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Nice. Do you think large companies would benefit from a different scheme that rewards employees who "think like an owner"? (pardon the oft-used phrase)
by totalZero 9y ago
Nice. Do you think large companies would benefit from a different scheme that rewards employees who "think like an owner"? (pardon the oft-used phrase)
- mtlynch 9y agoYeah, but in fairness to Google, it's not an easy problem to solve. Of course from my perspective, I want them to care about things like bugfixing or supporting my teammates. But then you have to put controls on that so that people can't just never really do anything except bugfixing or riding their teammates' coattails. I think the right direction is weighing manager feedback more heavily so that if a team member is doing things that benefit the whole team, the promo committee can accept the manager's word that the person had an impact even if they can't quantify it with metrics.
- professor_plum 9y agoUnfortunately this begs the question a bit. How does one hire good managers? I mean good as in both competent and not jerks.
- burlesona 9y agoAt risk of stating the obvious, not all the medium/large tech companies work as described in this article. At Atlassian, for example, the direct managers are the ones who make promotion recommendations, it’s very much driven by your contributions on your team, whether accompanied by shiny metrics or not.
- totalZero 9y agoTrue, but conversely, many large companies outside of tech have a very similar disconnect between the reward system and the actual work that benefits the firm. I saw this when I was working at a bank. Even in a profit-transparent business, politics and optics played a larger role than raw performance and team support.
- groby_b 9y agoIt is, to some extent, a direct function of scale. The larger you get, the more you need to rely on systems instead of individuals - because it's easier for bad apples to hide in the noise. (How's that for a horribly confusing metaphor? ;)