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The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

matt-welsh.blogspot.com

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Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#41

Post by easytiger »

yen223 wrote: post #24
Afforess wrote: post #2

No 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 problem isn't limited to Google. Everyone remembers the creator, nobody cares about the maintainer. There's a reason why software developers in general earn more than QA.

A lot of mgmt philosophies used in the corporate world attempt to recognize this structurally. But it rarely reflects in the pay packet

Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#42

Post by easytiger »

yen223 wrote: post #24
Afforess wrote: post #2

No 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 problem isn't limited to Google. Everyone remembers the creator, nobody cares about the maintainer. There's a reason why software developers in general earn more than QA.

A lot of mgmt philosophies used in the corporate world attempt to recognize this structurally. But it rarely reflects in the pay packet. Banks for instance are an exception and maintenance and BAU staff are generally paid the same as developers.

My current client see productisation and day to day running and ongoing maintenance as the hardest part of a project (as much to internal structural failings as anything else).

Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#43

Post by dannypgh »

nostrademons wrote: post #21
Afforess wrote: post #2

No 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 was true and a very big problem for a while. I started seeing improvement around 2011/2012, when promo committees started valuing grungy maintenance & refactoring tasks more. It is still harder to get promoted doing maintenance work than high-profile launches, but the gap has narrowed significantly. Possibly not coincidentally, this was also the beginning of Larry's "More wood behind fewer arrows" push.

In my experience it helps if you can demonstrate the impact of your maintenance work. "Cleaned up the configuration" is worth something. "Improved the configuration to make a certain class of misconfiguration, which has caused several outages in the past, impossible" is worth much more.

IMHO impact is really what matters most. I think where some people go astray is they rewrite a block of code but fail to convince the committee that there was a real, tangible benefit to the company in doing so. I don't believe this is a problem with the promo process- I think you get better engineering outcomes when people can justify the impact of their work. (People like to rewrite things, even things that don't need to be rewritten!)

Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#44

Post by kbart »

niketdesai wrote: post #20
lumpypua wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, o…

I'm a PM and feel this is the case as well. I've seen massive migrations as one type of 'maintenance' wrapped as a launch that led to promotions, but generally the best way to go about it was join a rapidly growing project (G+) with user-facing impact. The same issues you flag are similar for PMs.

That explains. I guess the key to the promotion this year is to integrate your project with G+ (bonus points if user face no choice).

Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#45

Post by e12e »

Am I the only one that finds it odd that (according to the article and comments) the compensation is tied tightly to levels, but the mean salary for each level is considered secret? So you get to know how you "compare" in terms of "performance", but not how much Google actually values you as an employee? Is this just an aspect of "if you generate revenue we pay you more"?

Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#46

Post by eitally »

dannypgh wrote: post #43
nostrademons wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was true and a very big problem for a while. I started seeing improvement around 2011/2012, when promo committees started valuing grungy maintenance & refactoring tasks more. It is still harder to get promoted doing maintenance work than high-profile launches, but the gap has narrowed significantly. Possibly not coincidentally, this was also the beginning of Larry's "More wood behind fewer arrows" push.

In my experience it helps if you can demonstrate the impact of your maintenance work. "Cleaned up the configuration" is worth something. "Improved the configuration to make a certain class of misconfiguration, which has caused several outages in the past, impossible" is worth much more. IMHO impact is really what matters most. I think where some people go astray is they rewrite a block of code but fail to convince th…

It would be fantastic if customer reviews were included in the peer review process, because there have been a number of times where things were launched for Google Apps customers that became a major cluster, or which actively strove to remove heavily used features, or which otherwise broke many companies' processes & use cases.

Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#47

Post by eitally »

buckbova wrote: post #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."

The only problems are when your boss doesn't pay attention and recognize the step up, or when they actively ignore it because you've taken some of the stress of their job and they are averse to potential change/risk if they promote you.

Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#48

Post by codeka »

codeonfire wrote: post #28
amaks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But no one holds you at that job though, right?

Just the need not to be homeless. EDIT: I'm not trying to be snarky. I literally work to pay for rent and food. Sorry if this bums you out.

>I literally work to pay for rent and food. Sorry if this bums you out.

You spend a third of your life working, if you're only doing it for the money then I feel you're quite literally wasting your life. It doesn't particularly "bum me out", but I do feel sorry for people like you.

Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#49

Post by codeka »

sid- wrote: post #38
ChuckMcM wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I didn't down vote you, but in my experience that is exactly correct. If you start acting like the CEO you will eventually become the CEO. The tricky bit though is that often times people don't really know why the CEO acts as they do. And that is partly because there is information available to the CEO that isn't available to just anyone, and partly because the CEO is often balancing problems and opportunities tha…

U live in a more idealistic world than I do There is no point climbing someone else"s organized corporate ladder with 10 levels when u can do ur own experiments :) Don't want to be an old man filled with regret on level 3 or 6

I don't see how you would have anyone to blame but yourself if that happened.

Re: The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions

#50

Post by gwillen »

kbart wrote: post #44
niketdesai wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a PM and feel this is the case as well. I've seen massive migrations as one type of 'maintenance' wrapped as a launch that led to promotions, but generally the best way to go about it was join a rapidly growing project (G+) with user-facing impact. The same issues you flag are similar for PMs.

That explains. I guess the key to the promotion this year is to integrate your project with G+ (bonus points if user face no choice).

I see you're getting downvoted for this, but the only thing that's wrong with it is that you're a bit late on the schedule. If you go back to the 2011 era it was absolutely true.
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