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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

#551

Post by twayt »

deviation wrote: post #533
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…

I'm going through the Google interview process right now, second round. My interviewer has rescheduled three times in the past week, each with less than 24hrs notice and without a reason given. Is there a 'safe' space I can give feedback regarding this that doesn't damage my chances of making it through the process?

You need to talk to your recruiter and let them know this is an issue. They are incentivized to hire you and are there to help you and give you a good impression of Google. The recruiter isn’t going to tank your chances of making it through unless you say something that is egregious and a red flag.

Just be straightforward and ask if there’s another interviewer available

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

#552

Post by chmike »

It seam that the fix should be the promotion criteria and process.

- use continuous promotion screening instead of well defined annual periods

- use indirect measurement instead of candidate self selling (involve manager's and colleague's feedback, but not only because introverted people merit promotions too)

- measure things to be aligned with the success of the project and the company objectives

- increase impression of progress and success by increasing the number of promotions (gamification)

- reduce frustration and demoralizing effect by reducing the gains of promotions

- make the criteria clear and objective to reduce frustration and demoralization (clear goals, clear push directions)

It seam that a system based on points (or karma) might be interesting to explore. People would earn these points by different actions or indirect objective evaluations.

People may loose points if efficiency or contribution quality degrades, but smooth out to absorb "life accidents" (e.g. transient health or personal social issues), to give a second chance, etc.

That's what I would explore. It's not easy to align this promotion system with the benefits of the company. Not every company earn billions like google.

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

#553

Post by rsanek »

elefanten wrote: post #335
pavlov wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly does it seem worse? Last year I switched from a FAANG to a Series B startup that does experience-based levels, and in my observation it's just better in every way. Here's a blog post explaining their approach: https://www.daily.co/blog/rethinking-levels-promotions-and-s... Maybe it's not possible to switch from a cutthroat promotion-oriented environment to this, but it's worth thinking about for anyone bu…

“ We have around 50 people on staff, and for the past couple of years, we have leveled new employees based on years of relevant experience. We had three levels, each with a single, non-negotiable salary that was the same across locations, and everybody was assigned to one of those levels. We've always been completely remote” I guess the main question that comes to mind is “why would a strong-performing, early-in-care…

They mention this potential downside explicitly in the blog post. It sounds like they actually believe this is a good thing as it signals to junior employees that would need alot of support that they cannot provide it:

> The way we’ve set up our levels, people in the early stages of their careers can get bigger titles and raises more quickly at other orgs than they can at Daily. This will likely be a deterrent to some early-stage candidates, but we are ok with that for now. While we are excited to bring in early-career people once we have the structure to support them, we aren’t there yet, and probably won’t be for a while. We don’t want to make the mistake of hiring high-potential people we then under-serve, especially if they’re from groups typically excluded from tech.

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

#554

Post by danielmarkbruce »

Husafan wrote: post #544
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing latency is mostly easy to measure, has directly understandable implications, is likely (and understood to be likely) quite difficult to pull off on a product like maps. It's basically a perfect promo packet project. The example given by the author - fixing lots of tiny features in sheets - is the opposite. Difficult to measure, lots of little and difficult to explain implications, sounds kinda easy - many in…

I disagree. Add a couple of these features, put them behind an experiment flag, and inspect metrics that matter. What usage are they getting? Do users in the experiment use the product more frequently? And for longer periods? If not, perhaps feature parity with Excel is not the highest impact project, despite the feature requests. If you are finding it hard to come up with measures that show impact towards your orgs'…

Inspect the metrics over what time horizon?

Think about how companies choose between office and google workspace, especially excel v sheets, and the buying process. And think about the industry/function where it matters most - finance. You aren't going to see sheets usage tick up next qtr because you added 5 features that ibankers use. Usage of those feature will slowly go up, and when mixed with 20 other things you'll slowly see more finance users. Hopefully. Maybe Goldman will switch, and others will follow. Whoever is running Sheets is in a long term game. Much of enterprise software is like this. It isn't Facebook where you often get instant feedback.

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

#555

Post by andi999 »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #399
hotpotamus wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I don't think I could make it at a FAANG, and then I read stuff like this and I don't think I could make it at a FAANG, but for different reasons.

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

Infinite marathon

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

#556

Post by edmundsauto »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #450
edmundsauto wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what every job in Silicon Valley is I am curious - is this informed by your experience of having sampled every job in SV? Or perhaps a representative sample? Is it possible other people might be different than you and have a different perspective. What a fucking joke of a comment.

Well, you have to maintain things after they're made. New things are usually made out of multiple old things. Figuring out how stuff works, then fixing and reusing, supporting, or replacing it is the bulk of every programming job I've done or heard of. I can't even conceive of what programming job wouldn't be describable as "grunt work" from the point of view of some hypothetical super-genius. Writing "new" code that…

As you said, those are required components of shipping software. I don’t consider them grunt work, any more than I would consider being a janitor as a grunt.

Grunt implies a heirarchy and a job that anyone can do. It’s pejorative. There is work that I don’t enjoy doing but needs to be done well (cleaning a toilet). I appreciate those jobs even more than what I do!

My point is that you should try to shift to language of “work I don’t enjoy” rather than “work that is beneath such an exalted 10x programmer such as myself”. Because that’s how I interpreted your original comment.

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

#557

Post by [deleted] »

cm2012 wrote: post #273
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a culture of toxic masculinity Hyper competitiveness. There is nothing "male" in nature about pushing people to compete in a giant free for all.

Even every non physical competitive sport in the world is male dominated to an absurd degree. Chess, esports, poker, you name it. Hyper competitive environments are associated with masculinity for valid reasons.

[deleted]

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

#558

Post by mecha_ghidorah »

alisonatwork wrote: post #505
mecha_ghidorah wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Ah my apologies, I thought you meant it was a failing of the developers themselves - which it definitely could be in some circumstances - and I felt the need to point out that a corporate culture can lead to docs not existing.

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

#559

Post by reindeerer »

acchow wrote: post #517
_j5l3 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Ex googler here, and when I was there 4 years ago this was true of L3 and L4. My entire team was L3's and L4's. We spent literally all of our time on projects with no meaningful impact on the company, but that made for promo packets. 6 engineers focused on rewriting the form to input cre…

> 6 engineers focused on rewriting the form to input credit cards on YouTube for 3 years. Can you explain how this gets them promos? I feel like a promo-focused culture would result in 6 engineers creating a new server-side rendering framework so that they can improve credit card input rendering speed - possibly equally useless, but much more work.

Those rendering frameworks are being written as well, for no other reason than promo

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

#560

Post by biztos »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #520
austhrow743 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large corporations?

Pick any company on the Fortune 500 and you’ll see the same behavior to climb the “ladder”. A small corporation could be less than 1000 or so people and might not have that culture as much.

I worked at a Fortune 500 and the ladder was floating in a mist of opaque fog, with inexplicably shifting rungs.

Upside was that many of us just said screw it and focused on the work. Downside was that many said screw it and went to other companies where they could at least grok the ladder.

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