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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
#212The author did a really good job of pointing out problem of promo culture, but the solutions suggested are more inspirational than actionable. All founders/execs/early employees are easily aligned on compabt success. But how do you align incentive of later hires? In order to reduce time spent on perf, you'd have to rely on a few people who knows an employee's work instead of a larger peer group and committee. The per…
i remember reading in some startup oriented text that founder driven values works up to about 50 people. once your company grows beyond that a culture shift is inevitable. i don't know what the answers are to manage that shift and avoid it going into the wrong direction.
Should avoid hiring people from big companies that are used to promotions every year.
Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The whole usage of the phrase "Toxic masculinity" to describe "Competitiveness" is some throughly pointless gendering which only serves to confuse matters.
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Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
#214A problem I've noticed working at larger companies is complexity simply for the sake of demonstrating complexity. In order to demonstrate technical prowess or importance, engineers will push a project in terms of headcount, solution, etc.
Good engineering can look simple. The best engineers I've worked with will make things look easy. This can be at odds with promo driven culture.
Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
#215Former 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…
"Easy, no one gets promoted for fixing anything, but creating the next broken thing? That's vision." -- svachalek
THIS IS A GREAT QUOTE! UPVOTE FOR REAL INSIGHT.
Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
#216Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
#217Thoughts on the following idea? I think Google's incentives have a problem similar to the incentives of any other company: It's open-ended, and possible to game everything. Whether promotions are based on the "hard problems" solved by your work, or the revenue it generates for the company -- or hell, even the software quality/performance -- this will always cause drama, people will get mad and leave. Any choice will lead to some positives and negatives for the whole company.
You might hate Google's choice, maybe enough to leave, but you might end up joining Microsoft/MANA and hate their incentives too. Basically, you're back to square one.
Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
#218Former 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…
> Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving USEFUL problems.
Playing the devil's advocate here, but shouldn't one position in the technical career ladder be correlated with technical expertise? Furthermore, technical ability is something that the employee has some control over: whereas impact to the business has more external factors.
The incentive problem to align people with the needs of the users is difficult. I imagine the best way to handle that would be through bonuses/profit sharing for high impact work, whereas promotions focus on difficulty of work.
Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
#219Former 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 former Googler here (from waaaaaaayyyy back -- I was employee #104). The reason Google is the way it is, and many organizations are the way they are, is that they are trying to reproduce the circumstances that led to their initial success. Google initially succeeded by solving what was at the time a Really Hard Problem, and so the people at the top want to reproduce that by encouraging people to solve more Re…
... the Lisa, the Apple III, firewire, calling wifi "Airport" for way too long, that home speaker boombox thing, the weird round mouse that came with the iMac, ...
But seriously, I remember reading on here a comment from a previous Apple employee that all of their products are designed with the primary goal of looking good in a keynote presentation, which makes sense for their image, but results in underdeveloped products that "disappear" after a few years.
Re: The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't think you're disagreeing with the parent poster, you just re-framed it terms that gloss over the downsides.