7 ms·

your manager can't vouch for you and it's basically up to how well you summarize and present your work to a faceless promotion committee (_i.e. how well you pla

by jlebar 8y ago

your manager can't vouch for you and it's basically up to how well you summarize and present your work to a faceless promotion committee (_i.e. how well you play politics_). (emphasis mine) Googler here, speaking for myself. Isn't what you describe literally the opposite of playing politics?

pfortuny 8y ago
Nope: playing politics mean talking corporatesse and a promotion commitee only understands that. Like when asking for scientific funds.
- elcomet 8y ago
  You can call almost anything 'playing policits'. In other companies, getting along with your manager on purpose to get a promotion and taking credit for successes, can certainly be called 'playing politics. The difference in Google is that there's a standardized process, so maybe that avoids a manager promoting his friends.
  - dandellion 8y ago
    I'd say that is correct. Unless you work alone you are going to be playing politics to some degree.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >You can call almost anything 'playing policits'. Except what does matter, and should be counted: your code, your design decisions, and the quality of your project output...
    - brownbat 8y ago
      Getting along with people actually matters. Brilliant jerks lower the morale and output of everyone around them. I agree that promotion processes suck if they don't create room for understated high achievers, people who are just a little more shy or awkward or humble. But focusing exclusively on individual output and ignoring more pathologic behaviors can lead to massive problems. And some team projects absolutely require communication as a core skill that influences overall output.
      - danaris 8y ago
        But none of that is the same kind of “playing politics” that it sounds like is required by Google’s processes. Indeed, if you’re good at playing politics, you can be an absolute jerk on a regular basis, but still get promoted all the time by saying the right things to the promotion board. Someone else’s comment had it almost right: playing politics is anything you choose to do at work primarily for the purpose of making yourself look good to those you think have the power to promote or fire you.
        joshuamorton 8y ago
        Something apparently missing from this is that what you say is only a small part of what the promo committee looks at. They also see peer reviews from coworkers and your manager. So this idea of blindly sucking up to the promo committee doesn't happen. (And in practice I'd agree, everyone I've seen get promo deserved it).
        vkou 8y ago
        The promotion board pays attention to what your co-workers say. More attention to that, then what you say, actually. If everyone says you're an asshole in your promotion packet, you're going to have a hard time getting promoted.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >Getting along with people actually matters. And that's another thing that can't be decided by a committee where you go and play nice for a few hours...
    - spookthesunset 8y ago
      > your code Who decides what "good code is"? There is no gold standard for such defenition. Guess how that gets decided? Politics. > your design decisions In order to "get credit", how does anybody know your design decisions were the best? Hell, how do you even know it was the right move. Just like the code, there is no 100% correct design decisions. It's all trade offs. Knowing you chose the best path and more important trying to get credit for it is.... politics. I mean, you had to convince people your design decisions were correct to get them implemented. That was political.... > and the quality of your project output What does "quality" mean? Wanna define it? That is politics. What does "project output" mean? Wanna define it? That, too, is politics. Engineers always think they can avoid "politics". But politics is everywhere and is an unescapable feature of life. It isn't even a bad thing. Any time you have limited resources and people are in contention for those resources, you are gonna get politics. Stop trying to avoid it and embrace it. Politics are part of every job if you want to be successful. Hell, even attempting to convince people that they should ignore politics is itself a political move.