Google employees alarmed that the company suddenly expects them to do work(futurism.com)
futurism.com
Google employees alarmed that the company suddenly expects them to do work
https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-employees-work-mandate
163 comments
This sounds like what it was like to work at a Fortine 500 company that’s in a declining business and hadn’t had profits in a while. I know that’s not the position Google is in but if the work environment is like that and the interview process is ridiculous then stock options has to be the only alluring thing.
Huge companies like that make it really hard to feel like anything you do matters.
Huge companies like that make it really hard to feel like anything you do matters.
I know people currently working at Google and have worked at Google. The internal politics they've described is insane. They all agree that there are many hurdles to prevent you from getting any work done. I don't know if it's always been that way, probably not, but I don't see the allure to working there now.
Is there a company that pays well and has a reasonable work life balance where that's not the case? Asking for a friend.
There are plenty of small-to-medium sized companies that will pay well (albeit not FAANG well). I work for one.
HN has a very strange employment bubble: there's an extreme distribution towards FAANG-tier companies, a decently sized tail for startups, and then virtually no representation of the places where 90% of people are actually doing software research and engineering: consultancies, contractors, teams within non-software companies, and so forth. Not all of them are well playing (and some are downright terrible), but plenty are.
HN has a very strange employment bubble: there's an extreme distribution towards FAANG-tier companies, a decently sized tail for startups, and then virtually no representation of the places where 90% of people are actually doing software research and engineering: consultancies, contractors, teams within non-software companies, and so forth. Not all of them are well playing (and some are downright terrible), but plenty are.
The 90% you refer to do not have time to browse HN at work. By the time they get home, they have more urgent things to do. Like cook, eat, wash-up, sleep, etc.
I'm looking to make the jump from FAANG to exactly what you're describing. How do I find one? They don't seem to be easily found on LinkedIn or hacker news jobs boards.
Yeah, they're definitely harder to discover.
I think the first step is probably identifying what exactly you'd like to do: smaller companies generally mean specialized roles (even if the engineers are themselves generalists). From that, there are probably local meetups and conferences in your area that are hosted or attended by smaller companies, consultancies, etc.
I think the first step is probably identifying what exactly you'd like to do: smaller companies generally mean specialized roles (even if the engineers are themselves generalists). From that, there are probably local meetups and conferences in your area that are hosted or attended by smaller companies, consultancies, etc.
Work in a tech role at a non-tech company. You get, like working conditions.
I moved from a financial software company to a government railway. 40% pay increase, heavily unionised, no expectations of working beyond paid hours, serious policies on bullying and harassment. One of the better parts is that because everything is a safety first mindset and engineering takes months to years to plan and implement projects, it severely limits the ability of managers from blowing up in progress projects with dumb ideas on the latest fad they saw in a tedtalk.
They don't pay like Google (most of the time, I hear ML is wild with salaries) but smaller startups under 20 people have, in my experience, excellent pay with excellent work life balance.
Under 20 people you are half a department, if pay is high dont think there would be wlb. Most of these want you onsite almost everyday even though they might say its hybrid.
I think remote work suits small companies best. There are not too many cooks in the kitchen, and meetings aren't overly crowded. That's to say... my experience does not align with your comment, but maybe I'm just lucky.
That isn't even remotely a universal truth. I've been working remote for 14 years and of the companies I've worked for in that time, 2 were hybrid and the rest fully distributed.
Amazon's pretty reasonable really most of the time. Certain teams work people like dogs, and junior engineers are too-often treated like shit. But if you're Sr. SDE or higher, it's usually quite reasonable.
Yeah they are reasonable until you come under the layoff quote and you manager cannot defend your work.
[deleted]
shopify
Can confirm.
Source: am a Shopify engineer
Source: am a Shopify engineer
I wouldn't work for Shopify for ethical reasons. They continue to help far-right sites like Breitbart or Daily Wire make their money.
Quote: https://twitter.com/gvwilson/status/1552090373283090432
>Reminder: every single one of the sources cited by the neo-Nazi responsible for the Christchurch massacre had a store on @Shopify, and the company refused to deplatform any of them.
Quote: https://twitter.com/gvwilson/status/1552090373283090432
>Reminder: every single one of the sources cited by the neo-Nazi responsible for the Christchurch massacre had a store on @Shopify, and the company refused to deplatform any of them.
You want to ban these people from exercising their rights? Yeah, I find them unruly and despicable too. Let us lobby up enough support and pass a bill. Let's convince everyone and rally up the entire country to pass a constitutional amendment. This is democracy. What you're seeking isn't that.
You want to bypass public decisions through proxy of corporations without public approval. That's a totalitarian/authoritarian future where a small group of corporate overlords rule general public.
You want to bypass public decisions through proxy of corporations without public approval. That's a totalitarian/authoritarian future where a small group of corporate overlords rule general public.
I'm glad Shopify isn't deplatforming entities that haven't been convicted in a court of law of a crime.
The tweet you linked to is doubly funny, since it was in response to Dan Price, who is under investigation for rape and physical abuse. Should Gravity Payments deplatform itself in today's guilt-by-association world?
The tweet you linked to is doubly funny, since it was in response to Dan Price, who is under investigation for rape and physical abuse. Should Gravity Payments deplatform itself in today's guilt-by-association world?
I think in this case OP isn't referring to a criminal act nor are they speculating to the possible guilt of a crime so of course there's no need for a a court of law to determine the facts.
