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Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

mtlynch.io

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Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#191

Post by googlethrow »

Google is changing the promotion process such that managers have much more power (for all promotions up to level 5 == senior swe).

Previously it used to be, as Michael says, very much in the hands of the committee members who never heard about you or even your team.

Now the committee will be composed of your manager and some other two managers from a related team. The committee will not see your own promotion rationale or your own description of your projects and achievements, rather it will be the job of your manager to present these points and advocate on your behalf. The committee (except for your manager) will also see only limited peer feedback compared to before -- no free form text, only multiple choice questions/answers.

If all three managers agree that you meet the bar, you get promoted.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#192

Post by zhausjgzga »

dahart wrote: post #29

> I drastically reduced the time developers spent repairing those failures, but there were no metrics that tracked developer time. For several jobs in a row, I've felt that helping others on a team is undervalued and under-recorded. I've been planning to implement the "assist" metric, similar to basketball, on my own team for a while. The idea would be something along the lines of everyone gets a set of assist points…

At my job, we use HeyTaco, a Slack bot. Every day you can give up to five tacos out by @mentioning somebody with a :taco: emoticon. If you answer a question or help somebody out, they will probably give you some tacos. The app keeps track of who gets the most tacos with leaderboards and the like. This has instilled a culture of helping others out on the team, by gamifying it and making it visible.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#193

Post by jartelt »

derekp7 wrote: post #171
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes my stomach turn is the interpersonal aspect. How can all your teammates see you fail through no fault of your own for days and pretend they don't notice. Unfortunately in my experience, that's not a rare occurrence.

I can give some insight from my own experience. In my current position, there are a large number of "things" that I've had to figure out, either by reverse engineering, reading code, or intuition. So I get constantly bombarded with helping others get unstuck. Well, when it comes time for a project meeting, those on the meeting are far removed from the other groups that I constantly have to help out. And it sounds lik…

It is also easy to get irked when people are seemingly unwilling to do any digging or reverse engineering on their own and go straight to asking for help. Allowing someone to search for an answer for several hours may seem like a waste of their time, but it also could allow them to learn how to figure out a problem on their own. Of course their is a fine line between being a jerk and not helping someone because you want to maintain your technical superiority and not helping someone because you want them to learn how to problem solve. Clearly you do not want to leave someone roadblocked for 48 hours when they are trying hard and you know the fix is some stupid bug. But, it's not always super straightforward either.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#194

Post by vinceguidry »

There is no reason anymore for the ambitious to work for the man. They will forever be trying to think of a lord-serf relationship as a mercantile one. Aided by earnest attempts by the company to help them delude themselves into thinking so.

If you want control over your economic destiny, you need to be in business for yourself. There is no middle ground between being a serf and being a merchant. At least not in our profession.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#195

Post by babesh »

Isamu wrote: post #78
shados wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one of my previous teams, we did away with individual metrics because they "punished" team players. If an engineer spent most of a week helping another with their issue, it made them look bad in whatever tracker we used by almost every metric. I prefered sticking to trying to optimize whole team velocity and using 1 on 1s and peer reviews to track individual performance where it was needed (eg: compensation review…

Yeah we don't do metrics, we gather short appraisals from a list of people that you provide, that you worked with throughout the year. You are encouraged to provide names of people that are outside of your group. So if you helped some other team, this is the way you cash in on that. Helping other teams succeed is a cultural thing and your organization has to encourage it with its practices and procedures.

That is gamed too. You just don't include the names of people you have wronged: the bugs you have left for others to fix, the undocumented code, the projects you were supposed to complete but got reassigned so that you could work on something with higher promotion possibilities, the delays you cause in other people's work, etc...

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#197

Post by AlexC04 »

popcat wrote: post #182
eldavido wrote: post #91

To author: you lost the political game. I busted my ass at a startup for years and also lost the political game. So I'm speaking from experience here. You can either get all mad and worked up and pissed off about it, and waste years of your career (as I did) being pissed off, stubborn, and refusing to change. Or figure out how to play. I'd like to think there are places with better politics but I think it's pretty en…

As a junior engineer, what the best way to learn about and master the political game? I feel like it all goes way over my head. Does anyone have any recommended reading?

I think the author said it in the article: Optimize for promotion. Work from day 1 to game the metrics. If it helps your metrics, do it, if it doesn't approach with caution.

If you start that from day 1 you'd be 2 years ahead of the author.

Honestly, it sounds like a really shitty way to live. I personally prefer doing great work and having faith that it will work out.

It has, a lot slower than that, but I'm proud of the work I've done and enjoy my work daily.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#198

Post by kamaal »

whack wrote: post #159
phamilton wrote: post #64

Writing documentation and fixing bugs is in fact not the bar for a senior software engineer. I don't disagree with the promotion committee on that front. IIRC, Senior Software Engineer is a terminal level. You aren't expected to advance any more once you reach that level. Some do, but you can stay a Senior Engineer for the rest of your career and that's fine. So certainly "can fix bugs and write docs and tests" isn't…

> Writing documentation and fixing bugs is in fact not the bar for a senior software engineer. The bar for a senior engineer should be identifying the biggest problems plaguing an organization, and successfully tackling them. In some cases, the biggest problem is building and launching something shiny and impressive. In other cases, the biggest problem is fixing bugs. Refactoring complex/unstable systems to make them…

>>The bar for a senior engineer should be identifying the biggest problems plaguing an organization, and successfully tackling them.

Yeah, right.

People who hold the current power will never let you do it. For one simple reason. No one likes to be promoting their next boss.

In fact in most companies merely talking about 'biggest problems plaguing an organization' can get you fired. No likes to be told that the current bosses aren't up-to their job.

Re: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

#200

Post by GVIrish »

paganel wrote: post #113
GVIrish wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We miss the perimeter shooter who positions themselves just so to pull two defenders out of position, but give credit to the point guard who makes the now-easy pass for the "assist". The NBA has an advanced metric for that called gravity. As you could imagine Steph Curry's gravity is through the roof. Another related metric is +/- for when a player is on the floor. That one is more nebulous and error prone but it i…

> The NBA has an advanced metric for that called gravity. As you could imagine Steph Curry's gravity is through the roof. Happen to have any additional reading on that? (only if it's a handy link for you, otherwise I'll google it). I've re-started watching NBA recently after about 20 years or so, and it's the first time when I hear about this concept, one which sounds very intriguing and interesting. Maybe it was als…

I can't think of any one particular article that goes into the details of gravity and some of the related metrics (respect and distraction being the others). Maybe lookup NBA gravity scores and SportVU. I believe the company that sells the SportVU system are the primary ones tracking that metric (and delivering it to teams).
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