[jeffbee]

At all levels?

I know it changes every year so I don't let my own personal experience color my perception of Google 2024, but some years when I was there my manager barely even knew where my desk was. My promo packets for L5 and L6 were judged by peer committees and I am not sure they even saw my manager evaluations. When I sat on an L5 promo committee we did not weigh manager assessments. This made sense at that time because of how hands-off managers were in the realm of the reasons a person could get promoted to L5.

[aix1]

These days it's the manager who writes the next-level assessment (NLA) and it's the NLA that forms the main body of the packet that the promo committee looks at. They're also the one soliciting and summarizing peer feedback etc.

[jeffbee]

That's wildly incompatible with my experience there in the previous decade. I hope the current managers are up to the job! Most of my managers didn't have even the slightest inkling of how to evaluate what I was doing on the job. One of them was mainly occupied with running the "mindfulness" office.

[aix1]

> That's wildly incompatible with my experience there in the previous decade

Yes, there have been some very signficant changes over the last few years. Promos are decided in-org. Managers play a much more important role. There are promo quotas along with associated pressures (felt more acutely in some orgs compared to others).

But, putting that asides, a manager who doesn't have any idea of what or how their reports are doing is clearly failing at their job under any of those systems.