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I have never worked for Google, but the story in previous similar discussions had been that Google’s performance reviews largely weigh launching new products to

I have never worked for Google, but the story in previous similar discussions had been that Google’s performance reviews largely weigh launching new products to the exclusion of everything, so anyone who wants to get promoted can’t afford to “get stuck” maintaining an existing product without at least a significant rewrite.

MattGaiser 6y ago
Ah ok. I have heard that story as well.
jakevoytko 6y ago
This is basically true, although "to the exclusion of everything else" is more extreme than my experience. At the time I left ~5 years ago, it was common for promotion rejections to be given the explanation "the current thing that you're working on hasn't launched yet, so the promotion committee couldn't properly assess your impact. If you successfully launch it, that would clearly demonstrate impact." If you were a shoo-in via your existing work (i.e. you were obviously underpromoted), then it wouldn't matter as much. But since most people were trying to get promoted the instant they had a plausible case, it meant that a lot of people were focused on launching One Last Thing. Since I left, I understand that they've revamped the promotions up to Senior such that managers that are familiar with your work consider your promotion instead of a random committee. I'm curious to hear whether that has affected the "launch launch launch" push for promotions under staff engineer. I know through my network that staff+ promotions can still be held up for this reason.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Promotion "committee" ??
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Fairly normal in larger organizations, has been the case in my past 3 jobs. The idea is to reduce gamesmanship in promotion decisions (my whole team is senior engineers, etc.), and to provide some uniformity across the organization. They usually also have some budgetary discretion as well, as they have to balance whatever pool of money is available for promotions, COL adjustments, and merit based raises.
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      Fairly normal in larger organizations, has been the case in my past 3 jobs. I guess my last several orgs just kept that away from me then, for whatever reasons they had. It's honestly surprisingly new to me that "committees" for such a thing are "normal" at large orgs. In those cases, I had a lot of autonomy over promotions-as a leader, other than the usual "get approval from the CFO for funding if there is a raise involved"; beyond that, coordinating promotions with my director what the promotion would entail was all there was to it.
  - bonzini 6y ago
    Usually it's only involved on higher-level promotions (like, only 5% of less of engineers have ever had a promotion going through the committee), but it's fairly common to have a corporate promotion committee at companies larger than a few thousand employees.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Ah ok. I have heard that story as well.

jakevoytko 6y ago

This is basically true, although "to the exclusion of everything else" is more extreme than my experience. At the time I left ~5 years ago, it was common for promotion rejections to be given the explanation "the current thing that you're working on hasn't launched yet, so the promotion committee couldn't properly assess your impact. If you successfully launch it, that would clearly demonstrate impact." If you were a shoo-in via your existing work (i.e. you were obviously underpromoted), then it wouldn't matter as much. But since most people were trying to get promoted the instant they had a plausible case, it meant that a lot of people were focused on launching One Last Thing. Since I left, I understand that they've revamped the promotions up to Senior such that managers that are familiar with your work consider your promotion instead of a random committee. I'm curious to hear whether that has affected the "launch launch launch" push for promotions under staff engineer. I know through my network that staff+ promotions can still be held up for this reason.

dvtrn 6y ago
Promotion "committee" ??
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Fairly normal in larger organizations, has been the case in my past 3 jobs. The idea is to reduce gamesmanship in promotion decisions (my whole team is senior engineers, etc.), and to provide some uniformity across the organization. They usually also have some budgetary discretion as well, as they have to balance whatever pool of money is available for promotions, COL adjustments, and merit based raises.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Fairly normal in larger organizations, has been the case in my past 3 jobs. I guess my last several orgs just kept that away from me then, for whatever reasons they had. It's honestly surprisingly new to me that "committees" for such a thing are "normal" at large orgs. In those cases, I had a lot of autonomy over promotions-as a leader, other than the usual "get approval from the CFO for funding if there is a raise involved"; beyond that, coordinating promotions with my director what the promotion would entail was all there was to it.
- bonzini 6y ago
  Usually it's only involved on higher-level promotions (like, only 5% of less of engineers have ever had a promotion going through the committee), but it's fairly common to have a corporate promotion committee at companies larger than a few thousand employees.