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Google Engineering Management Mistakes

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Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#21

Post by kenjackson »

plinkplonk wrote: post #13
kenjackson wrote: post #8

Curious, why does he end the presentation saying that a tech ladder is bad? Is the idea that they should have a management ladder, but all engineers are at the same level? That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

"Curious, why does he end the presentation saying that a tech ladder is bad?" From the blog post which provides some context to the presentation ( http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/10/facebook-and-google.html ), "Many consider Google's #1 mistake to be having a tech ladder in the first place. I covered that topic in my post on Promotion Systems ( http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/04/promotion-systems.html ) , so did not feel…

Interesting, as historically the problem has been quite the opposite. If you go back not that far most devs simply had a flat position in the org. There were no Distiguished Engineers or even Architect titles. You were a programmer.

Of course people started to get upset because the only way they could advance in the company was to go into management. A corporate VP can make $250k/year but a programmer never could. Maybe if you single handedly implemented Google you'd get a $50k bonus that year, but your base salary is still $80k/year. And maybe you get a 15% pay raise for your great contribution.

And when everyone is a "programmer" it is more apparent than even now that everyone is a replaceable cog.

It sounds like the Google promotion system is just bad. Since technical ladders don't have human resource bottlenecks (you can't make everyone the dev manager, but you can promote everyone to Level 4 SWE) you really should have very clear guidelines as to what constitutes a promotion.

When I've managed it looks like this: "This is where you're at today. To get to the next level, this is what you need to do. With your help we've put together this plan for your next 3-6 months. You'll finish up A, make sure B gets deployed. C gets checked-in with QA sign off. Do this w/o ticking anyone off or being a general jerk and that looks like Level XYZ".

Every week we talk about his/her progress against the plan. There's no pleasant surprises, but there's also no big disappointment. If you're not getting a promotion we've known about it for a while, and we're usually both not happy because I've made it clear that something is not going well.

Notice, there's no competition against other employees or any other such race. With that said, there are cases where there is little or no money associated with the promotion, but surprisingly this is often not a concern.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#22

Post by mmt »

sruffell wrote: post #10

"biggest mistake is still having a tech ladder"? What specifically is this referring to? A separate career progression for techs vs managers? I thought that was desirable so you don't need to move your best engineers out of engineering positions to promote them. I fear I'm missing something.

If I understand correctly, it's suggesting that having formal levels, regardless of whether managers do or not, is what's undesirable.

I infer the alternative to be flat, such that there's only difference in compensation, with no difference in formal title.

Perhaps I'm biased, since I very much believe you can call me whatever you want, as long as I'm suitably paid. This function-over-form attitude is why I prefer startups.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#23

Post by mfukar »

kenjackson wrote: post #11
plinkplonk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stack ranking means that if you have a group of 20 people, during each performance review cycle the group manager is expected to rank them from 1 to 20, and the company distributes bonuses and promotions accordingly. That just seems completely asinine." Worse, there is often an associated ideal distribution ("the curve") with fixed ratios for "exceeds expectations", "below expectations" and so on and managers are un…

It does seem asinine. Although frankly I can't think of many ways that seem much better. Do you always just give everyone on your team the exact same bonus?

In certain companies, bonuses are dependent on three factors: company success, team success, and individual success, based on targets agreed upon at a certain point in time.

To me, that seems a lot more fair than implicitly believing all members of a team are of equal levels of skill, productivity, etc.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#24

Post by kenjackson »

dpritchett wrote: post #14
kenjackson wrote: post #8

Curious, why does he end the presentation saying that a tech ladder is bad? Is the idea that they should have a management ladder, but all engineers are at the same level? That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Career ladders are wishful thinking and an easy way to undervalue contributions. They imply that professional development largely occurs along a single axis rather than multiple ones. Who's worth more, Peter Norvig or Marissa Mayer? What about an overachieving SWE I vs an mailing-it-in SWE III?

Who's worth more, Peter Norvig or Marissa Mayer?

Who's paid more? Who has the better title?

Who's worth more a very strong CTO of Google or an overachieving SWE I? Presumably with title comes responsibility befitting the title.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#25

Post by tptacek »

kenjackson wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one option. Not giving bonuses at all is another option. Tying incentive comp to business events (recruitment, customer acquisition, an A/B test and minor feature change that produces a 1% uplift, etc) is another option. Anything has to be better than going out of your way to stratify an otherwise well-functioning team.

I just have a hard time believing incentives don't work. For example, if I lost all of my stock options today and was told I'd never get another raise or bonus, except CoL, I'd quit on the spot. In fact I'd argue, if there were no financial incentives, most HNers wouldn't do startups. I know everyone likes to say they do it to change the world and the passion of something or other. But in reality I've yet to see many…

Incentives work great. Incentives aren't the problem. The basket of formal performance-driven compensation programs colloquially referred to as "incentive pay" are the problem. Incentive pay includes:

* Formal periodic performance reviews

* Scheduled bonuses based on "job performance"

* Ranking of employees (this is the old GE performance management paradigm; "up or out!")

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#26

Post by clr »

dpritchett wrote: post #14
kenjackson wrote: post #8

Curious, why does he end the presentation saying that a tech ladder is bad? Is the idea that they should have a management ladder, but all engineers are at the same level? That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Career ladders are wishful thinking and an easy way to undervalue contributions. They imply that professional development largely occurs along a single axis rather than multiple ones. Who's worth more, Peter Norvig or Marissa Mayer? What about an overachieving SWE I vs an mailing-it-in SWE III?

The worst part about career ladders at Microsoft was that it put people who were great engineers but terrible, terrible managers in positions of authority, because there was only one advancement path. When I left,they were just starting to create a career ladder for individual achievers, because they had finally realized this. I don't know if it actually ever happened.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#27

Post by orp »

plinkplonk wrote: post #7
tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to look up "stack ranking" just now, so, for the benefit of the class: Stack ranking means that if you have a group of 20 people, during each performance review cycle the group manager is expected to rank them from 1 to 20, and the company distributes bonuses and promotions accordingly. That just seems completely asinine.

"Stack ranking means that if you have a group of 20 people, during each performance review cycle the group manager is expected to rank them from 1 to 20, and the company distributes bonuses and promotions accordingly. That just seems completely asinine." Worse, there is often an associated ideal distribution ("the curve") with fixed ratios for "exceeds expectations", "below expectations" and so on and managers are un…

When I was a team leader, I was asked to rate my team members on a curve. Management stressed that this was important, and that we all had to conform.

I told my boss I had no intention of destroying my team, and handed out ratings and reviews as they were deserved.

Never heard this particular line from Management again.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#29

Post by al_biglan »

100% confirms my fear that this is a group of incredibly smart, hyper intelligent people who don't understand that specializing in a field (like, say... Management) isn't something you can "dabble" in and do well. My experience is that most "managers" in Google (when I interviewed, I met a few Directors, Managers and Tech Leads) are 99% technically focused. Google swung the pendulum too far the other way. Engineering should be in charge of the company, but rely on Managers to do management things, not have Engineers dabble in it (with the best of intentions) I would think if Google applied the same hiring practices to hire in hyper intelligent people with a management focus and could integrate them into the teams correctly, this would be a huge win. (I haven't interviewed there since '07, so things may have changed since then)
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