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I get the point of being able to measure success by something quantifiable, but the emphasis on individuals needing to prove the impact they’ve made strikes me

I get the point of being able to measure success by something quantifiable, but the emphasis on individuals needing to prove the impact they’ve made strikes me as an odd setup. I’ve never worked at a FAANG but currently at a F100 in fintech, and as the product manager for our team, part of my role is to make sure our team is doing work that has quantifiable value. But for ICs on the team they’re not penalized if I make the wrong decisions and lead the team down a negative path (however part of my role in being successful is making our team goals transparent to all the team so they can help course correct if my thinking is way off).

joshuamorton 7y ago
The process has changed since Lynch left (actually it changed ~the week he left Google). For promotions up to L5, the decision is made by people within your org, who should have context on whether you were working on the right things or not. By L6+ (even as an IC), part of your job is to make decisions that are good for the organization, so having to justify them is not unreasonable.
war1025 7y ago
Reading this comment and thinking back to my memory of the article from reading it earlier today and when it has been posted in the past, I wonder if the "failed promotion" wasn't so much a matter of "not working on a shiny new project" as not making sure metrics were in place to document how the improvements to the service he was maintaining made it so it could handle more load. At some point on the ladder it's no longer enough to do good work, you need to show your work and why it matters to the company.