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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

#381

Post by bluGill »

joshuamorton wrote: post #296
xmprt wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the solution to that hard problem is improving the incentive structure and paying/promoting people for fixing bugs? That's something only ELT or SVPs can do and they aren't getting promoted for that.

If you think the problem can only be solved by management attention, and you cannot demonstrate to your management that the problem is impactful enough that it deserves their attention, either you are incapable of making a clear enough argument to focus on the right problem, or the problem isn't actually as dire as you think it is (or management is bad and wrong, or at the very least mismatches your values). Two of t…

Many outsiders have noted that googles incentive structure is not around customer happiness in general. Thus articles and discussions like this one.

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

#382

Post by gowld »

jldugger wrote: post #182
bern4444 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple continues to innovate in new product categories. Apple Watch AirPods M1 Chip Services (Apple TV+, Apple Pay, Music, Fitness, iCloud etc). I include iCloud for services likeHide My Email and Private Relay. They do this all while maintaining a consistent release cycle of upgraded versions of their hardware (new iphones, macs etc). Also, everything in the list above has been developed under Tim Cook which…

You realize that's his point right? Each of those is trying to be the Cool New Thing, and part of what distracts the company while it ships butterfly keyboards, touchbars without escape keys, AntennaGate, whatever plagued HomePod so much they quietly discontinued it. Polish and Attention To Detail is outsourced to execs, who are increasingly spread thin.

> ships butterfly keyboards

a Cool New Thing

> touchbars without escape keys,

a Cool New Thing

> HomePod

a Cool New Thing

Cool New Thing was not distracting from these things.

> Polish and Attention To Detail

gets harped on at Apple because they are so much better than everything else (and charge $$$ for it), that customers and opponents don't tolerate mistakes. Maybe being perfect is actually, really too hard to reach?

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

#383

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

ryandrake wrote: post #96
sokoloff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve openly stated that I want my retirement job to be an SWE3-ish role somewhere. High enough to have interesting, somewhat challenging work, but with negative desire to climb the ranks any further.

Problem with that is due to inflation, you're making less and less compensation every year. Standard "you're doing a good job" raises often do not meet inflation, and certainly are not right now where inflation is higher than the recent historical mean. This is not a problem for some people, maybe including you, but I think most people have a general vague career expectation of making more when they're 60 than they m…

If you had a paid off house, and no kids to take care of, you should be able to live off a junior engineer’s salary no problem.

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

#384

Post by lliamander »

ctvo wrote: post #266
lliamander wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic Bulverism on display. Don't defend your position, just assume you're right and offer an armchair pyscho-analysis for why people who disagree with you are wrong.

Here's some more Bulverism: What's there to defend? Colloquially toxic masculinity means exactly what the OP was going for. It's to jockey for power, position, and status at the expense of others (and often detrimental to their own goals). Hey! Women sometimes also display these toxic masculine traits commonly found in male primates! You should be more inclusive and call it toxic humanity! has to be one of the least…

Also, that is not what toxic masculinity means. If you have an all-woman organization that has a culture dominated by counter-productive competition, you don't call that "toxic masculinity". That just wouldn't make sense.

At best, the competition is a symptom of the real (alleged) problem of toxic masculinity: too many men. Specifically an environment where men are systematically favored over women for sexist reasons.

That Google is suffering under such a system is a claim which needs defending.

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

#385

Post by activitypea »

tomatowurst wrote: post #379

I feel such a disconnect from all the comments. Seems most engineers/manager in the comments are pulling by my estimates, $400,000~$1,000,000+ a year arguing over culture. I don't get it because it's not an issue outside of FANG. Seen far more ugly stuff in companies that pay 90% of that in Canada. It explains why there's a big brain drain here.

I don't understand this comment. Are you saying people should take their money and stop complaining?

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

#386

Post by cracrecry »

So what this man is saying is:

"We at Google are promoting the wrong things. We have necessary work that our code monkeys do but nobody wants to do because those jobs are not promoted"

As a manager of a company promoting the right things is your job.

Of course people want to earn half a million dollars if they can.

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

#387

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

hintymad wrote: post #170
xoofoog wrote: post #43

Former Googler here. This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often... > choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career But the root cause isn't that people want to get promoted. It's that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons. Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving US…

Isn't this problem shared by pretty much every large company? Why is Google particularly bad?

I think Google has this worse than most because it has a relatively selective hiring process, large headcount, and is a mature company. The ratio of talent per scope is high, which mean there are less real problems left to solve per engineer.

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

#388

Post by lostcolony »

metadat wrote: post #375
lostcolony wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak to Google, but I can say that having ICs write their own packets has been hugely enabling for me at other companies. It means their success isn't reliant solely on implicit visibility of their work by me (which in turn meant I either had to maintain visibility on everything to the nth degree, get everyone to give constant feedback on each other, or fail to recognize their successes). I still come in and h…

As stated in TFA and throughout this thread, moving the burden to the ICs means they will be incentivized to focus on Promo Packet instead of real work. No offense intended, but in your comment it comes off a bit selfish and bears the hallmarks of a classic archetype of terrible manager. I'd never willingly work for you. Being in management isn't for everyone, it's a people-focused domain. The whole job is about supp…

Hey, agree to disagree on basically every point you make.

But, just to provide some context you're missing, I had someone promoted the last promo cycle without any mention of features or new products in her packet. It was entirely support work, tackling tech debt, etc, all of which was stuff she personally was passionate about, and which had led to her being passed over for promotion -for years- prior to my managing the team.

The incentive I'm working to create is "document your successes so we can ensure they're visible", not "focus on work that is by its nature highly visible", and, yes, definitely not "ignore the visibility of your work and rely entirely on your manager instead". It's no different than "maintain a brag sheet", except that I want them to be aware how that brag sheet feeds into the actual promo packet, and provides a common place for us to connect and discuss. If that means you'd never work for me...okay.

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

#389

Post by ZephyrBlu »

lliamander wrote: post #218
xoofoog wrote: post #43

Former Googler here. This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often... > choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career But the root cause isn't that people want to get promoted. It's that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons. Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving US…

> Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving USEFUL problems. Playing the devil's advocate here, but shouldn't one position in the technical career ladder be correlated with technical expertise? Furthermore, technical ability is something that the employee has some control over: whereas impact to the business has more external factors. The incentive problem…

Technical skills in isolation have no business impact. There's a reason that the higher up you go, the more business-y it gets even as an IC.

> Furthermore, technical ability is something that the employee has some control over: whereas impact to the business has more external factor

Rewarding someone for their skills in isolation makes no sense. The outcome is what matters.

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

#390

Post by ZephyrBlu »

summerlight wrote: post #159
xoofoog wrote: post #43

Former Googler here. This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often... > choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career But the root cause isn't that people want to get promoted. It's that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons. Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving US…

> the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" not for solving USEFUL problems. This is the real problem, but people typically underestimate difficulty of correctly identifying "useful" problems at scale. Fixing a bug is nice, but correctly prioritizing bugs worth fixing is harder than said because most cases relevant engineers have limited contexts on UX and PM also has limited contexts on…

> but in many cases seemingly simple bugs are not that really easy to solve while not making any dent on business

I work at a big tech company and see this all the time. Bugs that clearly exist and are impacting users, but they're hard to solve and have no or very little business impact. It doesn't really make sense to work on them, but it's kind of sad they just get left :/.

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