The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
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The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
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Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
#2No wonder Google lets many services languish. With a system of promotion based on launches of new products/services/features there is no personal incentive to make things work long term. It seems like the person who redesigns the gmail categories for the nth time would get a promotion, but someone who followed up on bug reports, maintenance and stability patches years later wouldn't.
Support is just as important as innovation. There's no point in having great ideas if they aren't maintained. Google doesn't seem to get this...
Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
#3>If you want to get promoted, just start acting like someone at the next level up.
Not at Google, but this is how I've always treated my career. Kind of a step beyond "dress for the job you want."
Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
#4No wonder Google lets many services languish. With a system of promotion based on launches of new products/services/features there is no personal incentive to make things work long term. It seems like the person who redesigns the gmail categories for the nth time would get a promotion, but someone who followed up on bug reports, maintenance and stability patches years later wouldn't. Support is just as important as i…
Speaking from experience, I see everyone from the team leader to the interns tackling bugs on my team at Google. Furthermore, the engineer with the highest level on my team has done a tremendous amount of refactoring and maintenance work over the course of the past year. Clearly this is just anecdotal, but from what I've seen an engineer who took the initiative to improve performance/stability or significantly refactor old code would have just as good a chance of promotion as an engineer churning out new features.
Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
#5No wonder Google lets many services languish. With a system of promotion based on launches of new products/services/features there is no personal incentive to make things work long term. It seems like the person who redesigns the gmail categories for the nth time would get a promotion, but someone who followed up on bug reports, maintenance and stability patches years later wouldn't. Support is just as important as i…
This is why the supposed meritocracy, promotions, and market economy of effort is a sham at corporations. In the real marketplace, support makes income happen. If a person is the owner of the company and does the necessary support, they reap the profits. But employees are not owners and corporations are not fair. The idealized marketplace is where everyone is their own corporation and the real marketplace determines exactly how rewards are allocated. In the real marketplace seemingly dumb ideas and banal work are both rewarded greatly if they have true value. In the corporate environment that will get you stuck in a career-ending dead-end job.
Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
#6Oh boy. A google career thread on HN. I look forward to measured and thoughtful discussion. Definitely not going to be sidetracked by multi-paragraph rants from some familiar names. No, not this time.
Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
#7No wonder Google lets many services languish. With a system of promotion based on launches of new products/services/features there is no personal incentive to make things work long term. It seems like the person who redesigns the gmail categories for the nth time would get a promotion, but someone who followed up on bug reports, maintenance and stability patches years later wouldn't. Support is just as important as i…
This is why the supposed meritocracy, promotions, and market economy of effort is a sham at corporations. In the real marketplace, support makes income happen. If a person is the owner of the company and does the necessary support, they reap the profits. But employees are not owners and corporations are not fair. The idealized marketplace is where everyone is their own corporation and the real marketplace determines…
But no one holds you at that job though, right?
Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
#8"If you want to get promoted, just start acting like someone at the next level up. Eventually they'll realize you're not being paid enough and will promote you."
--This sounds really bad. Like a slave trying to move more bricks to show slave-owner that he is not being paid enough.
Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
#9"If you want to get promoted, just start acting like someone at the next level up. Eventually they'll realize you're not being paid enough and will promote you." --This sounds really bad. Like a slave trying to move more bricks to show slave-owner that he is not being paid enough.
Can you think of a better argument to give your boss for why you should be promoted than, "I am already doing the work of one grade above me"?
Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions
#10No wonder Google lets many services languish. With a system of promotion based on launches of new products/services/features there is no personal incentive to make things work long term. It seems like the person who redesigns the gmail categories for the nth time would get a promotion, but someone who followed up on bug reports, maintenance and stability patches years later wouldn't. Support is just as important as i…
Speaking from experience, I see everyone from the team leader to the interns tackling bugs on my team at Google. Furthermore, the engineer with the highest level on my team has done a tremendous amount of refactoring and maintenance work over the course of the past year. Clearly this is just anecdotal, but from what I've seen an engineer who took the initiative to improve performance/stability or significantly refact…
Former employee here. I had a very opposite experience. New features were key for promotion. Performance/stability tweaks or bug fixes would only add to your promotion chances if they had a demonstrably large impact.
I wasn't at that level but this was super true for L5-L6ish engineers or above. Yes they had to tackle bugs, but they weren't getting to L6 unless they led an effort for a big feature within a project, or L7 unless they launched a project with a solid impact.
Management made efforts to give more weight to refactoring, but it seemed like a token effort. Refactoring was thankless unless it was a truly gargantuan change.
Working at google was great, but the engineering incentive structure is far from perfect.