Comment by wellpast | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wellpast | Hacker News Reader

If you have a good relationship with your employer you should be able to say "Hey I want to try something else for a while, but if things don't work out, I'd love to keep the doors open on both sides."

I've done this before with a few jobs, one of which I went back to after I left and the other thing I was pursuing didn't pan out. In the time I was gone I learned a tremendous amount about myself and what's possible. If you can something like this set this up, it's only a win-win.

A few reasons to not try something like this: (A) - you're worried you'll set back any career path you were on track for at google (B) - you're worried they won't take you back

Have no comment on (A) b/c for me I'm more interested in personal growth than specific career track at a specific company.

If (B) holds, why wouldn't they take you back? Top engineers are hard to come by. If you can't make a convincing case that you're in that top category of engineer, then what has working for Google earned you these past few years? (Other than $..)

IIRC Google is very open to internal transfers and theyou also have a 6 month grace period for you to return if you decide to leave.

There's no grace period as far as I know. That'd be stupid on their part: every keyboard jockey would immediately threaten to leave in hopes of getting a counter. Why not, if there's a "grace period"?Once you leave, there's no guarantee whatsoever that they'll want you back, even if you were doing well before you left. And that's by design.

When I left Google I was told I could come back within a year and not have to go through the full interview process. Just a few rounds of calls with recruiters a hiring manager. They apparently do this for anyone who goes out with high performance ratings on their last perf (Exceeds Expectations or greater).

Not a grace period per se, but pretty nice.

Yes you could, but there's no guarantee whatsoever they actually will let you come back. It's a subtle point which many people don't understand. The first part, them deciding to let you come back, is not deterministic. The second (no interview if you didn't suck before you left) is. I know several xooglers who went back (in one case 3 years after leaving, no interviews). I also know several who got their applications chucked into /dev/null, in spite of being kickass engineers and good people in all other regards.

> If you can't make a convincing case that you're in that top category of engineer, then what has working for Google earned you these past few years?

So are you suggesting that the 95% of people who are not to engineers are just waiting their time?

Maybe it's more along the lines of having become a "Google-idiot". Expert at using internal Google systems, or maybe even just a small subset of them, worse as a general engineer than when they started.

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