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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

#151

Post by digitalgangsta »

What often happens when an employee doesnt get promoted? they leave and usually are able to get that next level role in another company. Why is that?? Why does the current company require employees to show a track record and data points to be promoted, while they hire externally for the same position and often only look at resumes, interview and maybe an assessment. Why isnt it the same bar for internal vs external.

I think promotions to the next level should just be considered a new job (in the same company), and you don't 'win it' or get promoted - instead you apply for it and go through an interview process. If you study/train and get through the interview, then you get the job and all it's benefits. This way, employees can focus on doing the right things for the company and if they feel they're ready for the next level, apply for it.

If they don't get it, its based on merit - they can go back, get more experience/study etc. and reapply later. Their ego isn't destroyed, they're not pushed to to do the wrong things simply to get promoted, and I bet most people will remain at the company.

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

#152

Post by jstanley »

leros wrote: post #5

I used to manage engineers at another large tech company and this was a big problem. There was nowhere near enough big projects to get everyone the evidence they needed for promotions. As a result we ended up doing two things a lot: 1) over-engineering a feature that should be simple into something with architectural significance (e.g. a new set of services that could have just been a feature in an existing service)…

> There was nowhere near enough big projects to get everyone the evidence they needed for promotions.

Would the goal be to promote everyone? Who's going to do the work they all used to do?

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

#153

Post by esprehn »

svachalek wrote: post #76
xoofoog wrote: post #43

Former Googler here. This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often... > choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career But the root cause isn't that people want to get promoted. It's that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons. Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving US…

Yup. I left a decade ago with this exact thought. There are people there who lift mountains to create real working systems, but you're actively discouraged from doing that if you want any sort of career there. And spending two weeks a year on performance reviews just serves as a constant reminder of those values. It's easily visible from the outside too. The constant stream of one half-baked video chat solution or so…

> why would a company do that?

Or maybe it's because the company is always looking for the runaway 10X success story (like search, ads, etc). Incremental growth doesn't make a dent in the balance sheet. So they're always shutting down the products that didn't explode into a success and starting new ones to roll the dice.

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

#154

Post by ctvo »

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…

I understand the perspective of people who view their profession as solely a job, checking out after their 9-5 and doing other things with their life. This isn't me. I enjoy the work. Idealistically, I think I can make a large impact on people with my knowledge and experience. Shave off a seconds on a workflow in Google Docs end-to-end, that's a net good to humanity. It's not all about compensation. At some point it's almost only about impact, and impact often requires higher titles and putting in hours due to systems that govern these large companies.

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

#155

Post by sytelus »

xoofoog wrote: post #107
klipt wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty sexist to associate solving hard problems with masculinity. Women at Google also work on hard problems.

The sexist part is not the "hard problems" but the competitiveness. I don't think sexism is intrinsic to solving hard problems - certainly gender-inclusive companies work on hard problems successfully. But in my experience those companies tend to be more collaborative. Google needs to celebrate heroes. Like Jeff Dean. Or Sanjay Ghemawat. Those are Great Men. They are "Living Gods" because they solved Really Hard Prob…

Proving that you can lead does not neccesarily mean that you must prove others cannot lead. This is the fundamental problem in your thinking when you make such generic and universal claims. If people are doing this (and I do believe it happens a lot), then it is certainly very toxic culture but calling it "toxic masculinity" is forcing the issues into your own sexist ideologies. Also, competitiveness is not by default "masculine". You are doing massive disservice to many brilliant competative and successful women by making such blanket claims. When resources are finite, competition are natural regardless of sex. For example, we all need to demonstrate good grades out of school to get in to programs with very limited seats. Being able to compete is neither exclusive or inherent male characteristic.

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

#156

Post by BlargMcLarg »

uoaei wrote: post #136
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a culture of toxic masculinity Hyper competitiveness. There is nothing "male" in nature about pushing people to compete in a giant free for all.

But there is a masculine (in the sense of gender roles that a person assumes for themselves) way to do it, and that is what is typically expressed in these settings. And it is typically more harmful for more people on average than the feminine expressions of same.

Tell me, what do you consider "toxic masculinity"? You're not really presenting a frame for us to discuss this in.

>And it is typically more harmful for more people on average than the feminine expressions of same.

Yeah, no. This is borderline sexist. It's one thing to argue "the workplace only allows masculinity in its toxic form". It's another entirely to go "feminine better".

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #77
ZainRiz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is a bit more insidious than that As an engineer, you want to be working on cool new features too! Very few folks will be content sitting on their laurels just fixing the occasional bug or adding a touch more polish to a product that's already "done" If you setup a team to work that way, very soon you'll find that most of your engineers have left. Heck, the manager might get bored and leave too. "Okay, th…

Part of this is due to companies shooting themselves in the foot over and over, recruiting developers looking for challenges rather than grunt developers okay doing largely maintenance for a solid income. If they advocate themselves as providing the challenges for the former and filter out the latter, yes, obviously your employees are going to leave after they have to move that one div by 5 pixels for the umpteenth t…

[deleted]

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

#158

Post by [deleted] »

oofbey wrote: post #72
xoofoog wrote: post #43

Former Googler here. This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often... > choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career But the root cause isn't that people want to get promoted. It's that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons. Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving US…

Another example of this is their OKR system. If you meet all your quarterly goals at Google, that's not a success. In fact, you're frowned upon for not setting your goals high enough. Their whole management process encourages people to chase after impossible goals, and literally discourages people from getting things done.

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by summerlight »

xoofoog wrote: post #43

Former Googler here. This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often... > choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career But the root cause isn't that people want to get promoted. It's that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons. Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving US…

> the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving USEFUL problems.

This is the real problem, but people typically underestimate difficulty of correctly identifying "useful" problems at scale. Fixing a bug is nice, but correctly prioritizing bugs worth fixing is harder than said because most cases relevant engineers have limited contexts on UX and PM also has limited contexts on its difficulty. I don't deny that big techs have a bias toward solving "interesting" problems, but in many cases seemingly simple bugs are not that really easy to solve while not making any dent on business.

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

#160

Post by sytelus »

somethoughts wrote: post #85
xoofoog wrote: post #43

Former Googler here. This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often... > choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career But the root cause isn't that people want to get promoted. It's that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons. Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving US…

At least in my own small company - I'm hoping to promote the concept of the T shaped technical leader ladder. You're rewarded/measured on two metrics - breadth and depth - a depth metric - leadership in your own specific project team where you add features. - a breadth metric - you've demonstrably shown that you've gotten other teams outside your own to contribute to your project effectively. Additionally and perhaps…

You should reward only based on customer satiesfaction and adoption.
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