[googlryas]

It doesn't, in my experience. In the previous incarnation of the perf review system(which just slightly changed recently), there were effectively 3 buckets:

Needs improvement, meets expectations, and exceeds expectations.

The first one is "I'm going to get fired ASAP if I don't improve".

The second one is still viewed as a failure even though you're meeting every aspect of your current role.

The third one is "okay good, maybe i can go for promo if I string together 4 of these performance reviews as exceeds expectations"

[marssaxman]

Why do people at Google seemingly care so much about promotions?

[googlryas]

+25% total comp I imagine. Also a lot of them are in the sf/sv housing market and think they'll never be able to buy a house even making 250k/yr

[klipklop]

This is exactly it. After they hit whatever promo level that let’s them buy a home they usually stop trying to climb so hard unless they are really ambitious.

If you want your partner to stay home and help raise the kids you probably have to make L6 at a minimum.

You can make $250k and have zero chance of buying a single family home in the South Bay now. Prob need a household income around $300-350k before it starts to become reasonable. The recent interest rate hikes really jumped up the monthly payments. Dumpy houses can go for $2m, USD but that is slowly trending down.

[dmitrygr]

Pay bands are relatively narrow. The only way to a serious raise is promotion.

[xyzzy_plugh]

That sounds fucking horrifically stressful.