A former Google employee, who worked at the tech giant for a little over three years, recently took to Threads to share how he got a promotion and a 30% raise 8 months after being hired. According to his bio, San Francisco-based Jerry Lee joined Google in 2018 as a Strategist and worked his way up to become a Senior Strategy and Operations Manager. In his post, he revealed that initially his teammates mostly thought of him as a liability. “My first two months at Google? Honestly, they were weird,” he wrote on Threads.
“I was told to ‘take it easy,’ eat the free food, explore campus, you know, the works. Part of me felt like they thought I was just some kid who couldn’t contribute much, especially since I was the youngest on a team with folks who were 6+ years out of school. I think they saw me as a potential ‘negative’ for the first few months,” Mr Lee said.
However, after a month or two, he said he got bored of not doing anything and felt like he needed to add value somehow. “I started asking around for projects, anything to contribute. Finally, one of my managers said, ‘Hey, why don’t you look into this market landscape analysis?’ I dove in, and that’s when I noticed it – one metric that was way off the charts. Turns out, it was a major product loophole that the team hadn’t spotted,” he said.
Then suddenly, he found himself leading a project with two project managers, six engineers, and five other analysts, along with other employees from the operations and legal departments. “It was a huge deal. And that project? It led to a promotion within my first eight months and a 30% raise,” he said.
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“When I received the news, I broke down because this meant I could pay down my student loans faster & buy my parents a well-deserved vacation,” Mr Lee wrote in a separate post, urging professionals not to wait for opportunities but to create their own.
In the comments section, users shared their thoughts. “You’re lucky they acknowledged or showed appreciation for your extra work. Too many times I’ve had a somewhat similar experience just to be given the “it’s your job, you’re just meeting expectations” conversation,” commented one user.
“I feel like the real moral is that companies shouldn’t stress their employees out and should let them take plenty of time to acclimate. And treating them well like that makes them more inclined to actually do important work and create value,” commented another.