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >> your code Who decides what "good code is"? There is no gold standard for such defenition. Guess how that gets decided? Politics. There doesn't have to be a "gold standard", just sensible experienced programmers doing code reviews, instead of office-politics-players and executive drones. >In order to "get credit", how does anybody know your design decisions were the best? Hell, how do you even know it was the right move. How about people with actual domain knowledge judge that? All the rest of the comment is the same, as if any judgement of a project/code/design is impossible outside of "who likes whom" and "who kisses whose ass". If that's the case where one works, they should get out pronto.
arendtio 8y ago
Well, I would call everything you have to do besides the work itself to 'play politics'. Since very few tasks in a company require to present your work afterward, it is hard for managers to find out who did best without extra presentations. In the end, I think it is the manager's job to motivate their people to present their work, but ultimately it is in the employee's interest. My advice is to get used to having to present your work. Otherwise, you might end up doing a fantastic job and being disappointed when nobody notices that it was you who did it (probably resulting in promotions for people who didn't do as good as you did).
- hopler 8y ago
  A good manager should present their reportees' work for them, or help hire someone to do that for them. Do you want salespeople doing your tech jobs?
- sowbug 8y ago
  Engineering is a social job. Coding is much less of one. Explaining, debating, and presenting the relevance, correctness, quality, and comparative advantage of one's engineering work is part of "the work itself." You're right that it's kind of pointless to "present your work afterward," and indeed, promotion committees at Google actually pay little attention to after-the-fact summaries of technical work. Instead, they look for artifacts of in-the-moment design and implementation discussions. This is the evidence showing that a given solution wasn't just one person's moment of inspired genius that he or she deigned to bestow upon the codebase, but rather the best of many possible solutions that the team chose, as a team, drawing on all the resources available such as literature, other projects past and present, the informed opinions of others in the field, the experience of senior engineers and former engineers now in management, the PMs who agree this solution achieves business goals, etc. All too many junior engineers think a design document is "what we actually did." It's not. It's "why we picked the path we did, and why we rejected the alternatives." And yeah, as you say, nobody's going to care about what you actually did. That's kind of like being forced to look at a long series of selfies on Instagram. But they definitely will care if you asked their opinion which way to go at the start of the project, and later on they'll respect the fact that you consulted them and others on their area of expertise, because what you built has a little bit of them in it. That's the difference between coding and engineering. Code is something that works. Engineering is the selecting the best of the possible working solutions, and being able to explain why it was the best.
flunhat 8y ago
Well, kind of. But it's still very bureaucratic. To be cynical, though, being successful with that kind of process requires knowing how to describe your accomplishments, what metrics to emphasize, and what projects are simply not worth spending time on because they won't scream "promote me!" during your review (even though they might be necessary & important).
- m0zg 8y ago
  It also requires being given the opportunity to pursue high leverage projects in the first place. And guess who decides that.
m0zg 8y ago
You know, I'd even believe you if I did not observe with my own eyes, at Google, how people get promoted despite not really doing much themselves other than gaming the visibility, and people who are literally one of a kind and who delivered world class, pivotal work get denied promotion repeatedly. It's still a human-based system. It's still vulnerable to nearly the same political bullshit you see elsewhere: cliques, favoritism, backstabbing, etc. Heck even your boss still affects your promo (there's a "private" section in the feedback you don't see). If you don't see this, then you're probably not getting promoted either.
