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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

#321

Post by ScoobleDoodle »

SystemOut wrote: post #306
mochomocha wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does CME stand for?

Thank you for sharing your experience.

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

#322

Post by monktastic1 »

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.

Yes, and it doesn't stop there:

L3: $192,064

L4: $268,758

L5: $358,423

L6: $502,465 (!)

https://www.levels.fyi/

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

#323

Post by murderfs »

ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #321
SystemOut wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does CME stand for? Thank you for sharing your experience.

Consistently Meets Expectations, one step up from "you are probably going to get fired" (needs improvement)

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

#324

Post by staticautomatic »

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…

What is a packet?

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

#325

Post by ChrisCinelli »

I was talking last week with a friend working for Google and worked at Facebook before. The overhead to show that you are worthy for promotion is ridiculous. But he was giving for granted that was part of the "game."

I was never interested in climbing the corporate ladder and prefer to impact the users but I found that unfortunately trying to avoid wasting time in this overhead is eventually working again the users because who prefer spending time improving the product does not get promoted.

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

#326

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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.

Have you seen how wide the bands can be (especially when factoring in appreciation)?

Some L4s can make more than L6s.

What is bonkers is that you can care about levels so much - but pay is wildly disconnected.

What's the point behind putting all this effort into it when at the end of the day it means almost nothing?

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

#327

Post by joshuamorton »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #307
joshuamorton wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't disagree. I don't think maintenance is a bad word. But I do think that there is a point beyond which "maintenance" cannot grow. If you're maintaining a system there is a breadth of experience you cannot get. Being a senior engineer at Google is not easy. But my point is that sre is still fully capable of supporting L7 and L8 ic swes, while "maintenance" isn't.

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

#328

Post by _j5l3 »

jstanley wrote: post #152
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?

At Google at least, if you stay low level for too long, you get fired. If your team is full of low level people maintaining a project that's stable, you need to invent work to justify your existence.

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

#329

Post by mrtranscendence »

usrn wrote: post #247
sytelus wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 defaul…

Women demand men that are better than their peers while men only demand women who are good on their own. The evolutionary pressure produces men who are competitive in this toxic way.

This is pure evopsych fantasy land. Women do not, as a rule, demand men "better than their peers". We would see more little old ladies out there who held out for above average, never got it, and chose instead to remain single.

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

#330

Post by riku_iki »

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)…

It sounds you had bottleneck in product management pipeline. Product managers should generate enough creative and significant features to justify stream of large projects.
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