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Google's promotion process biases very heavily towards "impact". The problem is that maintaining existing projects generally isn't considered to be a demonstra
by nevir 8y ago
Google's promotion process biases very heavily towards "impact".
The problem is that maintaining existing projects generally isn't considered to be a demonstration of impact (or at least, it's a MUCH harder case to make). It's much easier to make the case that greenfield projects demonstrate impact.
Additionally, engineers have a good amount of power over what they get to work on: managers generally have to convince them to join a team. It's nice in concept, but lacks a steady influx of unwitting new engineers to help support all the not-so-sexy projects (like many other companies).
…so, you tend to see a pattern of engineers building a new thing, launching it, and then moving on to the next project. Leaving a trail of poorly supported projects in their wake.
- xiphias2 8y agoEngineers lost a lot of their power from the Eric Schmidt days. It's the PMs that are fighting for controlling engineers now, and killing projects that the engineers are working on (thereby stopping engineers from getting the promotion they work for). The promotion process is how you described though, PMs don't get promoted for maintaining projects, or even improvement on some metrics (that engineers are very good at), they always want new shiny stuff to brag about.
- hbarka 8y agoThe old Google Finance site was one of the better finance and stocks portal you could go to. Now it’s shite.
- auiya 8y agoCan vouch. When you see an organization behaving a specific way, you can usually assume it's due to how they structure their employee incentives. Conversely, watch how the organization deploys its lymphocytes if you want to know what it considers harmful.