401–410 of 613 posts
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.
I don't understand this comment. Are you saying people should take their money and stop complaining?
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…
Not saying this is the best thing, but it can get much, much worse at other places. I started my career at Accenture (then, Andersen Consulting). People go promoted for either sales (SrManagers or higher) or controlling issues (Managers and below.) Note, the aim was to control issues (documenting, writing up mitigation plans, briefing clients, deploying fixes, etc.) -- THE AIM WAS NOT TO PREVENT ISSUES. So code quality didnt get you promoted.
Several years in, a group of individuals passed up for promotion realized this all-together and literally started turning a blind eye to minor bugs, which eventually passed into PROD. Then they would solve them (which is what Management wanted.) Shockingly they got kudos for controlling issues. Many got promoted.
Set the wrong incentives, get the wrong behaviors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, agree to disagree on basically every point you make. But, just to provide some context you're missing, I had someone promoted the last promo cycle without any mention of features or new products in her packet. It was entirely support work, tackling tech debt, etc, all of which was stuff she personally was passionate about, and which had led to her being passed over for promotion -for years- prior to my managing…
There is no single correct take, and I appreciate you filling in more of your perspective on the matter. I'd be curious to understand what exactly you feel my points were, and why you think differently. I can't help but feel like I must be missing something or misunderstanding your comment. Fortunately we're unlikely to ever collide in real life :). Again, I mean no disrespect. Genuinely would like to understand your…
>> moving the burden to the ICs means they will be incentivized to focus on Promo Packet instead of real work
Such has not been the case. In fact, I've had to repeatedly remind people to add things to their promo packet. The point is that documenting successes as they happen means they get to own their own visibility; I've walked into multiple teams where people chafed at being passed over, because their past managers didn't have suitable visibility on their successes, and so while the IC was like "I have achieved all these amazing things!", the manager was like "I can't make a strong enough case for them", and the net result was no promotion and poor morale. To fix that, I could either insert myself into everything to know who is doing what (slowing everything down, taking away their feelings of autonomy, and taking up all my time in doing so), and still risk missing things, or I can ask individuals to maintain a brag sheet that I can then rework into something to submit at promo time. Every task has value on a promo packet now, not just those leadership cares about/remembers, and in practice it has meant people take work that grows and challenges them, rather than just work that has innately high visibility.
>> your comment you come off a bit selfish and bear the hallmarks of a classic archetype of terrible manager
I mean, you're entitled to your own read on it, but in my book a terrible manager is someone who insists on inserting themselves into every little thing rather than trusting their team, giving them autonomy, and instead spending their time looking for ways for the team to function better, while clearing out people/organization/process obstacles. I've had multiple people say I'm the best manager they've ever had, as well as one person memorably fighting back tears when I told them I'd gotten them promoted (with a packet they filled out, then I reworked, as mentioned above) after years of being passed over for doing work that wasn't high visibility. You mean no disrespect/no offense you say, but that's a hell of a follow up, that I 'come off as selfish and bear the hallmarks of a class archetype of a terrible manager'. I'm not sure how to say this politely, but if you want people to engage with you, you really need to learn how to not come across as offensive; just saying you don't mean to be doesn't really cut it.
>> 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.
All of this feels very much a non-sequitor; I have no idea what I said that you think this runs counter to (since I agree with every word of it), and so I disagree with the implication that this is a relevant argument.
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…
Arguably one of the causes of this is high salaries and only hiring (supposedly, I have no personal experience) Very Smart Developers. You're going to pay Google salaries for someone just to keep the lights on?
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Hey, agree to disagree on basically every point you make. But, just to provide some context you're missing, I had someone promoted the last promo cycle without any mention of features or new products in her packet. It was entirely support work, tackling tech debt, etc, all of which was stuff she personally was passionate about, and which had led to her being passed over for promotion -for years- prior to my managing…
There is no single correct take, and I appreciate you filling in more of your perspective on the matter. I'd be curious to understand what exactly you feel my points were, and why you think differently. I can't help but feel like I must be missing something or misunderstanding your comment. Fortunately we're unlikely to ever collide in real life :). Again, I mean no disrespect. Genuinely would like to understand your…
You've persuaded me. You don't sound bad at all, and I'm confident I'd actually like working with you, and I apologize for jumping to conclusions prematurely.
Note to self: Ask better questions first.
Best wishes~
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 s…
Then it's likely 3% forever.
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There is no single correct take, and I appreciate you filling in more of your perspective on the matter. I'd be curious to understand what exactly you feel my points were, and why you think differently. I can't help but feel like I must be missing something or misunderstanding your comment. Fortunately we're unlikely to ever collide in real life :). Again, I mean no disrespect. Genuinely would like to understand your…
lostcolony: thanks for following up and clarifying. Your response makes it clear you probably aren't a googler or xoogler, but that's a plus imho. You've persuaded me. You don't sound bad at all, and I'm confident I'd actually like working with you, and I apologize for jumping to conclusions prematurely. Note to self: Ask better questions first. Best wishes~
I can't speak to how particular patterns have played out at Google, I just wanted originally to respond that the advice being given runs counter to my own lived experience at other places. Not to undermine the original post, just to say it may not apply universally.
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.
The 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…
This echoes my read of this article as well. Any system for promotion has tradeoffs. You can't just say "this system's tradeoffs suck, we should have a new system with no tradeoffs." I'll admit, I don't really have a good solution. My strategy has been to just stick to early-stage startups where everyone is aligned on company success. Would love to hear some more meaningful discussion of alternative systems for manag…
Give people some choices on leveling up -- maybe most people just want a bump to salary, maybe other people would like to gain more vacation, stock, half days Friday, a private office, a good parking spot, etc etc.
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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/