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

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

#501

Post by cmrdporcupine » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:06 AM UTC

flappyeagle wrote: post #493

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…

How does the important, money-making stuff at Google get done?

Automatically.

Everyone else is eating the results of all that money-making in the many many cafes.

Actually, this is only true for SWEs. The money making at Google really runs on the insane hard work of its SREs and its data centre staff.

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

#502

Post by Arainach » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:11 AM UTC

mhss wrote: post #485

Arainach wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. You do not work for free. You are being paid. 'Top effort' needs not to translate to working overtime, more hours, etc.

That's not a popular school of thought in American business schools.

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

#503

Post by lanstin » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:12 AM UTC

dave250 wrote: post #490

lanstin wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root of the promo and hiring problems is this focus on individual performance. The appropriate unit of analysis for most human efforts is the group level. Just have some livable base salaries, and then give everyone a big chunk of the profits each year. I don't know if it's always true for people, but my performance goes up and down quite a lot depending on how much I believe in the group mission and the group dy…

> I don't know if it's always true for people, but my performance goes up and down quite a lot depending on how much I believe in the group mission and the group dynamic. I'll occasionally stay late working for some abstract metric that might impact 10% of my pay, but I'll stay up 48 hours working fanatically to make something work for my friends and co-workers and the dream of success in changing the world that the…

I don't mean the "slackers" that want to go home at a reasonable time and hike the Appalachian trail or rescue lost mountain climbers or whatever, I mean the ambitious types that worry if they are getting 185K USD instead of 205K USD rather than on making the digital transformation a really cool thing for humanity, and making products that they are proud to try to explain to their families.

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

#504

Post by GalahiSimtam » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:14 AM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #499

qzx_pierri wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a soul sucking marathon run by relentless ladder climbers fueled on concentrated avarice and amphetamines.

> soul sucking marathon run by relentless ladder climbers The saddest part about the ladder is that it's not even fun. In academia, our ladder has fun names, and on each level you get to dress up in a different outfit that gets more elaborate the higher you climb on the ladder, which is basically the driving concept behind every MMO ever made, so that's cool. The whole promotion culminates in a parade and a blessing…

Sure, the art faculties have the best costumes, but where I come from there was making vows in LATIN how cool is that (you needn't have to understand latin, just recite the vows is all fine)

jk

If you need to ask, promo parties were suspended with the lockdown, but I guess they are gonna come back in style

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

#505

Post by alisonatwork » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:19 AM UTC

mecha_ghidorah wrote: post #460

alisonatwork wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's exactly my point. If companies aren't expecting their developers to document their services - while the developers are still employed and building those services in the first place - that's a failure in my books. It's exactly the sort of corporate culture that props up this mindset of "promotion-driven development".

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

#506

Post by digisign » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:25 AM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #491

twayt wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your last sentence sums it all up for me. Having come into Google through acquisition (and product then killed off) maybe biased me, but still. That's how I see it. I worked at Google for 10 years and didn't have more than a few minutes of job satisfaction and jumped from team to team hoping to eventually find a place where I could fit in and maybe get promotion. But I never went for promotion ever. The whole process…

Occasionally I've landed a boring job with good pay. Yes, I'd keep an eye out, but while waiting I worked on floss projects. Not sure if that would've worked for you.

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

#507

Post by dane-pgp » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:25 AM UTC

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…

> the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems"

So you're saying that the incentives misalignment at Google leads to engineers who aren't self-deprecating, and products which are self-deprecating?

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

#508

Post by lanstin » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:26 AM UTC

dolni wrote: post #482

lanstin wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root of the promo and hiring problems is this focus on individual performance. The appropriate unit of analysis for most human efforts is the group level. Just have some livable base salaries, and then give everyone a big chunk of the profits each year. I don't know if it's always true for people, but my performance goes up and down quite a lot depending on how much I believe in the group mission and the group dy…

> The root of the promo and hiring problems is this focus on individual performance. The appropriate unit of analysis for most human efforts is the group level. This is an awful idea. Rewarding individuals based on the group outcome is a great way to drive rockstars away from the team. Why would any high performer want to anchor themselves to lower performing team members? That is a surefire way to get a lower bonus.…

>Why would I volunteer to take on a crummy or particularly hard task when I can just hope someone else does it and I reap the rewards?

When you are on a team that is committed to the success of a project or a real thing in the world, rather than hoping for a bonus, you help everyone on the team at each step of the process. If you enjoy the work you are doing, you'll enjoy the hard tasks; even the tedious tasks take on a certain type of satisfaction in a good job.

A team where people are sitting around for others to take action is not a good team or a good job. I encourage you to raise your standards.

>Rewarding individuals based on the group outcome is a great way to drive rockstars away from the team.

I don't care how many rockstars are on a team, I care if the team is transforming the world into a better place, is helping the company and humanity make the transition to "everything is software and networked" a thrilling transition. If someone is slower mentally but has a vision of a better world that the team is making happen, then they will probably move the team towards delivering on that vision than some smart but Blind obsessed person that wants the "FIRE" crap. Also, valuing money over all means your team will fall into traps like accounting irregularities more easily - lacking a sense of values outside of economic gain means the team will fall into things like the Enron mess or https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2005/03/22/t... or the various shady ad selling schemes or privacy selling schemes so common these days.

I've worked with teams where most people love the work and love the outcome of the work on the world, and I've worked where people are beset with visions of becoming some sort of rich software engineering lord, and it's a lot more fun in the former case.

People that want families and is supporting them are not doing software only for a princely salary. The thing that's awesome about a software career and families is that the demand for engineers means you can afford to insist on the flexibility and time-off needed by the family, and still get a livable salary.

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

#509

Post by cmrdporcupine » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:27 AM UTC

ZainRiz wrote: post #46

angarg12 wrote: post #16

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…

The problem is a bit more insidious than that As an engineer, you want to be working on cool new features too! Very few folks will be content sitting on their laurels just fixing the occasional bug or adding a touch more polish to a product that's already "done" If you setup a team to work that way, very soon you'll find that most of your engineers have left. Heck, the manager might get bored and leave too. "Okay, th…

Yeah and this problem is exacerbated at Google by the relatively easy process of moving between teams. Other companies I was at made this hard. Google encourages it.

When friends complain to me about Google killing projects, they act as if it's upper management making a decision to kill. And that is sometimes the case. But often it's just: nobody wanted to work on it anymore. And Google isn't the kind of "command and control" culture where you crack the whip and tell all your engineers that they're doing X and assign them. At Google they'll just leave your org and move to some other team, and you won't have the power to stop them.

Not saying that's a bad thing, but it has some bad outcomes occasionally.

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

#510

Post by nostrademons » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:28 AM UTC

bluedevilzn wrote: post #415

Terry_Roll wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why dont people work for themselves, you can earn alot lot more, like over 20x more!?!

Please tell me how I can make $10M per year (20 x $502k) And I’ll quit my job right now.

Found startup, get acquihired in a year for $10M. There's risk involved, but there are certainly people who have managed to do this.

There's a number of other ways of varying risk/time/shadiness tradeoffs. Start VC fund, have $1B exit, cash out $70M carry in 7 years. Start hedge fund, raise $300M, earn 12% returns for 7 years, cash out $70M carry on $360M profits. Find a DeFi exploit, hack Ethereum, earn $300M in a 10 seconds, hope the Feds don't catch you. Lever up on real estate, put 3.5% down on 100 $300K properties, turn $1M into $20M as they've gone up to $500K over the past year.