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Google Engineering Management Mistakes

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Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#31

Post by iampims »

tptacek wrote: post #3

Wow, this is one of the coolest things HN has found in awhile. It's remarkable how, time and time again, formal incentive compensation schemes are shown to cause more harm than benefit. I started paying attention when Joel Spolsky called it out 6-7 years ago, and then read Peopleware (an excellent book) which reiterates the point (and calls it "teamicide"), and then read the Harvard Business Review article ("Why Ince…

Regarding the Incentive system actively promotes bad behavior on slide 7, Dan Pink gave a very interesting talk on Motivation at TED — with surprising results:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#32

Post by mrcharles »

mattyb wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #3

Wow, this is one of the coolest things HN has found in awhile. It's remarkable how, time and time again, formal incentive compensation schemes are shown to cause more harm than benefit. I started paying attention when Joel Spolsky called it out 6-7 years ago, and then read Peopleware (an excellent book) which reiterates the point (and calls it "teamicide"), and then read the Harvard Business Review article ("Why Ince…

Spolsky's article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html

One of my coworkers has one of those Ship It awards. It's... pretty sad.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#33

Post by Splines »

iampims wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #3

Wow, this is one of the coolest things HN has found in awhile. It's remarkable how, time and time again, formal incentive compensation schemes are shown to cause more harm than benefit. I started paying attention when Joel Spolsky called it out 6-7 years ago, and then read Peopleware (an excellent book) which reiterates the point (and calls it "teamicide"), and then read the Harvard Business Review article ("Why Ince…

Regarding the Incentive system actively promotes bad behavior on slide 7, Dan Pink gave a very interesting talk on Motivation at TED — with surprising results: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

TED appears to be down. Here's the same (I think) video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#34

Post by pyrhho »

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?

Additionally, poorly structured career ladders can to lead to "Promotion Until Incompetence", where people are repeatedly promoted until they are unable to warrant another promotion. Thus, everyone is stuck at a level of mild incompetence.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#35

Post by shrikant »

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…

I was in a place that decided to give out bonuses to my team (consisting of 3 members and a leader) in the following way:

1. Allocate fixed amount to give out per team

2. Have team leader's manager determine how that pie would be shared between team leader and us 3 team members.

3. NOT have 360° feedback

4. Incorporate team leader feedback on team's performance into this decision

I'm not sure what type of HR schmuck thought up that scheme. About a month after 'self evaluation', we were called into 1-1 meetings with the TL, who told us each separately how disappointing our performance had been, and the usual spiel about 'taking initiative' and 'stepping up' and 'moving to the next level'.

Shortly after that we found out the three of us had received 0% each of the pie allotted to our team as a bonus. And the team leader had waltzed away with ALL of it.

That's right: an allegedly disappointing team who'd failed to achieve any of its goals was compensated for by a super-human team leader who had somehow magically overcome all our shortcomings to over-achieve so much, that even the organisation-wide "curve" was left by the wayside to reward such awesomeness.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#36

Post by gcheong »

tptacek wrote: post #3

Wow, this is one of the coolest things HN has found in awhile. It's remarkable how, time and time again, formal incentive compensation schemes are shown to cause more harm than benefit. I started paying attention when Joel Spolsky called it out 6-7 years ago, and then read Peopleware (an excellent book) which reiterates the point (and calls it "teamicide"), and then read the Harvard Business Review article ("Why Ince…

Most likely because they didn't bother to actually look at the available evidence.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#37

Post by rdouble »

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.

If you just want to do interesting work, an issue with career ladders is that little interesting work filters down to the people at the bottom of the ladder. This becomes a catch 22 for rookie employees. It becomes difficult to level up, because you're never working on anything that will wow your reviewers. In fact, the reward for excelling at boring but necessary tasks is often being stuck on those tasks forever. Thus begins the cycle of churn and lowering of hiring standards.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#38

Post by kreek »

Splines wrote: post #33
iampims wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the Incentive system actively promotes bad behavior on slide 7, Dan Pink gave a very interesting talk on Motivation at TED — with surprising results: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

TED appears to be down. Here's the same (I think) video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

or with animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#40

Post by paradox95 »

Any large company is going to have those same mistakes. There is really no way around it. Especially the part about only the big sexy project got recognition and not the little grungy tasks. In a company of 20,000, unless you have a 1:5 manager to employee ration at all levels you can't avoid that. If these are Google's biggest mistakes then I would happily go to work for them.
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