Last week, I received a notification on my “Googleversary” that shared a surprising stat: I have now been at Google longer than 90% of current employees.
In the fast-paced tech world, where job-hopping every 2 years is standard, hitting the 11-year mark (counting my early days, 2 years as a contractor) feels surreal. It made me pause and really reflect on how I got here. How did I navigate re-orgs, promotions, and high-stress HR situations without burning out?
It certainly wasn’t by working until 2 AM every night. It was by learning the unspoken rules of long-term career success, often the hard way.
If you are currently feeling stuck in your career, or just unsure of your next move, these are the four lessons I wish I had known when I first started out.
1. Your Manager Will Make or Break Your Trajectory
It’s not always possible to hand-pick your manager. Sometimes reorgs happen, and you have to play the cards you’re dealt. But I cannot stress this enough: if you are interviewing for a new role and have the agency to choose, you must pick carefully.
I have been incredibly lucky that my managers have ranged from good to excellent. Looking back, this has been crucial to my career growth.
Why this relationship is critical
Managers are your gatekeepers. They determine your performance reviews, they directly influence your compensation, and most importantly, they are your advocates in the rooms you are not in.
If you ignore early signs of a bad manager, it can break your daily experience and lead to burnout, regardless of how much you love the actual work. Conversely, a great manager will champion you when you aren’t even in the room.
How to vet a potential manager You need to evaluate them as critically as they are evaluating you. When you interview with your potential future manager, don’t just ask throwaway questions.
- Ask about their values: Instead of just asking about the daily tasks, ask, “What are your core leadership values?” Their answer will tell you a lot about whether they are a micromanager or an empowering leader.
- Trust your gut: If their communication style feels off during the interview, pay attention to it. Are they dismissive? Do they seem distracted? These are early red flags.
- Do backdoor references: If you know anyone else at the company (or on the team if this is an internal role), ask for an honest, off-the-record opinion on what that person is like to work for.
2. Drown Out the Noise: Focus on Impact, Not “Busy Work”
Early in my career, I remember a distinct moment when I was writing my self-assessment for a performance review. I realized my manager would have to distill months of my work into about five concrete sentences to present to other leaders.
Was my work on the culture committee going to make me stand out in a stack of 20 other high-performers? Probably not.
I see so many people get caught in this trap. They work incredibly hard, but they spend their energy in two areas that rarely “move the needle” in a performance review:
- “Good Citizen” Work: Things like culture committees or planning team events. These are great for networking and you should definitely participate if you enjoy them, but do so with eyes wide open: they are “nice-to-haves,” not promotion drivers.
- Routine Maintenance: This is the standard, “keep business running”, like organizing a weekly team meeting or just hitting your standard quotas. This work has to get done to “meet expectations,” but it won’t elevate you.
If you keep highlighting routine work in your performance check-ins, you will likely keep getting the same standard results.
The “Calibration Room” Test
To stop spinning your wheels on routine work, you need to understand what truly drives business impact in your specific role.
I always use this litmus test: Imagine your manager is in a calibration room with 20 other leaders, discussing promotions. They only have about 60 seconds to pitch you.
What is the one-liner that is going to make you stand out above peers?
- Is it: “She always organizes great team meetings”? (Probably not).
- Or is it: “She closed the XYZ deal that generated $1M in new revenue,” or “She streamlined X process that saved the team 200 hours a year”?
Identify what leadership actually values
You need to quickly understand what drives actual business impact in your specific role. Is it saving time? Saving money? Closing complex deals?
Once I understood this, I learned to ruthlessly prioritize. I drowned out the noise, declined meetings that didn’t serve those core goals, and focused my energy on the work that would actually move the needle.
Automate the mundane to make room for the impact
We all have BAU work we can’t escape. The secret isn’t to just stop doing it; it’s to become ruthlessly efficient at it. Especially now, in the era of AI, we have more tools than ever to cut down on this “maintenance” work.
If you are in charge of the team agenda, don’t spend an hour color-coding it. Spend 10 minutes getting it done so it’s “good enough,” and then reallocate that saved 50 minutes toward the project that will actually become your “one-liner” in the calibration room.
3. Don’t Get Stagnant (The Power of Internal Mobility)
A common fear I hear is that staying at a job too long looks bad on a resume. And it’s true, if you stay in the exact same role on the same team for 10 years, hiring managers might question your adaptability.
But staying at the same company is different, as long as you keep moving.
For me, internal mobility has been the secret to longevity without stagnation. I didn’t just wait for promotions in one straight line. I moved laterally to build a diverse skillset:
- Contract – Recruiting “Support Specialist”
- Recruiter
- Recruiting Program Manager
- HR Program Manager
- Current – HR StratOps Lead
Each of these moves forced me to build new networks, learn new skills, and gain fresh perspectives. It also diversified my resume so I didn’t look like a “one-trick pony.”
Note: This advice applies to internal moves. I would be cautious about job-hopping externally every two years, as that can be a red flag to Recruiters and Hiring Managers.
4. Stay Grounded to Avoid Job Burnout
Finally, the most important lesson I’ve learned in 11 years is a simple motto: I work to live, I don’t live to work.
I have worked in very high-stakes HR situations. We have dealt with intense, high-risk scenarios. But even in those moments, I have never stayed up working until 2 AM.
Why? Because I know that I cannot function properly without sleep.
If I don’t prioritize rest, I enter a vicious cycle. I’m exhausted the next day, so my brain fires slower. A task that should take one hour now takes two. Because I’m working inefficiently, I fall further behind, which makes me feel like I have to stay up late again just to keep up.
Breaking that cycle is crucial. I would rather get a full night’s sleep and wake up ready to be ruthlessly efficient for 8 hours than grind through 12 sluggish hours where I’m barely making progress.
How to actually close the laptop when you’re overwhelmed
It’s easy to say “just stop working,” but what do you actually do when the P0 deadlines are piling up?
For me, avoiding job burnout symptoms isn’t just about ignoring the work; it’s about hyper-organization and communication.
- Focus during core hours: I block out noise and focus intensely during the day so I can get those P0s done without needing to work late.
- Master the art of de-prioritization: This is a crucial skill you need to master to scale your career (honestly, this deserves its own future blog post!). When a massive P0 project is eating up your bandwidth, you must proactively communicate what is dropping because of it. Don’t just silently let things slip; tell your manager: “I am focusing 100% on this P0 launch today, which means the quarterly report will be delayed until Tuesday.”
- Share the load: In a good team, you can raise your hand and say you are at capacity so work can be re-allocated.
Maintaining perspective
If you lose your identity to your job, you will inevitably start showing job burnout symptoms. I always try to remember that the stressful project I’m working on today will likely be forgotten in two years (sorry folks, it’s just the truth!).
Maintaining this perspective doesn’t mean I don’t produce high-quality work; it just means I don’t sacrifice my health for it. If you can ground yourself in that reality, you can last for the long haul.
Final Thoughts
Eleven years in, I’m still learning. But if you take anything away from this, let it be that you have more control over your career trajectory than you think. You can choose your manager, you can choose where to focus your energy, and you can choose to set boundaries.
Tell me in the comments: Which of these lessons is the hardest for you to implement right now? For me, it was definitely learning to say “no” to busy work!
Note: These views are my own and do not represent those of Google.