Presuming t the facts that OP has concerns about are undisputed they're not alleging a crimes. But crimes have never needed to be the basis for boycotting something. Moral opposite has always been sufficient.
Presuming t the facts that OP has concerns about are undisputed they're not alleging a crimes. But crimes have never needed to be the basis for boycotting something. Moral opposite has always been sufficient.
"Not convicted" is not the gold standard of ethics, you know.
And this is how democracy dies.
If you think Breitbart and Daily Wire are far-right, you live in a serious bubble. If anything, both are middle of the road and a lot of conservatives would call them a tad left.
Funny how extremists see other lesser extremists as on the other side
Wow do educate us what you think is far right or far left.
Please share what you think are some examples of far right and far left. I was under the impression that both of these publications are pretty widely perceived to be right wing propaganda.
The litmus test is “would cloudflare take them as a customer?” If the answer is no then it’s a red-blooded American publication, if it’s yes then it’s a commie rag
That's my favourite scene in Office Space!
st00(3)
I've never worked for Google, but in every company I've worked for, when productivity was considered low or something, developers and designers weren't to blame for the low productivity.
1. We had 26 teams and 16 meeting rooms, and we often didn't have rooms for meetings. How was this fixed? They created a new meeting room.
2. After the discovery of "low productivity", a new meeting was created, obliging all teams to participate in meetings on "the reasons for low productivity"
3. The most productive week is the week when all scrum managers have been in training for one week.
But the accusations always came to the development team...It was hell on earth.
Probably something similar is happening at Google.
1. We had 26 teams and 16 meeting rooms, and we often didn't have rooms for meetings. How was this fixed? They created a new meeting room.
2. After the discovery of "low productivity", a new meeting was created, obliging all teams to participate in meetings on "the reasons for low productivity"
3. The most productive week is the week when all scrum managers have been in training for one week.
But the accusations always came to the development team...It was hell on earth.
Probably something similar is happening at Google.
Yes, if they aren't getting the results they want from all those smart people, it's because they aren't managing right. Most people want to do good work, but sometimes process and teams fighting each other gets in the way.
Maybe similar to a startup incubator/fund the idea is that most effort does fail and as long as some small percentage is wildly successful the whole enterprise continues.
The “low productivity” is a feature indicating low priority effort is appropriately prioritized. A key challenge is when something without a strategic purpose/value is released and becomes a beloved product that eventually must be depreciated, like Google Reader. It is much better to develop and never release than to release something without strategic benefit that causes problems in long run.
The “low productivity” is a feature indicating low priority effort is appropriately prioritized. A key challenge is when something without a strategic purpose/value is released and becomes a beloved product that eventually must be depreciated, like Google Reader. It is much better to develop and never release than to release something without strategic benefit that causes problems in long run.
I saw a similar situation once where a funded company hired "the smartest" people with the downside that they felt they had to let them do what they wanted to be competitive. The downside was you got people who wanted to do what they wanted instead of work on business-relevant stuff (almost with the kind of academic allergy to something "applied") which ends up being a pretty entitled, political and disagreeable group, and that once you've given people the freedom, it's almost impossible to go back and ask them to do something.
I wonder if the Google Graveyard is full of business-relevant stuff or personal projects. Either way, it's funny to think that a more productive Google might just mean more tombstones.
Both, because the promotion system is intricately intertwined with the Graveyard lifecycle. An engineer can rise more easily to the next rank by starting a project and delegating it once the promotion is achieved, leaving it to die. Due to the time difference between action and evaluation, there are no consequences for the initiator.
Well even if 1% of projects become profitable or valuable and the rest get killed, more tombstones should mean more value overall
(Edit: what's the objection to this comment? Usually I can tell, here I have no idea)
(Edit: what's the objection to this comment? Usually I can tell, here I have no idea)
That is if you don't count the cost of them or the possible damage to the brand that the killed projects might result in.
Yeah you're right nobody is using anything Google makes
Clearly people are using things Google makes. Search, Gmail, YouTube spring to mind.
But I'm not personally looking to use anything _new_ that Google makes. Wave, reader, goofke+, hangouts, and a bunch of others came and went. Basically when compared to behemoths like search and Gmail most really good things are complete failures.
Unfortunately this reputation is starting to ge an issue outside, and inside, the company. Outside I'm personally reluctant to use anything "Google new". I can imagine that inside when you're working on your 3rd or 4th cancelled Google project, you passion is, well, dulled.
But I'm not personally looking to use anything _new_ that Google makes. Wave, reader, goofke+, hangouts, and a bunch of others came and went. Basically when compared to behemoths like search and Gmail most really good things are complete failures.
Unfortunately this reputation is starting to ge an issue outside, and inside, the company. Outside I'm personally reluctant to use anything "Google new". I can imagine that inside when you're working on your 3rd or 4th cancelled Google project, you passion is, well, dulled.
It's a fair point and I don't think you should be downvoted. Though I have to disagree - for instance, when choosing whether to go with AWS or GCP...
Like yes, Google is probably not going to kill GCP. But it's not doing very well compared to Amazon, and then there's no guarantee that any product within GCP is going to exist for the long run. To think that a major part of your cloud infrastructure might just be dropped, that makes it too risky for me personally.
There's a general expectation that if I'm going to take a risk on a product, that they're in it for the long haul. Google is too big to be "in for the long haul" on really anything except their core products.
Like yes, Google is probably not going to kill GCP. But it's not doing very well compared to Amazon, and then there's no guarantee that any product within GCP is going to exist for the long run. To think that a major part of your cloud infrastructure might just be dropped, that makes it too risky for me personally.
