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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

#451

Post by twayt »

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…

Google hires a ton of really competent and motivated people with low experience at a low level. Many times undeservedly so.

I’ve seen some phds with 3-4 years of experience being hired at L4 (starting phd level), some masters with 3-4 years of experience, sometimes even leading teams at previous companies at L3 and some experienced managers with 10 years of experience at L4.

Why do these people accept offers? Because although their level is lower, their comp is adjusted to the appropriate (higher end) of the level.

What you notice at Google is that projects and work are scoped to your level so that you can justify your promotion easily. So a PhD with 4 years of experience who’s completely capable of leading a project has to act as an individual contributor fulfilling others’ plans until they get promoted.

There are some exceptions but most people and teams in Google operate as though someone’s level defines their scope of work. Managers/TLs will often talk about how many LXs they have on the project and who is responsible for what kind of work.

So you have a ton of highly competent people hoping that their promotion will finally allow them to play at their true level and contribute in a way that will be rewarded.

A ton of such deserving candidates are passed over during promotion and this is very demoralizing. They still get paid handsomely so they don’t leave and continue to coast while looking for a better alternative (which is hard to come by).

Promos at Google are primarily about self-actualization. The comp is what prevents them from quitting and joining a startup.

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

#452

Post by tomp »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #412
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We would see more little old ladies out there who held out for above average How in the world can you come to this conclusion when society hasn't been in the situation where old ladies as a whole were in a position to be close to equal financially compared to their male peers in at least the last century? If anything, you have to wait a few more decades to come to this conclusion at minimum .

The original contention was that women held out for higher-status men, leading to selection pressure such that men evolved to be more competitive. If women are only very recently even able to be more selective, then I don’t see how all this is supposed to work. Is there even any evidence that modern women are more “choosy” than men? You’d have an hypothesis like: among married 40-something women, the distribution of…

> Is there even any evidence that modern women are more “choosy” than men?

yes; look up sexlessness among youth by sex

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

#453

Post by tomp »

delecti wrote: post #414
klipt wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty sexist to associate solving hard problems with masculinity. Women at Google also work on hard problems.

Solving hard problems isn't an inherently masculine thing, but basing a work culture's progression around being able to prove employees solved hard problems is a pretty good example of toxic masculinity. And the phrase "toxic masculinity" does not mean that all masculinity has problems, it's a separate (and pretty well-documented) concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity

Can you list example of "toxic femininity"?

If not, you're just sexist, full-stop. (c.f. "toxic blackness" or "toxic Jewishness")

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

#454

Post by Arainach »

HWR_14 wrote: post #81
Arainach wrote: post #8

This all sounds nice but it's missing the concrete details and that's the most important part. "Build into core values wanting to create a culture where the end-user is the priority, not individual advancement up the ladder" Is there any non-exploitative way to interpret this? The only thing worse than wasting my time on features for promo rather than users is working overtime to make more money for those with signif…

Why combine two problems working overtime without compensation and promotion focused culture?

A culture where I'm supposed to be working for "the user" rather than for my own benefit is inherently exploitative. Employment is a contract. If I stop delivering value, the company will fire me.

As they say, the reward for being good at your job is more work. Expecting me to put in top effort for "the users" without compensating me doesn't work.

The idea that you can fix this with culture is wrong. It's been tried many times at many companies and it doesn't work for anyone but the owners. Unless you own a significant (let's say >5%) piece of the company, those late nights you work for "the user" will never be worth it to you.

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

#455

Post by twayt »

jedberg wrote: post #112
oofbey wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of this is their OKR system. If you meet all your quarterly goals at Google, that's not a success. In fact, you're frowned upon for not setting your goals high enough. Their whole management process encourages people to chase after impossible goals, and literally discourages people from getting things done.

Yeah from what I've heard you ideally want to hit 70-80% of your OKRs, and people game it to make sure they fail at one or two so they don't get accused of being "too easy".

I’ve seen this in many companies other than Google and shockingly even at startups.

If setting an OKR is meant to focus the team and maximize effort towards solving those problems, this approach is counterproductive because it completely fails to measure the effort exerted towards a goal.

You could have a 1.0 OKR and you could have 2 cases. 1. Set it too easy, didn’t have to do much to achieve it 2. Set a hard goal and produce a Herculean effort to achieve it

The latter case isn’t accounted for. It’s is glaringly obvious but the dull manager types don’t seem to want to acknowledge the difference or the fact that the latter behavior, if incentivized, leads to better and more predictable outcomes.

Instead, the effort is met with a blanket: “Too easy, didn’t set a hard enough goal”.

