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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

#61

Post by eitally »

nostrademons wrote: post #55
eitally wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This would be challenging to do fairly. Visual redesigns are almost always received negatively because they force users to learn a new UI, but they are very necessary because otherwise your product starts looking very dated compared to competitors, which prevents non-consumers from adopting it. On the other side, niche features are usually received very positively because it's easy to make a product that suits every…

Here's a specific example from last week. Last week, Google royally f'd up the release of the new Login Challenges interstitial, which wasn't supposed to be presented to SSO domains but was. This caused much consternation, especially since because this was primarily a consumer-focused feature, there was no advance notice given to Apps domain admins.

This ties into the second big problem re: Apps administration and Google's product roadmap / release process: there is almost no correlation between feature requests Apps admins make and their mapping onto a product roadmap. Additionally, for features or new services that are kept secret as a business strategy, even Apps admins don't get any advance notice. The first we see them is when they are released to production. It is entirely unclear what the relationship is between Bill Hippenmeyer's team, the actual PM & Apps product engineering teams, and the Google Enterprise Connect team, and by all outward appearances there is almost no strong link whatsoever.

So, regardless of how Google handles things on the consumer side, those behaviors adversely affect paying customers ... and when you are paying millions of dollars per year (as an alternative to paying Microsoft or IBM millions of dollars per year) that's a big turn off. Google is far more opaque re: roadmap than traditional vendors.

(I'm not bashing all things Google, just this one thing. I'm still a huge fan. :) )

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

#62

Post by potatolicious »

eitally wrote: post #47
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.

Then you take the fact that you're outperforming your title to another company that will recognize it.

Job-hopping (done within reason) is entirely underrated. Your salary will rise at a dramatically faster rate than if you stuck around one place, your responsibilities too, and best of all you get to learn how things are done across the industry.

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

#63

Post by potatolicious »

jedc wrote: post #60
michaelochurch wrote: post #58

That is, nobody is going to say, "You're only an L4, therefore you can't work on this project." Someone said exactly that to me when I was at Google. That's kinda how closed allocation works. What I always tell people: If you want to get promoted, just start acting like someone at the next level up. At any company, that's the quickest way to get fired. Getting into a turf war with someone with a much higher title? No…

The 1.0 to 5.0 system doesn't exist any more. What is in the OP's blog post is how it's done as of 2014. (Very recent Xoogler here).

As someone who has never worked for Google - how does The New Way address the problems he mentioned?

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

#64

Post by VLM »

groby_b wrote: post #36
JSno wrote: post #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.

Given the pay rate at any established company in the valley, I don't think being an underpaid "slave" is a concern.

Comes into social status and treatment. Open plan offices, micromanagement, pooled paid time off, things like that.

Google for the term velvet handcuffs or golden handcuffs.

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

#65

Post by dekhn »

dsplatonov wrote: post #34
nostrademons wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The levels don't work like that, as the blog post describes. They basically count for paygrade and job title, and that's it. At Google you were basically expected to make all the decisions you had good information on, and you had access to a lot more information than people did at most companies. I launched the [blink tag] easter egg by socializing my ideas around a few peers who said "Cool idea, go for it", implemen…

ok, agree, but thats doesn't covered in the article, which can lead to misunderstanding

Those points were covered in Matt's previous two articles on the subject.

But Matt is writing primarily for Researchers who leave academia for industry. They are a special class of people who tend to be more.... experienced with pushing back against management to achieve their research goals. However, the same idea applies equally to motivated low-level engineers who want to get things done.

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

#66

Post by sheepmullet »

typpo wrote: post #16
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…

Is there any company where churning through a list of bugs and maintenance projects will get you further in the long term than launching new things? Hacker News generally praises "ship it" culture, where experimentation and measurement is prioritized as the way to succeed. This is considered a good thing in most places and the incentives are not unique to Google.

"Hacker News generally praises "ship it" culture, where experimentation and measurement is prioritized as the way to succeed."

HN has a VC/startup focus. Maintainable code means a lot less to a quickly growing (and possibly pivoting) startup because fast growth almost always outruns the maintenance burden.

On the other hand poorly written and maintained software can drown a normal business. These companies typically have 20-30% margins and so even doubling the cost of maintenance can remove any profit.

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

#68

Post by ProAm »

nostrademons wrote: post #53
gwillen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wanted to say "As someone who got promoted in 2011, I can concur", but technically I got promoted about 3 months before I integrated my project with G+.

Honest question, did that integration benefit your project?

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

#69

Post by robrenaud »

michaelochurch wrote: post #58

That is, nobody is going to say, "You're only an L4, therefore you can't work on this project." Someone said exactly that to me when I was at Google. That's kinda how closed allocation works. What I always tell people: If you want to get promoted, just start acting like someone at the next level up. At any company, that's the quickest way to get fired. Getting into a turf war with someone with a much higher title? No…

(dead man's switch: Discussing perf with you on hackernews is going to be a waste of time, I'll personally pay you $10K USD [or EFF, if you refuse] if I respond).

An "occasionally misses" expectations is by no means career ending. It's just a warning sign. It's not by itself a fireable offense (as an aside, even being fired by Google won't ruin your career, a friend of mine with a bad manager at Google got fired. He ended up pre-IPO at Twitter, and he is definitely doing well). I had an occasionally misses as L4. For me, I took it as implicit permission to get more attention from my manager. I'd bring problems to him sooner and make sure to be less stuck, including burdening him with more mundane problems I was having, and giving him more status to make sure I was moving in the right direction. I quickly hit meets, and I eventually hit L5.

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

#70

Post by jedc »

potatolicious wrote: post #63
jedc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1.0 to 5.0 system doesn't exist any more. What is in the OP's blog post is how it's done as of 2014. (Very recent Xoogler here).

As someone who has never worked for Google - how does The New Way address the problems he mentioned?

Anyone who has a particularly strong opinion (coupled with strong evidence) is likely full of crap, since it just recently rolled out across the company. By the end of the year it'll be more clear what the long-term effects are.
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