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The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

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Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

#91

Post by svachalek »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #6
baby wrote: post #2

The other perverse incentive is that you will end up with engineers trying to extract as much value from other engineers as possible, because it becomes part of leveling up: how much you make other people deliver. Even as an IC. The other problem is that it becomes this game where nobody dares giving bad feedback to one another, because you know they could retaliate which could damage your chances to get a promotion.…

Were strict hierarchies really that bad? It seems that just about anything else devolves into an ontological mess of Byzantine proportions. At one stage in my career I was reporting to 4 different bosses in this weird interleaved hypercube topology. I spent most of my time giving status updates

At least for performance reviews it's so much easier. If your boss hates you for some reason, that sucks, but you can just move on. It's a lot simpler than trying to please a dozen different people simultaneously though.

Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

#93

Post by babl-yc »

I wonder how much newer trends of transparent career ladders are at play here.

The old way wasn't perfect either, but generally high performance was rewarded with broader scope. I assumed hard, high quality work was the way to get promoted.

Now with many public career ladders, employees realize they should take on broader scope (larger, complex projects) to look the part of a more senior engineer, even if that doesn't match their team's immediate needs.

Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

#94

Post by lesuorac »

burnoutgal wrote: post #20

Seriously, why do people care about being promoted beyond senior/staff? Even at a smaller company you're making 200k/year, you probably have a good handle on your job, why not just coast? There's a big discontinuity in comp if you can make it to the director level, but being a manager or senior staff seems like a ton of work for no benefit. I work like 20 hours a week at my job, I almost quit because it's extremely b…

A promotion (pre-director in CA/NYC) can easily be an increase of 50k (~25%) in comp so it's pretty meaningful.

Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

#95

Post by ducttapecrown »

An interesting way of looking at this is that it's the Iron Law of Bureaucracy at work.

The Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle

Also called the tragedy of the commons.

Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

#96

Post by ryandrake »

sokoloff wrote: post #73
nineplay wrote: post #31

My experience has been that some companies pressure engineers to want to advance. If you come into a performance review and say "actually I'm happy where I am" it's seen as a lack of motivation and will count as a mark against you. I had a boss say to me "I always want to move to the next level and I expect the same of my reports". Whatever, I guess I'm a poor employee because I like my job.

I’ve openly stated that I want my retirement job to be an SWE3-ish role somewhere. High enough to have interesting, somewhat challenging work, but with negative desire to climb the ranks any further.

Problem with that is due to inflation, you're making less and less compensation every year. Standard "you're doing a good job" raises often do not meet inflation, and certainly are not right now where inflation is higher than the recent historical mean. This is not a problem for some people, maybe including you, but I think most people have a general vague career expectation of making more when they're 60 than they make when they're 50, than they make when they're 40, and so on--even if they don't plan to be an overachieving "ladder climber".

Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

#97

Post by bluGill »

sokoloff wrote: post #73
nineplay wrote: post #31

My experience has been that some companies pressure engineers to want to advance. If you come into a performance review and say "actually I'm happy where I am" it's seen as a lack of motivation and will count as a mark against you. I had a boss say to me "I always want to move to the next level and I expect the same of my reports". Whatever, I guess I'm a poor employee because I like my job.

I’ve openly stated that I want my retirement job to be an SWE3-ish role somewhere. High enough to have interesting, somewhat challenging work, but with negative desire to climb the ranks any further.

i want to retire as an engineer. If I went management I'd be much more likely to get to this high paying jobs in the executive suite. What I don't want is to be doing the same thing again and again with no recognition of how useful I am. If I'm not useful, then I need to get into a different position.

Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

#98

Post by bradlys »

aroman wrote: post #65
ahtihn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a joke? What is median household income for families in both of these cities? Fairly sure it's below 100k.

In San Francisco, the median household income was $120k. That’s 2 years ago mind you, and a lot of inflation has occurred since then. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia

Doesn’t account for the fact that many are under rent control, own houses from decades ago, etc.

It’s better to look at the average incomes of people who are buying houses in SF.

Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

#99

Post by strongpigeon »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #13
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #4

Most promotions I've seen are when someone has a huge amount of tribal knowledge about some system and the company cannot afford to have them leave. So they get promoted. This is even within FAANG, where this narrative about impact or 10x developers is common. Not saying promotions dont happen for those reasons, just that huge systems that few people understand lead to promotions for those who do understand them

Not really? Promos incentive "up and out" culture, where people switch teams after getting promoted. Machiavellian managers respond by not promoting their best people, instead forever dangling the carrot of "deliver this and get promoted next cycle!".

“You got a really high CME this cycle” is the meme du jour I’ve heard
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