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I once heard that at Google advancement (and thus salary increase) is significantly pinned to shipping new things. As a result, nobody is incentivized to work o

I once heard that at Google advancement (and thus salary increase) is significantly pinned to shipping new things. As a result, nobody is incentivized to work on maintenance or improvement of existing things. Everybody wants to ship something new, so they can ride along with it up the corporate elevator.

DannyBee 9y ago
Counterpoint: I've been promoted 5 times (last was to Director), and i've never shipped anything new, only worked on maintenance or improvement of existing things.
dandv 9y ago
It was probably via [this Quora answer](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2016-12?op=0#/#staff-are-rewarded-for-dreaming-up-new-things-even-when-new-things-arent-needed-27 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things...). I don't think that's entirely accurate. There are efforts to reward Product Excellence, for example, which involved UX polish, performance tuning etc.
- earenndil 9y ago
  > It was probably via [this Quora answer](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things... http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things...). FYI, HN doesn't really have markdown, so that link doesn't work. Instead, generally we do something like this: > It was probably via this Quora answer[1] > I don't think that's entirely accurate. There are efforts to reward Product Excellence, for example, which involved UX polish, performance tuning etc. > > 1: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things... http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things...).
junkscience2017 9y ago
Google has become their own worst nightmare: Yahoo Google has optimized its hiring process almost uniformly for raw intelligence and it shows...they have very little common or "street smarts" sense about product vision. Apple isn't perfect but they run laps around Google here. Google is what happens when you are only hyper-intelligent. Bezos, Zuck, Musk...none of them are losing sleep worried about Google at this point. Google's products have become boring and stale. They endlessly build up and then tear down basic services like messaging that their competitors crushed long ago. They can't even fully commit with their hearts and guts to a "other bet". There will be some soul-searching at Google when Waymo is beat to market by a competitor that started years after they did but simply had more hustle and drive Look at something like Slack, Discord, Github, Whatsapp...those would never have emerged from Google as it is today. All Google can do is polish its boring stable of utilities.

DannyBee 9y ago

Counterpoint: I've been promoted 5 times (last was to Director), and i've never shipped anything new, only worked on maintenance or improvement of existing things.

dandv 9y ago

It was probably via [this Quora answer](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2016-12?op=0#/#staff-are-rewarded-for-dreaming-up-new-things-even-when-new-things-arent-needed-27 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things...). I don't think that's entirely accurate. There are efforts to reward Product Excellence, for example, which involved UX polish, performance tuning etc.

earenndil 9y ago
> It was probably via [this Quora answer](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things... http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things...). FYI, HN doesn't really have markdown, so that link doesn't work. Instead, generally we do something like this: > It was probably via this Quora answer[1] > I don't think that's entirely accurate. There are efforts to reward Product Excellence, for example, which involved UX polish, performance tuning etc. > > 1: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things... http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things...).

junkscience2017 9y ago

Google has become their own worst nightmare: Yahoo Google has optimized its hiring process almost uniformly for raw intelligence and it shows...they have very little common or "street smarts" sense about product vision. Apple isn't perfect but they run laps around Google here. Google is what happens when you are only hyper-intelligent. Bezos, Zuck, Musk...none of them are losing sleep worried about Google at this point. Google's products have become boring and stale. They endlessly build up and then tear down basic services like messaging that their competitors crushed long ago. They can't even fully commit with their hearts and guts to a "other bet". There will be some soul-searching at Google when Waymo is beat to market by a competitor that started years after they did but simply had more hustle and drive Look at something like Slack, Discord, Github, Whatsapp...those would never have emerged from Google as it is today. All Google can do is polish its boring stable of utilities.