The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures

Post by gkop » Thu, May 05, 2022, 4:27 AM UTC

somethoughts wrote: post #188

sytelus wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should reward only based on customer satiesfaction and adoption.

Agree - one feature that is missed w.r.t. long term customer satisfaction and adoption is long term support for previously delivered features. This is exacerbated when product managers/SW teams are mostly measured on new feature delivery metrics. The full feature lifecycle and reducing bus-factor across the entire existing product feature set is rarely considered as its not generally captured in OKR metrics.

Post by ninkendo » Thu, May 05, 2022, 4:32 AM UTC

mrtranscendence wrote: post #288

lisper wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll see your M1 and raise you a trash-can Mac Pro, and the fact that anything other than a Mac Pro can't be upgraded. But it's actually more about the software than the hardware. Once upon a time Macs were the computer that Just Worked. But recent devices, including phones, tablets, and laptops, have major usability issues. It's more about the software than the hardware, but with Apple you literally cannot separate…

I somewhat disagree? To be honest, the current UI look-and-feel hasn't bothered me at all. I can't recall ever being confused by it (with one exception: iPad multitasking). Perhaps I've simply internalized it to such a degree that I accept it, warts and all, without thinking about it critically. But it's difficult for me to be too upset by a UI that really has "just worked" for me. As long as my customized keyboard s…

Post by Husafan » Thu, May 05, 2022, 4:38 AM UTC

kajecounterhack wrote: post #540

Husafan wrote: post #476

I've been at Google for 12 years, and this has not been my experience. While it is a popular narrative, it is by no means dominant, and is fairly specific to individual teams. I got my second promotion leading the Google Maps Desktop Latency team. We demonstrated impact solely by reducing load latency and increasing performance while advocating for latency consciousness across the product space and implementing laten…

> With a little bit of thought around how to show that the work you are doing actually is valuable to your organization's OKRs, you can get promoted doing whatever work appeals to you the most. If you put yourself in the shoes of an L3 or L4, you know this is not exactly true. Who your manager is and what their priorities are, and how they view the promo process can greatly affect your ability to get a promo. I mean,…

Post by thumbsup-_- » Thu, May 05, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

klipt wrote: post #492

lanstin wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any promo process with any randomness (especially a promo process that changes over time as upper management changes) is effectively a stochastic version of "promo after N years after not being fired." I don't worry much about promos, but still randomly get promos because the stuff I found important for a few years was also nicely slotted into the promo standards at the time. And the obsession on titles and such book…

> but honestly, once you can afford a house or whatever That's probably where Bay Area housing inflation has an effect - houses that used to be affordable to "normal" engineers are now only affordable to staff engineers. Tech companies are hiring more and more people scrambling for a fixed supply of housing. Of course it's dystopian!

Post by thumbsup-_- » Thu, May 05, 2022, 4:48 AM UTC