This incentivizes people to set easier goals that they can meet comfortably and slack of 20% of the time so that it doesn’t look like the goal they set was too easy.

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

#456

Post by samhw »

lostcolony wrote: post #403
metadat wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure - >> 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…

Totally agree with this. I'm also an advocate for giving people substantial pay rises every year. It sounds profligate, but the alternative is that people leave for the so-notorious-as-not-to-merit-explaining pay bump one gets from switching company, and all your institutional knowledge ends up churning practically continually. It's probably the biggest thing I learned from my (former) time doing eng management.

(Also, fwiw, it's a non sequitur - I sat in Latin classes for 8 years and I still can't remember the conjugations well enough to explain why, but, long story short, it's a verb and so it doesn't obey the familiar rules of (even Latinate) English noun endings.)

((Also, that was a very classy and magnanimous response to a – speaking of the comment as distinct from its author – very classless and pusillanimous comment. Chapeau to you. I can't say I'd have managed the same myself.))

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

#457

Post by delecti »

tomp wrote: post #453
delecti wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solving hard problems isn't an inherently masculine thing, but basing a work culture's progression around being able to prove employees solved hard problems is a pretty good example of toxic masculinity. And the phrase "toxic masculinity" does not mean that all masculinity has problems, it's a separate (and pretty well-documented) concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity

Can you list example of "toxic femininity"? If not, you're just sexist, full-stop. (c.f. "toxic blackness" or "toxic Jewishness")

I'm not the one who named it. You're welcome to try and establish a new name for the phenomenon.

Also, yes, "toxic femininity" is also a term (and is even linked from the other page), but for some reason I don't think you were asking in good faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internalized_sexism#Toxic_femi...

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

#458

Post by icedchai »

colonelxc wrote: post #18
baby wrote: post #2

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. The other problem is that it becomes this game where nobody dares giving bad feedback to one another, because you know they could retaliate which could damage your chances to get a promotion.…

The "nobody dares giving bad feedback" thing isn't about retaliation (though I suppose that could happen). It's because perf is actually the worst place to provide "honest" feedback to a person about their performance. It's complaining to managers/directors instead of talking to the person themselves (the recipient wont get to read your feedback for a couple months after). Even if you want to talk to a manager about…

I worked at a place that did perf reviews every 6 months. 360 degree style, where you got manager feedback and a bunch of peers that you nominated. None of the feedback I received was ever actionable or useful. None of the feedback I gave was ever really useful, either! People rated you on a bunch of silly, vaguely described sliding scales from 1 to 5, then answered a couple of equally vague questions. It probably distracted people for 3 or 4 days, every 6 months.

All I ever got was stuff like "Joe writes excellent design documents! His code is always well tested. I always want Joe on my projects!" I'd write stuff like "Amy is extremely effective at solving problems with API's, and is a great communicator. She should do a brown bag session about her experience with ." The reviews were all fluff. Some people wouldn't put in any effort at all, and write one liners. Seriously, one of my reviews was "Just keep on being Joe!" Thanks, but why bother?

The review process at most companies is a big waste of time and money.

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

#459

Post by dougmwne »

ShamelessC wrote: post #280
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only true for E3/4. After that you can stay forever. I know someone that’s been E5 for 12 years

I just want to say that I can't believe some of the smartest people in the world are willing to put up with all of this off-putting corporate bullshit. No disrespect.

I would say that a high affinity for playing the games invented by others for the rewards invented by others is orthogonal to raw intelligence. In fact, smart people usually have a lifetime of being rewarded for exercising their intelligence on command. Where are they supposed to learn a healthy disrespect for authority when they have always been the darlings of authority?

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

#460

Post by mecha_ghidorah »

alisonatwork wrote: post #316
alimov wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experienced something similar, but it was not an outage. Had several knowledgeable people leave the company, and they all happened to be experts in a particular service. Positions weren’t backfilled even though the people gave advance notice. About two months later we ended up getting out butts kicked when nobody knew the details of the service implementation and the service was expected to be updated to support some…

Arguably those folks who left didn't do quite as good a job as they perhaps should have when they were still there. A high quality developer leaving a service behind should have already written sufficient documentation so that another high quality developer (especially one at the same company) can ramp up more quickly than 3-4 weeks. I think this is just another symptom of many tech companies throwing up their hands…

This is true but only so long as they have been given time to do it. I've left a company, with notice, and they had me working on building stuff almost to my last day. Sure I did have a few "hand over" sessions in my schedule where I was expected to walk other devs through some stuff I was the owner for in a broad sense, but they never gave me time to produce solid docs for anything even knowing I was headed out the door
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