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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

#301

Post by pavlov »

GoatOfAplomb wrote: post #278
titzer wrote: post #226

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…

It would be great if promo wasnt such a big deal. But when I look at the comp for an L3 software engineer, and the comp for an L5 software engineer, I have a hard time seeing how you could make people pay less attention to promo. I guess you could switch the process to "promo after N years of not being fired at your current level" but that seems even worse.

Why exactly does it seem worse? Last year I switched from a FAANG to a Series B startup that does experience-based levels, and in my observation it's just better in every way.

Here's a blog post explaining their approach:

https://www.daily.co/blog/rethinking-levels-promotions-and-s...

Maybe it's not possible to switch from a cutthroat promotion-oriented environment to this, but it's worth thinking about for anyone building up a software engineering workplace.

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

#302

Post by thewarrior »

ertian wrote: post #276
chestervonwinch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Raising up and increasing the productivity of your peers sounds like a good thing. I think I'm missing how this is a bad outcome due to a perverse incentive. Are you saying the value extrac…

> the focus on your raising your peers detracts from more important business goals? It's this. Actually doing work is seen as simple and unworthy of a higher-level engineer. Good engineers focused on problems (fixing complex bugs in distributed systems, adding fallbacks and failovers, improving the UI or performance of internal tools, etc) can add significant value to the company...but they won't be rewarded for it,…

It’s basically cargo cult engineering. There’s the appearance of engineering and sophistication but the actual substance is hollow.

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

#303

Post by lisper »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #288
lisper wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll see your M1 and raise you a trash-can Mac Pro, and the fact that anything other than a Mac Pro can't be upgraded. But it's actually more about the software than the hardware. Once upon a time Macs were the computer that Just Worked. But recent devices, including phones, tablets, and laptops, have major usability issues. It's more about the software than the hardware, but with Apple you literally cannot separate…

I somewhat disagree? To be honest, the current UI look-and-feel hasn't bothered me at all. I can't recall ever being confused by it (with one exception: iPad multitasking). Perhaps I've simply internalized it to such a degree that I accept it, warts and all, without thinking about it critically. But it's difficult for me to be too upset by a UI that really has "just worked" for me. As long as my customized keyboard s…

I think this is a topic about which people can reasonably disagree :-)

I'll just add that my complaint about inability to upgrade does not just apply to laptops. It's the whole product line (other than the Pro) including the Mini and the iMac. If I have an iMac and I need more RAM, I have to throw out a perfectly good SSD, processor, and display. There is just no excuse for that. I have a NUC that is essentially a hardware equivalent of a (pre-M1) Mini. The NUC is both smaller than a Mini and upgradable so I know it's possible.

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

#304

Post by lliamander »

ALittleLight wrote: post #237
lliamander wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If you are a developer who just implements what the PMs tell you to (more or less) then I agree that you shouldn't get extra credit when the project is a massive success. If the product earns a billion or loses millions you didn't have anything to do with that - you just implemented the designs of other people. If you significantly contribute to the design of a successful project - that's different. But then, you sho…

> If you are a developer who just implements what the PMs tell you to (more or less) then I agree that you shouldn't get extra credit when the project is a massive success. If the product earns a billion or loses millions you didn't have anything to do with that - you just implemented the designs of other people.

Actually I think you should be rewarded, just with money rather than a title.

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

#305

Post by lliamander »

scarface74 wrote: post #254
lliamander wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Having technical expertise doesn’t mean much of anything if it doesn’t positively impact the bottom line.

If it doesn't impact the bottom line then business folks need to do a better job of capturing the value you could provide.

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

#306

Post by SystemOut »

mochomocha wrote: post #59
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…

A friend of mine didn't get a promotion at Google because he was told that though his work generated >1B of revenues for the company, it was not "hard enough". He left the company.

This was one of the primary reasons I left. I had a project that enabled more than 100M+ increased revenue globally and the sales teams it impacted loved my work. But it wasn't considered hard enough or technically challenging work by engineering leadership so I got CME. That was it for me.

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

#307

Post by Karrot_Kream »

joshuamorton wrote: post #279
Manuel_D wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some companies, this is broadly what "SRE" vs "SWE" is meant to capture. But the issue is that roles aren't very fluid, plenty of times SWE ends up transitioning to a role more resembling an SRE after building a system and reorienting towards maintaining it.

God I hope not, SRE isn't a maintenance engineering role! Improving the reliability of a system (SRE's ultimate responsibility) is deeply technically challenging work of its own, and one can encounter deeply challenging problems.

The problem is that people think "maintenance" is a bad word. A company like Google is seeing growth from external customers, churn from their internal systems as internal best practices change, and changing threat landscapes on the internet.

"Maintenance" often is actual hard feature work. But when your org or company has a culture of thinking of maintenance as some low-level job, you get a culture like Google's.

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

#308

Post by charlespierce »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #260

The Netflix model is worth considering as an antidote. In short: 1. Don't hire junior engineers. 2. All ICs have the same title: Senior ____ Engineer.

Even Netflix is moving to have levels, however. At great cost to morale it seems, with people who were formerly all at the same title being grouped into potentially different levels.

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

#309

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Could be worse. You could be on a small team where there's no room for promotion and then get a 3% yearly raise based on your production despite the fact that you were rated "excellent" across the board because company policy dictates that 4/5 and 5/5 ratings are specifically for people they intend to promote, and alas your team isn't large enough for there to be promotions.... so you have to deal with your manager saying "I wanted to give you a 5, but I was only allowed to give you a 3 due to company policy."

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

#310

Post by thewarrior »

tfp137 wrote: post #223
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 wher…

How can every single manager become a director ? That seems impossible.
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