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Google Engineering Management Mistakes

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Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#51

Post by gruseom »

LiveTheDream wrote: post #42

"The sum of money just appeared in my bank account, but was so insulting low that I felt devalued. If a manager had just talked to me about how much my work was appreciated, it would have been better than money." This is true at a certain threshold. Appreciation is immeasurably better than an demoralizing, insultingly-sized bonus. However on the other end, if you go above and beyond normal expectations and save or ea…

I would challenge this. Let's replace your trivializing phrase "a 'thank you' from your boss on the company newsletter" with just recognition, which obviously can take many forms. We have evidence, cited in this thread, that recognition is generally more satisfying and motivating than financial rewards are (at least those produced by formal incentive plans). What evidence do you have that this effect only holds "at a certain threshold"? Or that it weakens as one's work becomes more important?

It's important to resist one's intuitions when faced with a counterintuitive finding, which this is. Most of us have been conditioned to think of "never mind the touchy-feely, show me the money" as hard-nosed realism. That it turns out not to be is immensely interesting.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#52

Post by gamble »

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…

It's not only about the money, but it's still about money. No matter what the company's 'mission', anything that changes the distribution of equity or profits will bring out that truth awfully quick.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#53

Post by InclinedPlane »

codypo wrote: post #17
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…

Not only is it very political, but it forces some baffling decision making. Assume I have a team of 10 in which 5 are wonderful contributors, and that, due to stack ranking practices, only the top 1/3 of my team gets consideration for big bonuses and promotions. Here, I'm incentivized to immediately hire 5 warm bodies, thus ballooning my team to 15, so that the top 1/3 get the recognition they deserve. It's actually…

Hiring is difficult and time consuming, what you really want is a re-org (which are all too frequent at big software dev. corporations).

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#54

Post by btilly »

plinkplonk wrote: post #2

"Stack ranking system was harmful:" whoa! I didn't know Google practiced stack ranking. There is a lot of unnecessary stress generated at Microsoft due to this[1]. I would have thought the Google folks would be wise enough to avoid it. As for ".... SVP response: “If you wanted to get promoted for these non-engineering tasks, move into management" heh! How big company ish is that? The best way to join Google these day…

There are many, many ways to set up a stack rank system. People that I know who have worked at both Microsoft and Google far prefer Google's system. That is not to say that they find Google's system perfect. Just significantly preferable to Microsoft's version.

As a Google employee I am not at liberty to discuss what the differences are.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#55

Post by gaius »

biggest mistake is still having a "tech ladder"

What does that mean - there there shouldn't be an engineering career track, the only promotions are into management? (To avoid conflict of team leads being evaluated as individual contributors)

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#56

Post by DuncanIdaho »

mfukar wrote: post #23
kenjackson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I work in a company like that - and the system sucks - especially now in downturn.

Here's why: 1. Some managers (of sub-par mind you) teams scored whole their team as "excelent" - as to compensate for lack of company success. Then when the MGMT figured that out - they implemented ratio - thus again hitting the team with many excelent overachievers, etc... 2. Myself personally am often transfered from f-ed up project to a f-ed up project (since I have the ability to mostly turn them around or help to mitigate the damage) thus ensuring that I will never be compensated for the level of effort necessary to turn around a f-up.

This system just makes me sick - because I want to compete but I don't want for my collegues to suffer because of it - currently it just encourages teamicide. So this kind of scheme appears to demotivate over-achievers more than it motivates under-achievers.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#57

Post by illumin8 »

ora600 wrote: post #18
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…

I left my job at BigCo because I was part of a 8 person team where the manager was supposed to create a normal distribution out of scores from 1-5. I was one of two employees recognized for doing an excellent job, but my manager could rate just one of us as "excellent". During a performance review, my manager talked for an hour about how much I'm contributing and what an amazing job I do. Then he ranked me as average…

This is actually how almost every large company works. Scale is 1 to 5, average is a 3, 2 is exceeds expectations, "Nobody ever gets a 1."

The problem is that the grading is done on a curve, so that for every 2 given out, someone else must get a 4. If you get a 4, you are considered below expectations, and must be put on a "personal improvement plan," or managed out of the team.

Because of this pressure, nobody wants to give out anything other than a 3. So they resort to stupid tricks like giving out "high 3s" or "low 3s" instead of 2s or 4s.

The desire to model employee performance with data and manage out the bottom 10% has a crushing effect on the morale of any small technically focused team.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#58

Post by brown9-2 »

al_biglan wrote: post #29

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…

I wouldn't spend too much time looking down your nose at Google's mistakes here, as piaw cautions that they're still a really great company to work for:

-At 1500 people, Google was more agile and less political than most 200 person startups!

- At any given size, Google was the best company in its class to work for.

- At its current size, Google is still more desirable an employer for engineers than Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, and many other well known names.

I think you'd find many similar stories at other software companies if you applied as focused of a lens at them.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#59

Post by _cbsz »

shadowmatter wrote: post #41
martincmartin wrote: post #28

What is a "Peer bonus structure"? I appears in #3 Recognition, "Peer bonus structure was very well done, but not widely used inside engineering."

You can give a peer bonus of $200 to any individual with their manager's approval (which is very easy to get). They encourage giving peer bonuses for when someone goes the extra mile on something, but very few engineers initiate giving a peer bonus. After tax, it's about $100, hence the "I can poop $100" bit.

Is "close to 50%" the going marginal tax rate in general? I calculate ~30% federal + ~10% California + possibly ~6% social security & Medicare to get that number; did I miss anything? (current grad student with a marginal rate a lot closer to 20%, haven't had the joy of full-on taxes yet)
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