There's a general expectation that if I'm going to take a risk on a product, that they're in it for the long haul. Google is too big to be "in for the long haul" on really anything except their core products.
It's possible for there to be damage to a brand without it sending overall usage to zero. Maybe someone would be skeptical of future social networks or URL shorteners or news reading apps or video chat apps from Google. It's conceivable that some of those (or any of a number of other failed products) could keep them from getting adoption elsewhere in the future.
I'm not sure how to answer this. Do you really believe you addressed what I wrote with a logically sound rebuttal? I would be happy to try to explain my position if you were making a genuine attempt.
I don’t think they are being sarcastic, given the context
They're definitely being sarcastic, the question is whether they thought they were making some useful point.
Obviously damage to the brand does not mean their users will immediately go to zero. You can see the damage to their brand that their project cancellation strategy causes in nerd forums like this all the time. Now probably that's not a big concern in the large scheme and they've decided the impact is reasonable, but if people think public moves like these are not considered carefully considered in this light, they just don't have a grasp of the reality of how corporations manage an asset worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
And the idea that because the balance may not be hurting them now, that the marginal costs and benefits for increasing the number of projects and project failures remain static and therefore increasing them can only help, is just laughable, and you don't need an economics degree to figure that out.
So I try to give the benefit of the doubt and give the benefit of the doubt even this kind of cheap rhetorical device and illogical point, but it's hard to imagine someone actually thought they were making a good point.
Obviously damage to the brand does not mean their users will immediately go to zero. You can see the damage to their brand that their project cancellation strategy causes in nerd forums like this all the time. Now probably that's not a big concern in the large scheme and they've decided the impact is reasonable, but if people think public moves like these are not considered carefully considered in this light, they just don't have a grasp of the reality of how corporations manage an asset worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
And the idea that because the balance may not be hurting them now, that the marginal costs and benefits for increasing the number of projects and project failures remain static and therefore increasing them can only help, is just laughable, and you don't need an economics degree to figure that out.
So I try to give the benefit of the doubt and give the benefit of the doubt even this kind of cheap rhetorical device and illogical point, but it's hard to imagine someone actually thought they were making a good point.
> it's hard to imagine someone actually thought they were making a good point.
That’s why assumed it wasn’t sarcastic. As a sarcastic comment it feels flippant and dismissive. So I thought a better perspective was that they were referencing Google’s social and messaging products.
I have no way to know but fortunately, it matters not.
That’s why assumed it wasn’t sarcastic. As a sarcastic comment it feels flippant and dismissive. So I thought a better perspective was that they were referencing Google’s social and messaging products.
I have no way to know but fortunately, it matters not.
IBM I believe kept a research group around for 2 years and let them work on whatever they wanted. Results? Basically nothing. So they disbanded the group.
IBM still has a research group.
Sometimes hiring great researchers and letting them do what they want pays off.
AT&T I believe kept a research group for much longer than that and they only invented or co-invented the transistor, the laser, radio astronomy, information theory, Unix, the C language, and the photovoltaic cell.
Sometimes hiring great researchers and letting them do what they want pays off.
AT&T I believe kept a research group for much longer than that and they only invented or co-invented the transistor, the laser, radio astronomy, information theory, Unix, the C language, and the photovoltaic cell.
My understanding was that Bell labs was full of researchers from wartime labs. These researchers were used to freedom, quick iteration and a focus on application to wartime efforts.
I think it would be hard to replicate this with modern day researchers. There just isn't the same pressure or importance that wartime provides.
I think it would be hard to replicate this with modern day researchers. There just isn't the same pressure or importance that wartime provides.
> Sometimes hiring great researchers and letting them do what they want pays off
Almost like research is not a guaranteed thing. Kinda like you're trying to figure out the unknown.
Almost like research is not a guaranteed thing. Kinda like you're trying to figure out the unknown.
So is venture capitalism; it's expected that most bets don't pay off and money is made because, if the VC makes good choices, some will pay off hugely. I think it's a matter of hiring the right people and managing them well.
in my experience, management is the problem rather than a hello, let alone the solution
Update: Through some digging and serious luck, I managed to find where I first heard this story [1] and here are the actual details:
- This is an "I know a guy..." story from a podcast. I don't have any blog posts or written pieces for you.
- The setting: Intel in the 90's
- Allegedly, they hired a team of PhDs to look into designing some "mobile" software -- pretty new back then. No deadlines, management essentially just said "go look into this"
- The project went on for 2 years. Code was designed, but no code came out of it. They more or less just blew millions of $$$.
[1] https://softskills.audio/2016/05/02/episode-9-deadlines-and-... Roughly 8 minutes and 20 seconds into the podcast.
- This is an "I know a guy..." story from a podcast. I don't have any blog posts or written pieces for you.
- The setting: Intel in the 90's
- Allegedly, they hired a team of PhDs to look into designing some "mobile" software -- pretty new back then. No deadlines, management essentially just said "go look into this"
- The project went on for 2 years. Code was designed, but no code came out of it. They more or less just blew millions of $$$.
[1] https://softskills.audio/2016/05/02/episode-9-deadlines-and-... Roughly 8 minutes and 20 seconds into the podcast.
IBM is still #1 in patent grants [1] so there's still other groups there going strong I guess
1. https://www.ificlaims.com/rankings-top-50-2021.htm
1. https://www.ificlaims.com/rankings-top-50-2021.htm
That’s very prestigious but orthogonal to remuneration unless one is operating a low status patent troll.
