[m0zg]

At Google your "years of experience" matter not at all. I've seen former VPs and directors elsewhere work at Google as L5 software engineers and not be able to be promoted. L3 pretty much means she didn't do well in her interview. L4 is more common for out of college hires.

Moreover, back in 2010 Google had a system for when the "correct" hiring level is unclear. You'd be hired as a "member of technical staff" (MTS) with a given salary and stock grant, and then over the next 6-12 months prove that you deserve to be "slotted" at the level your compensation is at. If you failed to do so, your comp would remain the same, but you'd be slotted a level below and expected to earn a promo in the near future. Which means the hiring committee (none of the decisions are made directly by the interviewers or the hiring managers) was pretty certain what level was appropriate for her. Nowadays this system is not in place anymore, and if there's any doubt, down a level you go right off the bat.

It is very counterproductive to attribute one's misfortunes in life solely to traits one can't change. It could very well be that Kelly just wasn't that good at her job, many otherwise very smart people at Google are barely scraping by.

But once one starts attributing all misfortune to something like race or gender or another unchangeable trait, that kind of shuts down the feedback loop that could otherwise drive improvements in performance, and therefore, one hopes, also improvement in promotions and therefore compensation.