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Google Engineering Management Mistakes

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Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#91

Post by mturmon »

kscaldef wrote: post #63
_cbsz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Closer to 8% for SS & Medicare. Also, you'll typically have deductions taken out of bonuses for your 401(k) and ESPP contributions (maybe another 20-25%). Technically, those are still your money; and ESPP will come back to you before too long, but the psychological impact of opening up your paycheck and only seeing 30-40% of the gross you were told was your bonus is pretty frustrating.

Most of those people would hopefully be above the social security threshold of around $100K/year so that would not apply. I think a marginal tax rate of more like 30-40% is more accurate.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#92

Post by VladRussian »

kenjackson wrote: post #21
plinkplonk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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. Ma…

>Notice, there's no competition against other employees or any other such race.

there is. Limited promotion and salary increases pool.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#93

Post by kscaldef »

mturmon wrote: post #91
kscaldef wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closer to 8% for SS & Medicare. Also, you'll typically have deductions taken out of bonuses for your 401(k) and ESPP contributions (maybe another 20-25%). Technically, those are still your money; and ESPP will come back to you before too long, but the psychological impact of opening up your paycheck and only seeing 30-40% of the gross you were told was your bonus is pretty frustrating.

Most of those people would hopefully be above the social security threshold of around $100K/year so that would not apply. I think a marginal tax rate of more like 30-40% is more accurate.

It depends on when in the year the bonus is delivered. If it's early in the year, it doesn't matter if you're going to hit the Social Security ceiling eventually, they take it out of your bonus. I speak from personal experience both on this matter, and on my previous accounting of only 30-40% of bonuses actually hitting my bank account.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#94

Post by piaw »

jfb wrote: post #44

It's funny how you could take "Google" out of that slide and put "Apple" in it and it would be almost word-for-word applicable. Or maybe it's not funny. Too, I recognize that this author of this presentation spent time to make it public, and sharing this sort of information is always welcome, so moaning about the format might seem a little rich. But in the glorious tradition of the internet, I'ma gonna bitch about it…

Sorry, the slide deck was there as a presentation to Facebook's VP of engineering. I wasn't about to transcribe my own talk.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#95

Post by piaw »

shimon wrote: post #20
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…

This presentation comes out against some specific incentives, but doesn't state a judgment on formal incentive schemes in general. From what I've heard, these schemes are quite alive and well at Google. So perhaps they have found a way to make them work, or perhaps they just take them for granted at this point. In either case, there must be something about the incentive structure that is serving Google well.

Depends on how you feel about the recent spate of defections to smaller companies.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#96

Post by megablast »

kscaldef wrote: post #62
kenjackson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Ma…

> "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" "Sorry, corporate priorities changed. A and B were cancelled and C was put on indefinite hol…

You are right, it is not 100% perfect so therefore it should never be used, and we should keep using the much more broken system we have now.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#97

Post by JabavuAdams »

kenjackson wrote: post #79
JabavuAdams wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really saying that you wouldn't work more than 40 hrs per week for money that makes you put in extra hours? The thing is that there's a huge number of talented people out there who will put in extra hours because the work is interesting, or they feel that if they don't, they're letting the team down. In fact, the really really talented developers seem to care less about money (after a nice base-line), and mor…

And regarding $150k/year, saw your profile and you look young (although maybe you're not). Like it or not, you'll make more as you get more experience. Maybe that's reverse ageism, I don't know, but seems to be a fact of life, even in software, which is more meritocratic than most industries. Also it appears you do game development. Unless you become a rockstar or do the next Angry Birds as a solo dev, you'll tend to…

Your observations re: gamedev are correct.

Actually, I can't really stand working for other people, so I'm doing a startup. Now I work almost all the time I'm awake, and I make 0 dollars. Hmm.

So, what city do you live in? Does your employer have EDIT> I should point out that the highest-paying jobs I've seen advertised for non-management devs in Toronto are around 100k. Architects are like 120k. Then again, a detached house in town, near a subway stop is under 400k.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#98

Post by jonnathanson »

rhizome wrote: post #48
matwood wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once worked at company that employed a lot of hourly wage type people. One exec wanted to stack rank each group of wage employees each month and fire the bottom 25%. I tried to explain to him the negative morale effect that would lead to lower performance across the board, the fact any employes who were decent would just leave on their own, and there is a significant training cost for each new employee that he was…

This is what Jack Welch did at GE in the 80s, firing 10% of management every year. It's not universally derided as an HR/Management policy. I mean, it's pretty much the entire premise of the TV show "The Apprentice," no? Pro: http://www.cogmap.com/blog/2009/11/12/force-ranking-to-fire-... Con: http://www.missionmindedmanagement.com/where-jack-welch-got-...

It bears mentioning that the long view of GE's history is becoming increasingly unkind to Jack Welch. He's starting to look pretty bad and short sighted in many respects. His legend has already been cemented, though, so I doubt anyone will care.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#99

Post by jonnathanson »

BarkMore wrote: post #16
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 just that: the employees are ranked. What the company does with the ranking can vary. The uses of a stack rank can be beneficial or harmful. At one company where I worked, the rank was used to identify employees for promotion. If an employee consistently ranks above employees at a higher level, then the employee should probably be promoted. The company also merged the ranks for smaller groups into…

The problem with any sort of ranking sysyem is that skill sets, jobs, projects, and roles are not freely fungible or normalizable. You're forced to make some totally absurd comparisons for the sake of fitting whatever the mold may be. We're not talking apples to oranges here; we're talking apples to watermelons.

Re: Google Engineering Management Mistakes

#100

Post by jfb »

piaw wrote: post #94
jfb wrote: post #44

It's funny how you could take "Google" out of that slide and put "Apple" in it and it would be almost word-for-word applicable. Or maybe it's not funny. Too, I recognize that this author of this presentation spent time to make it public, and sharing this sort of information is always welcome, so moaning about the format might seem a little rich. But in the glorious tradition of the internet, I'ma gonna bitch about it…

Sorry, the slide deck was there as a presentation to Facebook's VP of engineering. I wasn't about to transcribe my own talk.

Like I said, I appreciate that you took the time. I was just being J. Random Internet Asshole.

(But I really do hate slide decks.)

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