Concerning the promotion thing, I hear this a lot from Googlers but isn't it the same everywhere else? Most tech companies (big tech at least) will promote on product achievements, not maintenance.
The main difference was/is that at Google your immediate manager, director, PM, peers and everyone else in your product unit (who you work with every day) have almost zero say in whether you get promoted or not. You have to essentially summarize everything you did in bullet points and send it over to an anonymous committee who don't know who you are. They will base their decision on this piece of paper without any additional background or context.
This does help in various ways – the process is more objective, there is less bias, less departmental/managerial politics etc. The drawback is that a lot gets lost in translation. There is too much burden on you as an engineer to pick and choose what you spend your time on so it looks good to the committee.
In other companies I have worked at getting promoted was a byproduct of doing a good job. At Google getting promoted is the job.
There have been some changes that make this entirely untrue for earlier promos and partially untrue for promotions to L6/Staff. There's considerably more locality at this point.
That’s not true anymore until you are going for 6/7 (depending on your org). Now, committees are based in your org and members are expected to be somewhat familiar with your work.
This does help in various ways – the process is more objective, there is less bias, less departmental/managerial politics etc. The drawback is that a lot gets lost in translation. There is too much burden on you as an engineer to pick and choose what you spend your time on so it looks good to the committee.
In other companies I have worked at getting promoted was a byproduct of doing a good job. At Google getting promoted is the job.