- osrec 8y ago
  A good friend of mine from university is a Googler. He is a nice guy, but incredibly political and technically not very capable. A master of making himself look good, schmoozing and talking the talk. He has done rather well at Google. Yet another friend, a brilliant, straight-talking techy, struggles at moving up the ranks Google. Only one data point, but given the comments here, perhaps it is somewhat accurate.
  - beerlord 8y ago
    The solution is to work for a smaller company where your output is directly tied to the market success of the entire organisation, and where its small enough that the CEO/Founder can directly appreciate your efforts. Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go. Bonus is that these kind of jobs are often located outside of Silicon Valley, so your living costs will be much lower.
    - hoaw 8y ago
      > Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go. That is a pretty big "just". Bonuses aren't common everywhere, and unfortunately it seems like management being directly involved in the company can also go the other way. Since they have a larger incentive to short change you on salary as it is their own bottom line. That said I think looking at the promotion structure is something underappreciated and should really be part of these "how to be successful" post rather than maxing out you credit card (or whatever).
coldtea 8y ago
Is it? It might not be playing inter-personal politics, but it's like doing a campaign speech. Instead of a long term assessment of your work (and the real interactions within your team etc), it's how you represent it in a pitch that is measured... The most charismatic presenter (e.g. bullshit artist) wins.
drewg123 8y ago
I'm an Xoogler and was promoted when I was there. (see sibling comment for details). The way to get promoted at Google seems to be to play a game where you tick all the boxes for performance at the next level and have the right people write for you. In some ways, that helps the company (working across teams, for example). In other ways, it may hurt the company (launching potentially redundant products is seen by committees as being more valuable than incrementally improving existing products). I think that a lot depends on who writes recommendations for you in your promo packet (and that's pure politics) In my case, I was basically gathering requirements and helping other teams integrate with an internal product. So I was perfectly positioned for promo. I was an L5, and talking to a lot of senior folks in other teams (sr. staff, director, vp) who were willing to write for me. I'm pretty sure having a VP who knew me and could write about me really made the difference.
- hopler 8y ago
  That's not a problem with the process, that's a problem with what the senior engineers value (making themselves feel smarter than their aspiring peers, not producing valuable products)
- brown9-2 8y ago
  > The way to get promoted at Google seems to be to play a game where you tick all the boxes for performance at the next level This is how it works at every company I’ve ever worked for. Companies don’t want to promote someone into a position where the outcome seems risky.
  - m0zg 8y ago
    Don't know how it is now, but most of my promos at Microsoft (in 00s) were unexpected by me. I just kicked ass, and my managers delivered the goods. I liked that system. That's how it's supposed to work. :-)
- creato 8y ago
  > I think that a lot depends on who writes recommendations for you in your promo packet (and that's pure politics) ... I'm pretty sure having a VP who knew me and could write about me really made the difference. It sounds like that VP knew you because of the work you were doing, not because you bought him dinner or something. In that case, it's not pure politics, your work was apparently important and impacted a lot of people. In this thread it sounds like a lot of people think promotion (and work performance in general) should be measured by purely technical contributions only, which is not realistic. That kind of work is important and makes sense for entry level work, but that's not how big projects get done.