From what I heard in the past, at IBM employees get a $1k bonus per patent - and I bet the patent pool is worth more than that for IBM in cross-licencing savings and licensing revenue...
Isn't this kind of how Valve's (Steam) corporate structure is set up?
Valve has been called out as fairly dysfunctional. They havent made any quality games in awhile.
The last major project they got out the door was what the handheld device? That they are taking losses on? And how much of that was contracted out?
The last major project they got out the door was what the handheld device? That they are taking losses on? And how much of that was contracted out?
Also, the index hardware kind sucks (ive had constant hardware issues, and quest 2 is kind of superior in every category that isnt FOV). Facebook is proving to iterate on VR much better, despite Valve taking VR seriously for several years.
I can only speculate.
I assumed Valve decided that competing witu literally Apple, and Facebook, for VR headware wasn't clever.
I assumed Valve decided that competing witu literally Apple, and Facebook, for VR headware wasn't clever.
Steamdeck, Alyx, SteamOS, Proton
Exactly.
> it's almost impossible to go back
But, if they’re all working on business irrelevant things it’s unusually low risk to fire them all for cause and hire new employees.
But, if they’re all working on business irrelevant things it’s unusually low risk to fire them all for cause and hire new employees.
In the example I saw, they had convinced investors that this critical mass of "geniuses" would eventually usher in profitability somehow. I think that's part of the idea with google as well, hire the best let them work and they'll do great things. Just firing them admits that was a bad idea, I'd expect making it not so simple
> I think that's part of the idea with google as well, hire the best let them work and they'll do great things.
Google also has big impact focused culture, if employee doesn't produce business relevant impact, he is not rewarded (bonuses, promotion).
Google also has big impact focused culture, if employee doesn't produce business relevant impact, he is not rewarded (bonuses, promotion).
If that is (and had historically been) true, what is the article about then, or do you believe it's inaccurate? The whole thesis is that people are now being asked to be productive who were not previously held to productivity
Edit: or do you mean that previously there was room for slackers as long as they didn't care about promotion, and the difference now is their jobs are at risk?
Edit: or do you mean that previously there was room for slackers as long as they didn't care about promotion, and the difference now is their jobs are at risk?
Google is an incredibly complicated situation. Yes, it's impact-driven. But many other variables affect how your impact is perceived. For amusing reasons, over the past decade, the number of people who can and want to work on the core parts of google3- the load balancer/front end/web server/search/ads- has been dropping. No CS grad wants to work on a 15 year old web server that is mostly patches to deal with odd cases and a million tests that fail if you look at a load bearing comment oddly. The dwindling pool of experts has seized the memes of production (ha) and has the ability to work less because they are absolutely needed.
The best anecdote I ever heard from an SRE was "the VP was chagrined when I told them it didn't matter I was in a nerf war, because nothing was broken or needed to be fixed, but they still saw my point and let me continue" (I used to work in an SRE area that overlapped with an SVP's preferred meeting room so Susan Wojcicki was always getting pinged by a rogue nerf bullet).
As for slackers? Sure, when I joined around 2008 there were definitely folks who were slacking off. in fact they got rid of sabbatical because so many people were taking it then coming back and quitting.
The best anecdote I ever heard from an SRE was "the VP was chagrined when I told them it didn't matter I was in a nerf war, because nothing was broken or needed to be fixed, but they still saw my point and let me continue" (I used to work in an SRE area that overlapped with an SVP's preferred meeting room so Susan Wojcicki was always getting pinged by a rogue nerf bullet).
As for slackers? Sure, when I joined around 2008 there were definitely folks who were slacking off. in fact they got rid of sabbatical because so many people were taking it then coming back and quitting.
Going to have to steal “load bearing comment”
Nothing wrong with slacking off unless you have a real job as a firefighter or ER nurse.
Even firefighters also sometimes slack off when they're not responding to a call, although the responsible ones do it in a way that allows them to go from slacking off to driving off in the fire truck in a ridiculously small number of minutes (like 2). As you say, nothing wrong with that.
I once walked through a park on a fine spring day and saw an EMT team playing whiffleball using their stretcher as a backstop. Great way to wait for a call if you ask me.
Considering their low pay and high responsibility, I would never take away what little they have such as a little park time.
> or do you mean that previously there was room for slackers as long as they didn't care about promotion, and the difference now is their jobs are at risk?
Yes, I think they collected lots of mediocre employees through the aggressive hiring.
Also, some of them may be not productive by common metrics (say bugs closed, lines of code implemented), others are good at those metrics, but produce high quantity/low quality work, and make more damage than impact: systems are overengineered, buggy, etc. I think second type is likely makes companies suffer much more than first one, they are much harder to trace and fire.
Yes, I think they collected lots of mediocre employees through the aggressive hiring.
Also, some of them may be not productive by common metrics (say bugs closed, lines of code implemented), others are good at those metrics, but produce high quantity/low quality work, and make more damage than impact: systems are overengineered, buggy, etc. I think second type is likely makes companies suffer much more than first one, they are much harder to trace and fire.
> Google also has big impact focused culture, if employee doesn't produce business relevant impact, he is not rewarded (bonuses, promotion).
Xoogler here.
I see how people may view Google as having an impact-focused culture, but I would argue that Google has a perception-of-impact focused culture.
Google historically has sought to hire clever people-- clever people that understand and care about optimization. It should be no surprise that Googlers also applied their cleverness to optimize their behavior toward what they understood about the reward system called perf/promo (some of those understandings weren't necessarily correct, but when enough people share an understanding or behavior, correct or not, it can have a reflexive effect on the system itself).
