who is working on the internal comp tracking system that no one thinks about more than once a year