The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by pavlov » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:01 PM UTC

elefanten wrote: post #335

pavlov wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

“ We have around 50 people on staff, and for the past couple of years, we have leveled new employees based on years of relevant experience. We had three levels, each with a single, non-negotiable salary that was the same across locations, and everybody was assigned to one of those levels. We've always been completely remote” I guess the main question that comes to mind is “why would a strong-performing, early-in-care…

For one thing, Daily (intentionally) doesn't have a lot of junior engineers, so I don't really know firsthand how they feel about the system. It may well be that this appeals more to mid-career people with families and other life to worry about.

But consider that Daily is fully remote, hires globally paying SV-level salaries, doesn't do whiteboard torture interviews, and has an interesting product space where you can make a visible impact. I'd imagine this combination would be appealing to early-career people, especially if they don't live in a FAANG hiring market or aren't set on acquiring that kind of résumé.

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

#372

Post by dudeman13 » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #349

dudeman13 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're asking for title inflation You're asking for feature bloat. If the only way of winning is getting new stuff done, new stuff will be done regardless of the benefit or cost to the company. That does sound like Google alright, though.

Yes, it is in fact the case that getting new stuff done is the only way to benefit the company. But new stuff != feature bloat. There's lots of new stuff that can be totally invisible to end users, and is deeply valuable. Treading water should not get you promoted. That doesn't make sense.

>it is in fact the case that getting new stuff done is the only way to benefit the company

I spent a few weeks just refactoring 6k lines of code into +- 300 lines on my current job.

If my company was run by you, the best course for me woould have been leaving that mess around. Which would have led to either the same refactoring under far more stressful time constraints, or even more shit code by applying a band-aid into the old code (this code makes us some serious money, and an unexpected third party change would have broken it in such a way that would be seriously hard to fix with the old code).

Also, there are loads of features that were far easier to implement after the refactoring.

Maintenance job isn't coasting around. It has a multiplicative effect on anyone who works in the system. It needs to be done, if you want the org to not slow down to a snail pace - and when someone leaves a mess, it isn't even neccessarily easier than pumping new features since you have to figure out all observable behaviours from messy stuff.

If there's no incentive to getting your hands dirty, no one will want to get their hands dirty. People will fight to not do neccessary jobs if the only way of advancing their career is avoiding those jobs.

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

#373

Post by gowld » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

elefanten wrote: post #335

pavlov wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

“ We have around 50 people on staff, and for the past couple of years, we have leveled new employees based on years of relevant experience. We had three levels, each with a single, non-negotiable salary that was the same across locations, and everybody was assigned to one of those levels. We've always been completely remote” I guess the main question that comes to mind is “why would a strong-performing, early-in-care…

> In other words, aren’t you capping junior hires to come from the bottom ~60%?

Why do you think you need the top 40%?

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

#374

Post by gowld » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #352

fatnoah wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's the point behind putting all this effort into it when at the end of the day it means almost nothing? At a company like Facebook, the difference between L4 and L6 is over $100k in salary, and $80k in stock (difference in 4 year refresh grant of $325k). $180k a year difference isn't almost nothing.

Not if the L4 started 3-4 years before the L6. Their original RSU grant might have been substantially more than they are handing out due to price appreciation, and thus their TC is much higher. This happened to hilarious effect at Amazon, where I had some coworkers that were receiving insane comp and were Sr, but not PE level. Originally they got a grant that was worth 500-600k that went up 5x.

That's not L4 vs L6, that's start in 2015 vs 2108 or whatever.

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

#375

Post by metadat » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

lostcolony wrote: post #275

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…

Can't speak to Google, but I can say that having ICs write their own packets has been hugely enabling for me at other companies. It means their success isn't reliant solely on implicit visibility of their work by me (which in turn meant I either had to maintain visibility on everything to the nth degree, get everyone to give constant feedback on each other, or fail to recognize their successes). I still come in and h…

As stated in TFA and throughout this thread, moving the burden to the ICs means they will be incentivized to focus on Promo Packet instead of real work.