Google has reached a critical mass point where values it cultivated in its people through these reward systems now drive the culture and common behavior.
There are a few major components to this:
Perceived Impact: Perf/promo-optimizing Googlers optimized for things that they understood or believed to be perceived by promotion committees as "impactful." This does not mean that those things are actually impactful, but perceived as impactful.
Impact isn't Technical Skill: What counts as "impact" and the need for impact varies by an employee's ladder (job family) and their level. Generally for individual contributor SWEs, levels were meant to be representative of an individual's technical skill/ability and leadership. Generally, assessing and gating a technical individual contributor's performance rating and promotion based on business impact doesn't lead to fair or correct outcomes for the person when the business impact isn't associated or driven by that individual's work. Also, from the reviewer's side, a person's work/contributions generally needs to be viewable as the driving factor for the impact portrayed. This creates a bias toward things that can be seen as 'technically complex' or 'technically challenging.'
Perceivability and Overemphasis on Visibility/Measurability: Many important things in life and engineering are not easily measurable, nor can the explanation of how to appreciate the "why this matters" be condensed into ~300 words. You have likely had scenarios in life where your intuition, experience, or judgment for what the right or good thing to do made something obvious for you, but the explanation would probably take too many words to fit into a promotion packet or a few minutes during an short interview, so you'd have to select obviously understandable and relatable examples when sharing with others -- This drives a bias toward doing things that can be easily perceived and visible to group of reviewers in a calibration and promotion committee.
Lowest Common Denominators: "Perf" (performance review) ratings and Promotion are separate processes. Performance ratings are recommended by managers, and calibrated/adjudicated amongst a set of managers from the same calibration group, typically people from your own team or adjacent teams. Promotion nominations are adjudicated by small committees of ladder (job family) representatives drawn from across the company (this was later changed to representatives across the person's Product Area/Division as the company got bigger). Sometimes the important things for a person to do are contextually related to the dynamics, circumstances, or needs of the local organization, but those very things wouldn't be appreciated or understood by a person in a similar role elsewhere (see previous paragraph), so a person often has to make a tradeoff on where to apply their time -- doing the right thing for the team/organization, or doing something that could be more generally perceived as impactful by a committee of people that don't know you, probably wouldn't appreciate why fixing ___/paying off technical debt/etc was important, and might not understand that the nature of your work is very different where you are than in other teams/orgs/product areas.
Overburdened and Sometimes Lazy Reviewers: Calibration group participants aren't volunteers, but promotion committee members are. Both groups often have more packets to evaluate and assess than they have time to commit while also doing their regular jobs. In "perf" and the promotion process, the person being reviewed typically has to author their own statements for why their work represents the characteristics of strong performance for their level and/or the next level -- those statements can often be a lot, or hard, to read. Checking and verifying that a launch happened and that a person had associated code (CLs) and design docs is a lot quicker and easier than reading through a bunch of code, design docs, etc and trying to verify the "impact."
So you could imagine why "I launched _______" becomes a common focus for perf/promotion optimizers, and a common understanding amongst the larger community on what's important to be rewarded...
Xoogler here.
I see how people may view Google as having an impact-focused culture, but I would argue that Google has a perception-of-impact focused culture.
Google historically has sought to hire clever people-- clever people that understand and care about optimization. It should be no surprise that Googlers also applied their cleverness to optimize their behavior toward what they understood about the reward system called perf/promo (some of those understandings weren't necessarily correct, but when enough people share an understanding or behavior, correct or not, it can have a reflexive effect on the system itself).
Google has reached a critical mass point where values it cultivated in its people through these reward systems now drive the culture and common behavior.
There are a few major components to this:
Perceived Impact: Perf/promo-optimizing Googlers optimized for things that they understood or believed to be perceived by promotion committees as "impactful." This does not mean that those things are actually impactful, but perceived as impactful.
Impact isn't Technical Skill: What counts as "impact" and the need for impact varies by an employee's ladder (job family) and their level. Generally for individual contributor SWEs, levels were meant to be representative of an individual's technical skill/ability and leadership. Generally, assessing and gating a technical individual contributor's performance rating and promotion based on business impact doesn't lead to fair or correct outcomes for the person when the business impact isn't associated or driven by that individual's work. Also, from the reviewer's side, a person's work/contributions generally needs to be viewable as the driving factor for the impact portrayed. This creates a bias toward things that can be seen as 'technically complex' or 'technically challenging.'
Perceivability and Overemphasis on Visibility/Measurability: Many important things in life and engineering are not easily measurable, nor can the explanation of how to appreciate the "why this matters" be condensed into ~300 words. You have likely had scenarios in life where your intuition, experience, or judgment for what the right or good thing to do made something obvious for you, but the explanation would probably take too many words to fit into a promotion packet or a few minutes during an short interview, so you'd have to select obviously understandable and relatable examples when sharing with others -- This drives a bias toward doing things that can be easily perceived and visible to group of reviewers in a calibration and promotion committee.
Lowest Common Denominators: "Perf" (performance review) ratings and Promotion are separate processes. Performance ratings are recommended by managers, and calibrated/adjudicated amongst a set of managers from the same calibration group, typically people from your own team or adjacent teams. Promotion nominations are adjudicated by small committees of ladder (job family) representatives drawn from across the company (this was later changed to representatives across the person's Product Area/Division as the company got bigger). Sometimes the important things for a person to do are contextually related to the dynamics, circumstances, or needs of the local organization, but those very things wouldn't be appreciated or understood by a person in a similar role elsewhere (see previous paragraph), so a person often has to make a tradeoff on where to apply their time -- doing the right thing for the team/organization, or doing something that could be more generally perceived as impactful by a committee of people that don't know you, probably wouldn't appreciate why fixing ___/paying off technical debt/etc was important, and might not understand that the nature of your work is very different where you are than in other teams/orgs/product areas.
