[munificent]

Googler here.

If you want to seek a promotion, you can nominate yourself or others can nominate you. When that happens, a packet is assembled for you. It includes your self-review, and reviews from a number of your peers as well as your managers.

That packet goes to a committee likely made up of people who don't know you who then reach a decision about your promotion.

That's a simplification, but that's the basic idea. Your manager has a large influence on your success: to get promoted you need to show accomplishments, and that depends on you being given important work to do. But, compared to other companies, the process is much less biased by your manager. Your peers have a huge influence on your ability to get promoted.

[KurtMueller]

So if I was a Googler, I'd apply for a promotion just to see what my manager and my peers thought about me - both pros and cons - and use that to improve my performance.

Does that happen in the company?

[nostrademons]

All the time. Conventional wisdom at Google is that you should always apply for a promotion, because the cost to you was zero and the benefit was potentially very large.

...that said, I didn't apply last cycle, because the form was changed so that promo candidates have to fill out a more in-depth self-assessment and get more in-depth peer feedback, and me and my peers were heads-down on a deadline at the time. I suppose one way to deal with the externalities of everybody always going up for promo is to make the process easier on people who don't.

BTW, there are regular performance reviews at Google - you can (and should) get your peers' feedback without actually going up for promotion. I did every cycle until I made senior, then I stopped caring quite so much. Promotions beyond senior have a large "impact and leadership" component to them, and so you basically know what you have to do to get promoted, you have to lead a major project that succeeds.