by jlebar 8y ago

pfortuny 8y ago

Nope: playing politics mean talking corporatesse and a promotion commitee only understands that. Like when asking for scientific funds.

elcomet 8y ago
You can call almost anything 'playing policits'. In other companies, getting along with your manager on purpose to get a promotion and taking credit for successes, can certainly be called 'playing politics. The difference in Google is that there's a standardized process, so maybe that avoids a manager promoting his friends.
- dandellion 8y ago
  I'd say that is correct. Unless you work alone you are going to be playing politics to some degree.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >You can call almost anything 'playing policits'. Except what does matter, and should be counted: your code, your design decisions, and the quality of your project output...
  - brownbat 8y ago
    Getting along with people actually matters. Brilliant jerks lower the morale and output of everyone around them. I agree that promotion processes suck if they don't create room for understated high achievers, people who are just a little more shy or awkward or humble. But focusing exclusively on individual output and ignoring more pathologic behaviors can lead to massive problems. And some team projects absolutely require communication as a core skill that influences overall output.
    - danaris 8y ago
      But none of that is the same kind of “playing politics” that it sounds like is required by Google’s processes. Indeed, if you’re good at playing politics, you can be an absolute jerk on a regular basis, but still get promoted all the time by saying the right things to the promotion board. Someone else’s comment had it almost right: playing politics is anything you choose to do at work primarily for the purpose of making yourself look good to those you think have the power to promote or fire you.
      - joshuamorton 8y ago
        Something apparently missing from this is that what you say is only a small part of what the promo committee looks at. They also see peer reviews from coworkers and your manager. So this idea of blindly sucking up to the promo committee doesn't happen. (And in practice I'd agree, everyone I've seen get promo deserved it).
      - vkou 8y ago
        The promotion board pays attention to what your co-workers say. More attention to that, then what you say, actually. If everyone says you're an asshole in your promotion packet, you're going to have a hard time getting promoted.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Getting along with people actually matters. And that's another thing that can't be decided by a committee where you go and play nice for a few hours...
  - spookthesunset 8y ago
    > your code Who decides what "good code is"? There is no gold standard for such defenition. Guess how that gets decided? Politics. > your design decisions In order to "get credit", how does anybody know your design decisions were the best? Hell, how do you even know it was the right move. Just like the code, there is no 100% correct design decisions. It's all trade offs. Knowing you chose the best path and more important trying to get credit for it is.... politics. I mean, you had to convince people your design decisions were correct to get them implemented. That was political.... > and the quality of your project output What does "quality" mean? Wanna define it? That is politics. What does "project output" mean? Wanna define it? That, too, is politics. Engineers always think they can avoid "politics". But politics is everywhere and is an unescapable feature of life. It isn't even a bad thing. Any time you have limited resources and people are in contention for those resources, you are gonna get politics. Stop trying to avoid it and embrace it. Politics are part of every job if you want to be successful. Hell, even attempting to convince people that they should ignore politics is itself a political move.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >> your code Who decides what "good code is"? There is no gold standard for such defenition. Guess how that gets decided? Politics. There doesn't have to be a "gold standard", just sensible experienced programmers doing code reviews, instead of office-politics-players and executive drones. >In order to "get credit", how does anybody know your design decisions were the best? Hell, how do you even know it was the right move. How about people with actual domain knowledge judge that? All the rest of the comment is the same, as if any judgement of a project/code/design is impossible outside of "who likes whom" and "who kisses whose ass". If that's the case where one works, they should get out pronto.

arendtio 8y ago

Well, I would call everything you have to do besides the work itself to 'play politics'. Since very few tasks in a company require to present your work afterward, it is hard for managers to find out who did best without extra presentations. In the end, I think it is the manager's job to motivate their people to present their work, but ultimately it is in the employee's interest. My advice is to get used to having to present your work. Otherwise, you might end up doing a fantastic job and being disappointed when nobody notices that it was you who did it (probably resulting in promotions for people who didn't do as good as you did).

hopler 8y ago
A good manager should present their reportees' work for them, or help hire someone to do that for them. Do you want salespeople doing your tech jobs?
sowbug 8y ago
Engineering is a social job. Coding is much less of one. Explaining, debating, and presenting the relevance, correctness, quality, and comparative advantage of one's engineering work is part of "the work itself." You're right that it's kind of pointless to "present your work afterward," and indeed, promotion committees at Google actually pay little attention to after-the-fact summaries of technical work. Instead, they look for artifacts of in-the-moment design and implementation discussions. This is the evidence showing that a given solution wasn't just one person's moment of inspired genius that he or she deigned to bestow upon the codebase, but rather the best of many possible solutions that the team chose, as a team, drawing on all the resources available such as literature, other projects past and present, the informed opinions of others in the field, the experience of senior engineers and former engineers now in management, the PMs who agree this solution achieves business goals, etc. All too many junior engineers think a design document is "what we actually did." It's not. It's "why we picked the path we did, and why we rejected the alternatives." And yeah, as you say, nobody's going to care about what you actually did. That's kind of like being forced to look at a long series of selfies on Instagram. But they definitely will care if you asked their opinion which way to go at the start of the project, and later on they'll respect the fact that you consulted them and others on their area of expertise, because what you built has a little bit of them in it. That's the difference between coding and engineering. Code is something that works. Engineering is the selecting the best of the possible working solutions, and being able to explain why it was the best.

flunhat 8y ago

Well, kind of. But it's still very bureaucratic. To be cynical, though, being successful with that kind of process requires knowing how to describe your accomplishments, what metrics to emphasize, and what projects are simply not worth spending time on because they won't scream "promote me!" during your review (even though they might be necessary & important).

