"A standard engineer at Google can work on Android, transfer to YouTube, then decide they'd like to work on Google Flights or Cloud" - this is more true in theory than practice. In practice you're beholden to the perf cycle, and the other team's manager. i.e. you can't just decide to move to a team and that's it. You still have to "apply" and get interviewed by that team. For instance, it's not like you can just move from the Angular team to the Google Brain team - otherwise there would be a lot more people on the Google Brain team :)
And if the manager accepts you there can still be costs. Most notably it can put you behind in your performance review cycle. This becomes a much bigger deal as your level increases because the timespan between promotions increases.
I have a lot of friends that work for Google and it's usually years between when they change teams. And when they do, it's a big deal that they think about for a long time.
And if the manager accepts you there can still be costs. Most notably it can put you behind in your performance review cycle. This becomes a much bigger deal as your level increases because the timespan between promotions increases.
I have a lot of friends that work for Google and it's usually years between when they change teams. And when they do, it's a big deal that they think about for a long time.