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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

#521

Post by hansvm »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #512
digisign wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem with this approach is the FLOSS stuff being more interesting ends up impacting the success of $work, or the $work distracts you enough that you can never focus long enough on the FLOSS. Plus the guilt. Plus, at Google in particular, you have to make them aware of your OSS work and go through the motions of getting the licensing set up so either they own it or you get permission.

Even if you "get permission" that's only for copyright. They still claim ownership of other IP (patents, trademarks, trade secrets), ... on _everything_ in your private life. I doubt it gets enforced often, but the employment contracts are draconian.

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

#522

Post by kamaal »

nostrademons wrote: post #510
bluedevilzn wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1…

The worst case when you fail to get promoted is still making salary at the current levels.

The worst case when you fail at a start up is years of lost time, money and health. And starting way behind others, should you(now that you are out of money, wouldn't you?) start a a job again.

The term mediocre is loosely used there, pretty much every one who starts a company fails, and thereby ends up being mediocre compared to a person working a job.

Salaried jobs have a better path to financial success than a start up, for nearly all the people.

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

#523

Post by hansvm »

austhrow743 wrote: post #475
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not much different at large corporations, just far less money.

Large corporations?

Google only has a couple 100k employees at most. Other organizations dwarf that.

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

#524

Post by jrockway »

pillowkusis wrote: post #257
analyst74 wrote: post #17

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…

> The person entrusted with this decision (typically the manager) now wields tremendous amount of power over others. This happens anyway in Google's "objective" promo system. Your manager assigns your projects, gives you your non-promo performance ratings, sets direction for your team, they sit in the room with the promo committee, and their feedback is critical to the promo committee's decision. You need their help…

I've been on promotion committees where it was clear that the manager didn't support it, but we promoted the candidate. I feel like most of the memorable discussions in those committees were figuring out how to give the manager feedback on how bad of a job they were doing.

I agree that you're basically screwed, especially L3->L4, if your manager isn't actively counselling you on how to grow your career. You obviously don't have enough experience to do it on your own at that point, so you are at their whim. Even when you do have the experience, if you don't have a good working relationship with your manager, you're in trouble anywhere. It is ultimately going to be them or you, and you are easier to get rid of ("he took another offer" versus "everyone thinks your manager is a jerk, so we fired him, oh by the way in the meantime your career is on hold while we figure out what the fuck to do please keep showing up").

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

#525

Post by sidlls »

lanstin wrote: post #511
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It reduced the bias in the system from ICs writing up their own packets, which disadvantaged poor writers and poor self-promoters less. It got employees thinking less about promotion, since there was less they could control or do. I agree that this seems positive, but you lose some things with this sort of change as well. ICs often have knowledge of their own performance that their managers don't, even when you're…

I have been using git logs and cvs logs to see who does what, across hundreds of developers, since 1997. I don't understand how people, managers, claim to not be able to figure it out. And if people are doing work in an engineering organization that isn't backed by commits to some durable and versioned system, that is a huge red flag. They should probably not get promotions till they automate and make their work flow…

There is so much more to engineering than slinging code into the repo. Using commit logs as anything other than a superficial note of trivia is absolutely terrible for anything but the most junior engineers.

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

#526

Post by 8note »

metadat wrote: post #375
lostcolony wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 supp…

In a manager driven promo process, do you want gp in charge of whether you're promoted or not?

Thats a benefit to having ICs run their promo process.

Generally, I think freedom to have anyone drive an ICs promo process is better than forcing it to be one group or another. The IC might be best for it, or the manager might.

Regardless of who it is, the IC can work at gaming the system, that's just the nature of systems and abuse

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

#527

Post by twayt »

google234123 wrote: post #489
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…

Experience is not equal to ability.

That cuts both ways, ability to excel and take on responsibility within Google isn't equal to ability to succeed at Google. That's an argument against making outside hires start at a lower level.

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

#528

Post by bjt »

RHSeeger wrote: post #484
cyanydeez wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your manages appropriately manage the employees, it'd require letting go poor performance.

Even if you let go the poor performers, there's still a wide range of ability in the rest. It also means people will do just enough work to not get layed off (or appear to do that much work), because there's no benefit to doing better.

While I see your point, I'd argue with "there's no benefit to doing better."

People are motivated by more than money. Mastery, autonomy, and purpose come to mind.

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

#529

Post by metadat »

dang wrote: post #443
metadat wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 supp…

Can you please make your substantive points without crossing into personal attack? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I did try to word it in a neutral way, but I'll try harder in the future.

Thanks for the feedback.

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

#530

Post by thethethethe »

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…

> 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 significant equity/ownership in ways that will never seriously affect my comp. Without promo or "promo by a different name" i.e. money, how do you incentivize people? How do you decide who to allocate your finite equity and money to?

Easy, there is no promo, you just pay everyone 450k like Netflix and raise everyone's pay each year to stay at the top of the market.

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