No offense intended, but in your comment it comes off a bit selfish and bears the hallmarks of a classic archetype of terrible manager. I'd never willingly work for you. Being in management isn't for everyone, it's a people-focused domain. The whole job is about supporting the team and setting things up for successful outcomes.

There is nothing wrong with being an individual contributor. If your organization limits how far ICs can go, take this as a sign of toxicity and consider finding a higher quality organization to join.

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

#376

Post by gowld » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

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 reduced the bias in the system from ICs writing up their own packets,

and replaced it with manager bias.

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

#377

Post by bluGill » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

ShamelessC wrote: post #274

bluGill wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they consider fixing easy bugs are hard problem? Should someone ignore a bug report "The is not spelled teh?" until it has bounced around unsolved for months on end, then spend 2 weeks "investigating" to show that it is a hard bug? I've seen real bugs that bounce around for months, each time to someone who looks decides it isn't in their code and points to someone else: eventually we tell one engineer to solve it…

Sorry but shouldn't you have just taken the initiative and fixed the bug yourself? This is the sort of thing I would hope a company would reward - not passing the buck. If that's "below your pay grade" _and_ you're still capable of doing it, well that's kind of the problem then, isn't it.

> Sorry but shouldn't you have just taken the initiative and fixed the bug yourself

Why should I spend a week learning a different domain when someone with experience in that code can possibly fix the bug in an hour? Passing the buck to the right person is the correct answer when you are not an expert and someone else is. Passing the buck too many times happens very rarely, most of the time it is the correct answer, so long as you pass it to the right person.

I can go into anyone's code and fix a misspelling. However if the problem is less obvious someone with experience can take a few days off my time just because they don't have to figure out how the code is supposed to work before figuring out why it doesn't do that.

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

#378

Post by scarface74 » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

lliamander wrote: post #367

scarface74 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Google is a very much technology focused and not business focused. That’s why after 20+ years almost all of its revenue still comes from advertising. All of the other major tech companies have multiple billion dollar profitable revenue streams. It even came out during the Oracle trial that Google only made about $26 billion in profit from the inception of Android to 2016. Apple makes more from Google i…

> Unfortunately, Google is a very much technology focused and not business focused. That’s why after 20+ years almost all of its revenue still comes from advertising. All of the other major tech companies have multiple billion dollar profitable revenue streams. Is that true of other ad-tech driven companies as well? Companies like Meta and Twitter. Companies like Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are used to charging user…

Twitter is not exactly a shining light on the hill as far as being a good business.

Facebook is also starting to see the issue with being a one trick pony.

But as for as Google, how many failed “other bets” have they been throwing money at since they were founded?

Google was founded in 1998. About the same time that Apple was close to bankruptcy.

One year they introduced three messaging platforms. How many failed first party phone initiatives have they had including buying Motorola?

Not to mention Google Fiber that left city streets ruined with “micro trenching” (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/googl...)

Since then, Apple has grown the Mac business, iPhone, iPad, “wearables”, and has a growing services business.

Microsoft built Azure, Xbox and pivoted with Office365.

Amazon (disclaimer I work at AWS), built AWS.

Google has a lot of smart people. But not a good business development strategy.

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

#379

Post by tomatowurst » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

I feel such a disconnect from all the comments. Seems most engineers/manager in the comments are pulling by my estimates, $400,000~$1,000,000+ a year arguing over culture. I don't get it because it's not an issue outside of FANG. Seen far more ugly stuff in companies that pay 90% of that in Canada. It explains why there's a big brain drain here.

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

#380

Post by tomatowurst » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

nineplay wrote: post #31

My experience has been that some companies pressure engineers to want to advance. If you come into a performance review and say "actually I'm happy where I am" it's seen as a lack of motivation and will count as a mark against you. I had a boss say to me "I always want to move to the next level and I expect the same of my reports". Whatever, I guess I'm a poor employee because I like my job.

You are being pressured to get higher salary for the same level of work you are currently doing and this is a problem? Strange.