This is good advice, but be advised that you won't be able to transfer for 18 months.

I transferred after ~3 months because my original team wasn't a good fit for me. One of the topics that is mentioned during orientation is that Google is designed to be fault tolerant at multiple levels. If a server goes down, the workload needs to be able to move to a different server. If a Noogler is placed a team that isn't a good fit for their skillset, they need to be able to move to a different team. This happened to the person giving the orientation when he was first hired and it still happens today. Some people end up quitting because they can't adapt, while others successfully recover from the error.

that's weird, because my experience is exactly the opposite! I've spent about 4 months on my team so far, which has very little to do with my background, and after I realized just how bad the fit was, I started a conversation with my tech lead, his supervisors, and some HR people about moving to a team that would be a better fit (which had openings at the time).

3 weeks of conversations later, I was told that the 18 month rule was "fair" in everyone's opinion, and that if I'm really concerned about working on projects that are interesting to me, I should just find one to spend my 20% time on (easier said than done).

In my experience the 18 months 'rule' is much more a guideline than a hard rule. I've personally seen a number of cases where someone transferred much sooner than that for a variety of reasons.

If you approach situations like this in a constructive and professional manner, the company will go to great lengths to find a solution. At least that's been my experience.

unfortunately, it certainly doesn't seem like the company does this all the time. i got placed onto a team which has no bearing on my background experience whatsoever, and after approaching my tech lead and some HR people to continue the conversation, everyone else decided to agree that the 18 months guideline was "fair" and that the 20% projects were there to satisfy my need for interesting problems.

i had potential teams lined up (one of which I would've been allocated to initially, had they not hit their new grad hire cap), so it was certainly a very frustrating experience. perhaps they care more about established engineers than recent graduates?

I thought you could ask for a reallocation right away. The 18 months might be if you stay more than a couple of months in your preallocated position.

18 months? That's a problem if you have the bad fortune of being put on a project you don't enjoy. I've heard you have little to no say in the project you get assigned when you first join, is this true?

No, while this was once true, this is no longer true at all. You should know exactly what team you will be working on before you ever get an offer.

This is also not entirely accurate. I got my offer a good 5 months before I even knew which teams I had a chance to speak with before the allocation process, let alone before I knew which team I would be placed on.

That agrees with my experience. I got team information yesterday and expect an offer today.

My advice is reach out to the team and talk to the engineers on the team. Even meet up with them for a Google lunch.

This is the best way to align everyone's expectations.

When I got the offer, I interviewed the 6 teams from two product areas before I accepted the offer.

This is always good advice whether the offer is from Google or a Big Bank.

Talk to the manager, talk to your coworkers. Once they give you the offer, their job is to market the job to you. Use that as an opportunity to interview your future coworkers. When I was considering finance job, I've even gone as far as asking the future coworkers to implement different algorithms and/or talk about their system architecture. If it was too crazy, it was an immediate sign that I won't be happy there.