Overburdened and Sometimes Lazy Reviewers: Calibration group participants aren't volunteers, but promotion committee members are. Both groups often have more packets to evaluate and assess than they have time to commit while also doing their regular jobs. In "perf" and the promotion process, the person being reviewed typically has to author their own statements for why their work represents the characteristics of strong performance for their level and/or the next level -- those statements can often be a lot, or hard, to read. Checking and verifying that a launch happened and that a person had associated code (CLs) and design docs is a lot quicker and easier than reading through a bunch of code, design docs, etc and trying to verify the "impact."
So you could imagine why "I launched _______" becomes a common focus for perf/promotion optimizers, and a common understanding amongst the larger community on what's important to be rewarded...
What I find enlightening about your description is how closely it matches incentives and resulting behavior in much less technically complex or profitable professions. Every dynamic mentioned is basically the common sense understanding of corporate workplaces we gain by late 20's or early 30's, but with a few SWE idiosyncrasies added in.
In some ways, it's both terrifying and comforting that highly competent people in difficult disciplines are also like this.
In some ways, it's both terrifying and comforting that highly competent people in difficult disciplines are also like this.
Yes -- We have to remember that Googlers are people and do what people tend to do :)
So, to summarize: Google as a company tries to establish impact driven culture, but complexity of this task (hard to measure impact) and humans imperfection (laziness, politics) make this goal not easy to achieve.
Google as company tries to establish an "engineering-driven" culture where how things get done matter.
Years ago, they tried to temper the bias-toward launches with a need for actual "impact" -- this led to a common saying of "Landings, not launches."
We end up with an amalgamation of technical complexity and launches as demonstrations of impact instead.
The problem is... The visibility and measurement of "landings" usually takes time, and the amount of time needed can be well-beyond the horizon of when a regular-level employee needs to be able to have their performance and promotion assessed. The effects of some things may take a year or longer to see. And as said above, measuring actual impact isn't always easy.
Years ago, they tried to temper the bias-toward launches with a need for actual "impact" -- this led to a common saying of "Landings, not launches."
We end up with an amalgamation of technical complexity and launches as demonstrations of impact instead.
The problem is... The visibility and measurement of "landings" usually takes time, and the amount of time needed can be well-beyond the horizon of when a regular-level employee needs to be able to have their performance and promotion assessed. The effects of some things may take a year or longer to see. And as said above, measuring actual impact isn't always easy.
Google has a big focus on technical excellence and complexity. Facebook is the one with the impact focused culture. You need to get your PRs approved by language experts at G, while at FB people frequently ship things that are terribly written and have few tests.
Anywhere where there are committees that decide who gets promoted are not impact focused.
Anywhere where there are committees that decide who gets promoted are not impact focused.
I have bad news for you, then: Facebook, which you laud as being impact driven, does exactly this. They call them "calibrations" but I've been in them and I can assure you that they're committees with all that implies.
Oh they certainly still do have some bureaucracy, but you will never see an L3 at Google being promoted to L5 in 1 year whereas that is a (very rare) possibility at FB.
I specifically know a person who was double promoted from 3 to 5 in their second full cycle at Google. Just over one year.
Except that they over-reward "design a completely new project in market X" where they already have a product, and under-reward fixing the existing product in a backward-compatible way. That means customers can't count on Google supporting anything long-term.
When I was working there, I was surprised how many engineers did NOT work. I would see people watching Netflix all day, hitting the gym twice a day, sitting in cafes and chatting, taking tours of various cafes, even driving 30m each way to a different campus to eat at that cafe, sitting around to eat dinner while watching movies. They would get large groups of friends to dinner so they can eat for free, dick around all day, run after nonsense issues, create trouble, social justice warriors of all kinds ... there was one case I was completely baffled - a new hire wanting to change government policies around how contractors are paid and somehow it was Google HR problem to solve it.
My own org was different, people were very productive and I struggled to keep up but this was the exception. Maybe because were in Infra and focussed on results oriented systems research. Most teams in infra were like this, infra teams were hard.
Everyone else was a different world. I did not envy them but its no surprise with the headcount they have, they are struggling to justify the numbers. They can cut 30% of the workforce and still be fine.
My own org was different, people were very productive and I struggled to keep up but this was the exception. Maybe because were in Infra and focussed on results oriented systems research. Most teams in infra were like this, infra teams were hard.
Everyone else was a different world. I did not envy them but its no surprise with the headcount they have, they are struggling to justify the numbers. They can cut 30% of the workforce and still be fine.
I mean why work hard if they don't force you to? It's not like it's an orphanage or a power-plant or something, but a gigantic data-siphoning ad company.
Life's easy when you're a rent-extracting monopoly in the richest market on the planet.
That title reads like The Onion...
Then again, given what they've done to many of their products, especially their search engine recently, I'm not surprised. I just hope they don't end up trying to save themselves by stuffing in even more dark patterns and other user-hostile crap.
Then again, given what they've done to many of their products, especially their search engine recently, I'm not surprised. I just hope they don't end up trying to save themselves by stuffing in even more dark patterns and other user-hostile crap.
