Fascinating story, Chuck, thanks for the insights.
One dumb question: can you translate "got slotted"? I'm guessing it has to do what team you end up in, but I have a feeling there may be a more nuanced meaning to it?
Sorry, Google tried to solve the problem of 'mismatched' titles in their own unique way. Since "Senior Engineer" at some persons previous job might not compare to what Google called a "Senior Engineer", Google delayed determining what your "pay grade" was until after you had done some work.
So Google would hire you, you would spend 6 months being useless trying to figure out what the heck was going on, then you'd get on a starter project or some first "real" project, and 12 to 18 months later your manager would put you in front of a committee of folks who would look at your work output, and then pick what "slot" you were.
If you were slotted "lower" than you had been hired at, they had a talk with you (and it meant you couldn't get a pay raise until you had been promoted twice). It also had an annoying tendency to slot people who had been "Principal Engineer" or "Distinguished Engineer" at a previous company into "Junior Engineer" at Google, which really pissed them off (and sometimes lead to "management action" in the form of a formalized "performance improvement plan").
Basically the more senior you were, the more likely you were to wash out. Since Jeff was a "Principle Engineer" at eBay prior to Google I'm guessing that this was his path as well. Probably got slotted as 'senior engineer' (which is three levels below Google's equivalent of Principal Engineer) and said "Screw this, I've paid my dues already, see ya!" But that is just speculation on my part.
One dumb question: can you translate "got slotted"? I'm guessing it has to do what team you end up in, but I have a feeling there may be a more nuanced meaning to it?