It was in the pipeline, and it seemed silly to leave just weeks before it was in effect because:
1) If you are a regretted departure, there is a good chance you'll be hired back at your old level with a minimum of fuss. There is a pretty big difference in salary, bonus factor and probably GSU grants between L5 and L6, so I did not want to loose that advantage should I ever want to return.
2) It was a personal goal. I suck at whiteboarding, so was hired as L5 when I should probably have been L6. So I did not want to leave before I finally got to the level that I thought I should have been at all along.
3) There is an internal Google system (go/epitaphs) where you can look up an Xoogler, and it will tell you when they worked at Google, what their title was, what their level was, etc. If I ever wanted to join a startup that was being founded by Googlers, I thought it would look better if they could confirm the L6 was claiming on my resume. If I had left after the promo was announced to me, but before it was effective, it would look like I was an L5 and just spinning a story.
1) If you are a regretted departure, there is a good chance you'll be hired back at your old level with a minimum of fuss. There is a pretty big difference in salary, bonus factor and probably GSU grants between L5 and L6, so I did not want to loose that advantage should I ever want to return.
2) It was a personal goal. I suck at whiteboarding, so was hired as L5 when I should probably have been L6. So I did not want to leave before I finally got to the level that I thought I should have been at all along.
3) There is an internal Google system (go/epitaphs) where you can look up an Xoogler, and it will tell you when they worked at Google, what their title was, what their level was, etc. If I ever wanted to join a startup that was being founded by Googlers, I thought it would look better if they could confirm the L6 was claiming on my resume. If I had left after the promo was announced to me, but before it was effective, it would look like I was an L5 and just spinning a story.