m0zg 8y ago
It also requires being given the opportunity to pursue high leverage projects in the first place. And guess who decides that.

m0zg 8y ago

You know, I'd even believe you if I did not observe with my own eyes, at Google, how people get promoted despite not really doing much themselves other than gaming the visibility, and people who are literally one of a kind and who delivered world class, pivotal work get denied promotion repeatedly. It's still a human-based system. It's still vulnerable to nearly the same political bullshit you see elsewhere: cliques, favoritism, backstabbing, etc. Heck even your boss still affects your promo (there's a "private" section in the feedback you don't see). If you don't see this, then you're probably not getting promoted either.

osrec 8y ago
A good friend of mine from university is a Googler. He is a nice guy, but incredibly political and technically not very capable. A master of making himself look good, schmoozing and talking the talk. He has done rather well at Google. Yet another friend, a brilliant, straight-talking techy, struggles at moving up the ranks Google. Only one data point, but given the comments here, perhaps it is somewhat accurate.
- beerlord 8y ago
  The solution is to work for a smaller company where your output is directly tied to the market success of the entire organisation, and where its small enough that the CEO/Founder can directly appreciate your efforts. Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go. Bonus is that these kind of jobs are often located outside of Silicon Valley, so your living costs will be much lower.
  - hoaw 8y ago
    > Just make sure that you have a solid bonus/promotion structure pre-agreed and you're good to go. That is a pretty big "just". Bonuses aren't common everywhere, and unfortunately it seems like management being directly involved in the company can also go the other way. Since they have a larger incentive to short change you on salary as it is their own bottom line. That said I think looking at the promotion structure is something underappreciated and should really be part of these "how to be successful" post rather than maxing out you credit card (or whatever).

coldtea 8y ago

Is it? It might not be playing inter-personal politics, but it's like doing a campaign speech. Instead of a long term assessment of your work (and the real interactions within your team etc), it's how you represent it in a pitch that is measured... The most charismatic presenter (e.g. bullshit artist) wins.

drewg123 8y ago

I'm an Xoogler and was promoted when I was there. (see sibling comment for details). The way to get promoted at Google seems to be to play a game where you tick all the boxes for performance at the next level and have the right people write for you. In some ways, that helps the company (working across teams, for example). In other ways, it may hurt the company (launching potentially redundant products is seen by committees as being more valuable than incrementally improving existing products). I think that a lot depends on who writes recommendations for you in your promo packet (and that's pure politics) In my case, I was basically gathering requirements and helping other teams integrate with an internal product. So I was perfectly positioned for promo. I was an L5, and talking to a lot of senior folks in other teams (sr. staff, director, vp) who were willing to write for me. I'm pretty sure having a VP who knew me and could write about me really made the difference.

hopler 8y ago
That's not a problem with the process, that's a problem with what the senior engineers value (making themselves feel smarter than their aspiring peers, not producing valuable products)
brown9-2 8y ago
> The way to get promoted at Google seems to be to play a game where you tick all the boxes for performance at the next level This is how it works at every company I’ve ever worked for. Companies don’t want to promote someone into a position where the outcome seems risky.
- m0zg 8y ago
  Don't know how it is now, but most of my promos at Microsoft (in 00s) were unexpected by me. I just kicked ass, and my managers delivered the goods. I liked that system. That's how it's supposed to work. :-)
creato 8y ago
> I think that a lot depends on who writes recommendations for you in your promo packet (and that's pure politics) ... I'm pretty sure having a VP who knew me and could write about me really made the difference. It sounds like that VP knew you because of the work you were doing, not because you bought him dinner or something. In that case, it's not pure politics, your work was apparently important and impacted a lot of people. In this thread it sounds like a lot of people think promotion (and work performance in general) should be measured by purely technical contributions only, which is not realistic. That kind of work is important and makes sense for entry level work, but that's not how big projects get done.