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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

#221

Post by somethoughts »

ZainRiz wrote: post #46
angarg12 wrote: post #16

It gets worse than promo-driven development. Recently we had a chat with a lead from another team. Their product has a lot of similarities with ours so we sync up every now and then to bounce ideas off each other. They recently release a big change that we thought didn't provide much value, so we asked him about it. His candid answer was "you know how it works, we have a service running in production, so we need to m…

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…

I think you nailed the crux of the problem.

The challenge for engineering management is how to provide metrics to measure your bus factor reduction efforts and the strength of your insurance prior to the emergency.

It is highly possible though that the new support team members are actually coasting up until the disaster so you didn't really have the insurance you thought you were paying for.

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

#222

Post by oicU00 »

mirntyfirty wrote: post #147
oicU00 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to show on investor calls the line went up. We’re propping up the wealth of a generation that has no idea how anything works, but they got there first so of course they are now the de facto deciders of our agency.

True, it’s difficult to know how things work when they become needlessly complicated and one is unable to move on from a project that is essentially complete.

It’s presumed needlessly complicated is necessary to make the line go up; behind the scenes, they say, mathmagical forces exist that only the chosen few truly understand. You see everything is really a graph of infinite brand names, and the flow of value is determined by the taxonomy of brand ownership.

Many a study have been attempted to quantify what character qualities or technologies boost productivity. Their model becomes so nebulous no reasonable conclusions can be made.

But now of course computers learning helps us untangle that web and low and behold the same economic winners emerged! Wow!

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

#223

Post by tfp137 »

iffe_closure wrote: post #108

I work at Google and the who promotion culture is very toxic. People are incentivized to "Launch" things just in time to get promo and only to abandon it or switch teams in search of the next promo. It also gets hypercompetitive and harms teamwork sometimes. The promotions are usually B.S. anyway, they add stress and usually remove a good functioning engineer from doing good work into more "non technical leadership"…

The dual-ladder system exists to fix something that is broken but ends up breaking it more.

In essence, there's the E9/O1 problem. An elite engineer with 25 years of experience simply knows more than an entry-level manager. Organizations try to solve this by dual-laddering and saying that there are "Director-equivalent" engineers (e.g. Staff or Principal) and so on, to rectify the obvious injustice of a scenario where a fresh MBA is seen to outrank the best engineers because he manages a team and they don't. The problem is that this dual-laddering makes it worse, because it's so much harder to move up the engineering ladder. If you're a Software Manager I at Google, you have to shit five or six different beds not to make Director within ~6 years and VP within ~12. On the other hand, making Principal+ Engineer is quite difficult, especially if you're not in MTV. So it perpetuates a false equivalency in which the managerial and product folk are gods (because of their swift, easy promotions) while most of the engineers are leftovers.

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

#224

Post by zeruch »

zarkov99 wrote: post #110
xoofoog wrote: post #82

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

When it is prevalent (including in the irony of subsequent commentary), it shouldn't be surprising to see it called out, hyperbole notwithstanding.

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

#225

Post by jedberg »

joshuamorton wrote: post #142
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…

So what happens when you promote someone for maintaining the same system for years? When do you stop promoting them? There's a person on my team who is happy to maintain what he works on. He has worked on fundamentally the same project for over a decade. He's a senior level engineer, and as far as I know doesn't have aspirations beyond that, which is perfectly fine. Assuming he keeps doing that work, and no more, doe…

You wouldn't promote them. But if they picked up a new system and started maintaining that one too, then they could get a promotion for expanding their scope and for getting more efficient at maintaining the old system.

Or, if they are both adding new features and maintaining them, then that could merit a promotion too. They are still doing innovative work, and they are maintaining it and fixing it.

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

#226

Post by titzer »

I spent over 9 years at Google. Got promoted 3 times. Was a manager.

Google is absolutely bonkers when it comes to promotions. At every opportunity to provide feedback towards upper management, I had one consistent refrain:

Everyone needs to chill the f### out.

The stakes (seem) too high. The amount of time invested is too high. The amount of discussion, rehashing, tinkering, rejiggering, and calibration is just too high. It's off the charts how obsessed seemingly everyone is about it. It's off the charts how much company time was blown on it and psychological stress people were subjected to. IMHO, the process at Google doesn't need to be readjusted or tinkered with, but somehow de-escalated; like it needs to not be such a huge f'ing deal.

One positive development ~5 years ago is that promotion to levels L5 and below were mostly moved out of the IC's hands and into their manager's. Despite being a manager at the time (and creating more work for me), I thought this was great. It reduced the bias in the system from ICs writing up their own packets, which disadvantaged poor writers and poor self-promoters less. It got employees thinking less about promotion, since there was less they could control or do. There were other biases that crept up, but it helps the psychology of day-to-day life to not be stressing over the frantic ladder climb.

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

#227

Post by majormajor »

lisper wrote: post #210
brokencode wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple has done a fantastic job of incremental improvements on their products rather than chasing the next cool thing. Can you name a company that has actually been doing this better? For instance, they often resist new technologies like high refresh rate or OLED screens, 5G, etc., until they feel the technology is developed sufficiently and won’t impact battery life. There are other brands that compete by mak…

> Can you name a company that has actually been doing this better? No. But that doesn't mean that Apple hasn't fallen prey to this phenomenon. It just means that they set the bar incredibly high to begin with. My first Apple was an Apple II, and I have never been without an Apple product since then. I currently own three Apple phones and eight Apple laptops. But for me the overall usability and quality of Apple produ…

The MacBook design has only changed step-by-step in small increments since the 2003 aluminum Powerbooks. The iPhone has pretty similarly used just a couple of basic designs since 2013.

So I'd definitely say Apple is best in class at incremental changes with the exception of the touchbar/butterfly MBPs. I'd just disagree with you over the quality: my M1 MBP is a big improvement over even the pre-touchbar ones in basically every way.

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

#228

Post by judge2020 »

lumost wrote: post #189
brokencode wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple has done a fantastic job of incremental improvements on their products rather than chasing the next cool thing. Can you name a company that has actually been doing this better? For instance, they often resist new technologies like high refresh rate or OLED screens, 5G, etc., until they feel the technology is developed sufficiently and won’t impact battery life. There are other brands that compete by mak…

I haven't worked at apple, but I suspect that this is the result of only having Some companies like to spam new products, others like to perfect what they have.

Apple spent ~22B in R&D in 2021, but they definitely have large-scale decision makers expecting near-perfection on anything considered for released, probably before they even push it to DVT.

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

#230

Post by ALittleLight »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #138
xoofoog wrote: post #107

Earlier 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…

It seems that you missed their point: the toxicity is non-gendered. (I say you missed their point but they also kinda did a poor job of making it, FWIW.) There might be a point that Google's culture in practice is male-dominant but I think it's mistaken thinking that puts the toxicity on the male-dominance. Consider your words as if they were being said about a woman: > Proving you're smart by solving hard problems i…

It's hard to claim a phrase like "toxic masculinity" is non-gendered.
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