8 Lessons from my Mentors at Google

After 6 years at Google, here are 8 things I’ve learned that make me a better person, manager, and contributor.

I started at Google just over five years ago. A year before that, I was a TVC. Nothing ever really stays the same at a place like Google. People come and go, priorities change, and culture evolves. That hit home for me this year especially. In just the first half of this year, two of my closest mentors left my immediate orbit to go do other things. First off, how dare they? Second, It got me thinking — and that thinking lead me to a deep feeling of appreciation and gratitude that I wanted to reflect on.

Even though I’ve been an Engineering Program Manager the whole time, I’ve been lucky to work on some wildly different stuff. I managed Google+’s content and community management team before helping the platform find an enterprise fit as Currents. I had a crisis of imposter syndrome and worked on account infrastructure for Family Link. (Note: this did not help my imposter syndrome and was probably a big mistake.) I had a stint on an Area 120 project. Most recently, I started Google’s Internal Community Management Team.

Reentering the office and seeing people face to face again, I’m feeling drawn back to the grounding advice from people who’ve spent…