I'm curious. Were there many newspaper and magazine articles about life at IBM, GE, and other large corporations in the the 1950-1980 time frame? Did this trend of corporate culture commentary arise with periodicals like Byte, Dr. Dobb's, and Wired Magazine? Before?
Whole books even:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
Available to read for free on Open Library :)
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL98218W/The_soul_of_a_new_mac...
Oh, great point. That's a fantastic book.
I don't remember any corporate culture stuff in hardcore tech magazines like Byte or Dr. Dobb's. Wired came later and it seems like it had corporate culture articles.
People talked about corporate culture at IBM all the time, it was just in hushed tones.
True, you heard about corporate culture at IBM, I just don't recall reading articles about it in Byte or Dr. Dobb's.
This is low quality clickbait, almost no real info in the article
There were several direct quotes from google management and some anecdotes by current employees. What would you consider real info?
Maybe there's "real info" there, a few quotes without context, but this reads like nypost decided to make an edition for silicon valley.
~175,000 employees. They can probably run the company just fine with tens of thousands fewer employees. But, when it comes to productivity / profitability, it really doesn't seem so bad, frankly; consider:
2018 operating income margin: 22.9% ($31.4b op income)
2021 operating income margin: 30.5% ($78.7b op income)
And they nearly doubled sales in three years, from 2018 at $136.8b in sales to $257b at the end of fiscal 2021. That's something beyond astounding for a company so big.
This reeks of Sundar and top management worrying about their jobs, trying too hard to please Wall Street.
2018 operating income margin: 22.9% ($31.4b op income)
2021 operating income margin: 30.5% ($78.7b op income)
And they nearly doubled sales in three years, from 2018 at $136.8b in sales to $257b at the end of fiscal 2021. That's something beyond astounding for a company so big.
This reeks of Sundar and top management worrying about their jobs, trying too hard to please Wall Street.
2020 was a record year because nobody touched grass for 9 months.
2021 was a record year because they juiced the monetization on search and youtube to the max.
2022 still seems to be fine so far since the brand equity hit from juicing up the ads hasn't made it to the bottom line yet, but it will.
2021 was a record year because they juiced the monetization on search and youtube to the max.
2022 still seems to be fine so far since the brand equity hit from juicing up the ads hasn't made it to the bottom line yet, but it will.
they increased operating revenues in part by making Search results unusable, decreasing the quality of search results to drive more ad impressions and clicks. Ads themselves have been optimized to blend in with organic traffic, taking over the page, to drive more revenue.
FWIW I think Page and Brin have retained voting control of the company through some differentiated class of common shares. So Sundar is probably more interested in pleasing them than some Wall Street analysts.
This reeks of wallstreet getting greedier.
Yeah this is what is frustrating internally. The company is still ludicrously profitable. Just not as much as last year. But it isn't like in 2019 there were big disruptive cuts and massive wrenches thrown into hiring plans. This isn't a "oh boy we don't have enough runway and need to do something fast" thing that startups or unprofitable unicorns run into. Instead this is "the stock market will be angry if they see lower margins."
Here are the 4 sources of information in this article, none of which are new nor support the garbage clickbait title:
>CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly told employees that "there are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the head count we have," and "we should think about how we can minimize distractions and really raise the bar on both product excellence and productivity."
>a manager [explained] that if next quarter sales "don't look up, there will be blood on the streets,"
>"The communication has been rude," another Googler told the outlet, "and it's threatening people to make sure we hit numbers.
>"Volume has picked up and the busyness of the workday has picked up with how rough things have been," one unnamed contractor told Insider. "I haven't heard of reductions, but there are definitely no additions."
>CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly told employees that "there are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the head count we have," and "we should think about how we can minimize distractions and really raise the bar on both product excellence and productivity."
>a manager [explained] that if next quarter sales "don't look up, there will be blood on the streets,"
>"The communication has been rude," another Googler told the outlet, "and it's threatening people to make sure we hit numbers.
>"Volume has picked up and the busyness of the workday has picked up with how rough things have been," one unnamed contractor told Insider. "I haven't heard of reductions, but there are definitely no additions."
> there are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the head count we have
What a weird concern. Increasing head count decreases productivity (per person anyway). Why would you expect it to increase?
I have to imagine at some point the marginal benefits are near zero, and Google probably reached that scale years ago.
What a weird concern. Increasing head count decreases productivity (per person anyway). Why would you expect it to increase?
I have to imagine at some point the marginal benefits are near zero, and Google probably reached that scale years ago.
I don't think he means "per person", the sentence makes sense without that assumption.
What sort of weird bootlicker wrote that headline?
Also, this is a cheap and bad reblog of this Insider article: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-freeze-cuts-pe...
Also, this is a cheap and bad reblog of this Insider article: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-freeze-cuts-pe...
Funny how Google became a trillion dollar company with employees sitting around doing nothing
Extreme clickbait article a la Vanity Fair or New York Post…not what I’d expect to see on HN.
@dang, are these submissions now acceptable?
@dang, are these submissions now acceptable?
“Cancel more products! Quickly!”
It feels like they canceled their spam team at Gmail and YouTube.
My spam filter is a 2-position slider.
I'm afraid to mark anything as spam because it just flips the switch the other way, and now way too much stuff is in spam. Mark something not spam? Welcome to spam-fest!
Why they can't do something so simple as, I don't know, blocking messages in foreign charactersets I don't understand, block messages with obvious spam senders and subjects, .. I mean, come on, I don't get 10 Norton receipts a day, guys.
