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>>Nos 2-5: these happen at almost every medium-large sized company I've ever worked at. If you know a place that isn't political, bureaucratic, siloed and fille
by kamaal 8y ago
>>Nos 2-5: these happen at almost every medium-large sized company I've ever worked at. If you know a place that isn't political, bureaucratic, siloed and filled with rivals and petty managers, let me know so I can give you my resume.
This is one of the problems with the way their hiring is marketed. They are depicted to be asking hard CS and algorithm based questions, and a culture of a workplace is being sold which is based on a merit process along the lines of 'programming abilities'.
The reality in every people structure one will every work at, politics is how the world works. People optimize what's best for themselves. The bosses are often stupid, because bosses that exist never want smart people to grow up and become a competition to them. Money is always attached to hot projects, so bulk of the career growth, bonuses and other juice comes when you work there. Regardless of whatever the merits of that project are.
The same applies to projects too. Once a company has 2 - 3 cash cow projects, the executives won't let new set of rivaling products emerge and become a competition to their fiefdom. Most of the times the competition is killed in plain sight, but other times its back room political sabotage. Only a few days back some one mentioned how Google is a place where $100M revenue opportunities pop up and die all the time.
The same case with that 20% extra time projects. Who is going to let this happen? I'm pretty sure anybody who dares to do these projects will be marked to be a trouble maker by the very managers they report too.
In short once you have more than 2 layers of management at your company, politics is how thing will work. And its perfectly, OK. Because that's how world is.
What is problematic is if the people at the top, Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't know are too naive to understand that its happening in their company since years. Inability to deal with everyday politics can kill companies.
- kbenson 8y ago> The reality in every people structure one will every work at, politics is how the world works. > In short once you have more than 2 layers of management at your company, politics is how thing will work. And its perfectly, OK. Because that's how world is. The problem is people see "the political system" and "politicians" and think wouldn't it be great if we could do away with that, never understanding these are just examples of normal human behavior taken to extreme levels because of the competition, scale and stakes. Politics is always present, because it's just a word to describe human power dynamics. Company politics becomes obvious when different people want different things, and some people exert power and influence to affect outcomes, in subtle or not so subtle ways. It's as inevitable at a small company as a big company, the only difference is that it may not be as extreme and it may take a while longer to show up. The mistake is people considering working at a company of tens of thousands of people and thinking that somehow normal human behavior doesn't apply here.
- 1ae8-4846-8e9c 8y agoPeople have gotten promoted off their 20% projects. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but to say you understand the internal dynamics of Google and the decisions that Larry and Sergey make is certainly some kind of delusional.