[nostrademons]

Top Google engineers can make millions in stock grants. Even if you're not the best of the best, get promoted a couple times and you get a very respectable salary and stock grants that (in this market) add up very quickly. I know at least a couple mid/late-20s engineers that are like "Yeah, I'll stick it out for another 5-10 years and then move to Portland or Seattle and retire."

[mahyarm]

I hear stories of people in google never getting a promotion in 7 years as a software engineer. Or getting frustrated with promotions because everyone is overqualified for their position with PhDs and so on for positions such as a sales manager and so on. How does one become a top google engineer in their mid/late 20?

[nostrademons]

It happens. I think the longest I knew was someone who was there 11 years without being promoted. I also know folks who are promoted reliably every 2 years, all the way up from SWE 3 to Distinguished Engineer. My personal story was in the middle...I was promoted while at Google, but I didn't particularly want to climb the corporate ladder in a big company.

As for tactics - they aren't actually all that different from what you'd need to manage a successful startup. Get yourself put on a big, important project, and execute successfully on it. How do you get yourself on a big important project? Make yourself an expert within a department in one area, so that when that project is looking for people, they really need to have you. For me that area was Javascript, although I also picked up a lot about all aspects of the search stack from working on a bunch of projects (this is the "success begets success" phenomena: if you're an expert in one area, you can leverage that to get your pick of projects, which you can use to become an expert in more areas). It also helps to have a good relationship with your manager, and to pick a manager who is "plugged in" to Google's priorities and aware of the top priorities and opportunities around.