Why they can't do something so simple as, I don't know, blocking messages in foreign charactersets I don't understand, block messages with obvious spam senders and subjects, .. I mean, come on, I don't get 10 Norton receipts a day, guys.
Exactly. I'm getting spam with eggplants emojis in the title, FFS. Come on!
I assume this is sarcasm but... rather than squeezing all employees to work harder, why shouldn't Google cancel a bunch of unprofitable products like, say, space lasers, Pixelbooks, and maybe Fuchsia?
NOT THE SPACE LASERS!
This is such an angry ranty version of this story...
...but at the same time, this feels like the angry ranty version of the story that [a certain set of] Googlers deserve.
...but at the same time, this feels like the angry ranty version of the story that [a certain set of] Googlers deserve.
> this feels like the angry ranty version of the story that [a certain set of] Googlers deserve.
If people fail to work a healthy amount on a day-to-day basis at a company, that speaks more to the company than it does those workers. People like to work on things they find interesting. Google is failing by not putting workers on interesting things, or things they want to work on.
If people fail to work a healthy amount on a day-to-day basis at a company, that speaks more to the company than it does those workers. People like to work on things they find interesting. Google is failing by not putting workers on interesting things, or things they want to work on.
It's not this. It's that a large number of Google engineers are risk-averse, and a lot of the rest of them love to do empire-building. All of this means that there are a lot of people saying "no" in between any individual engineer and a project. When you can't do anything like this, a lot of people just check out.
It's not even about interesting work, it's about the fact that for each person trying to do X, there are >10 trying to make sure that X doesn't get done without their approval.
It's not even about interesting work, it's about the fact that for each person trying to do X, there are >10 trying to make sure that X doesn't get done without their approval.
It’s impossible to get anything done. Googlegeist is pretty damn clear across the company.
I’ve been getting nothing but pushback for a very critical project. Driving me nuts.
Two weeks ago I just decided I was done with meetings, doc reviews, pretty much anything that was holding me back. Time do it my way.
In that time I built what started as a proof of concept and is shaping up to be a beta. (Tool is internal facing.). Solves a hugely critical, long standing issue. Boom.
Now I’ll spend the next three months begging to get it kept alive.
But apparently I’m just lazy.
I’ve been getting nothing but pushback for a very critical project. Driving me nuts.
Two weeks ago I just decided I was done with meetings, doc reviews, pretty much anything that was holding me back. Time do it my way.
In that time I built what started as a proof of concept and is shaping up to be a beta. (Tool is internal facing.). Solves a hugely critical, long standing issue. Boom.
Now I’ll spend the next three months begging to get it kept alive.
But apparently I’m just lazy.
Reminds me of when I worked at AT&T, on a team that was running a very small file transfer service internal to the corporate firewall. Literally a couple week project that you'd find in a tutorial.
We were asked to check in with the accessibility folks to make sure everything was good with our emails that we were sending. It was a completely plain-text email, so just about the most accessible you can get, so I didn't expect any issues. We had a QA person who was blind look it over informally and said it was great.
The accessibility people said we had to undergo a formal review, and they could do it in six to ten, nbd.
I asked what unit of six, like six weeks? No, six to ten months. And we would have to stop sending email in the interim, for sure, definitely not permitted.
After all, our emails didn't even have all the graphics and corporate branding (and features to make the graphics and corporate branding "accessible") that were required. No, there's no guidelines, the committee has to review it.
I informed them that the CTO of the company was using the file transfer service for sending out his weekly meeting slides. No more complaints were received, and I left the company well before their timeline rolled around for review.
Would be interesting to know if the service was still operating and sending plain text emails.
We were asked to check in with the accessibility folks to make sure everything was good with our emails that we were sending. It was a completely plain-text email, so just about the most accessible you can get, so I didn't expect any issues. We had a QA person who was blind look it over informally and said it was great.
The accessibility people said we had to undergo a formal review, and they could do it in six to ten, nbd.
I asked what unit of six, like six weeks? No, six to ten months. And we would have to stop sending email in the interim, for sure, definitely not permitted.
After all, our emails didn't even have all the graphics and corporate branding (and features to make the graphics and corporate branding "accessible") that were required. No, there's no guidelines, the committee has to review it.
I informed them that the CTO of the company was using the file transfer service for sending out his weekly meeting slides. No more complaints were received, and I left the company well before their timeline rolled around for review.
Would be interesting to know if the service was still operating and sending plain text emails.
Sorry, but work is work, and not every task at work is a fun problem. Sometimes you need to buckle down and grind through hard problems that aren't the most fulfilling.
Google should be investing everything in next generation AI smart assistants and search. Otherwise it’s dead. Search is otherwise overrated.
Kek this puts a smile on my face, all those smug rich kid interns that "work at google" and their whole day is just going to some meeting, doing 1 hour of shuffling tickets, then playing lacrosse and going to a drag show or some shit, with the final hours of the day spent editing the footage to go on TikTok.
If they lowered their hiring bar I’d be happy to do Jack shit all day too
Considering their growth rate it probably isn't as high anymore.
Tiktok isn't real life
In all seriousness, if my bosses at G wanted me to do work when I was there, I would have had to explain to them that I would love to do work, but there are about 10 other people at G whose job it is to make sure that I don't do any work. The only work that gets done at G is done by virtue of herculean efforts from engineers and frontline managers to convince a mountain of other people that their work is a priority. After that, one offhand comment from a VP or an SVP can get your entire project cancelled.