101–110 of 136 posts
There is no perfect review and compensation scheme. People will figure out how to game the system. Perhaps the best scheme is to randomly change it every few years so people can't game the system permanently.
This is great, but I think EVERY tech company struggles with finding the right balance here. Where I currently work, they also fail each and every one of these.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
"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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
The slide deck was part of a blog post. It's not my fault that news.ycombinator.com only linked to the slide deck and did not provide context: http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/10/facebook-and-google.html
He says offhand that Google is a better place for engineers to work than Apple, but as far as I can tell, Apple makes none of these five mistakes.
He says offhand that Google is a better place for engineers to work than Apple, but as far as I can tell, Apple makes none of these five mistakes.
It's impossible to be around for so long and to employ many people and not make any mistakes. No company is perfect. Coming away from this presentation thinking "pffft Company X is so much better because they don't do this" is a huge mistake - if you aren't making mistakes, you aren't trying.
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.
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)