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Another example of this is their OKR system. If you meet all your quarterly goals at Google, that's not a success. In fact, you're frowned upon for not settin

by oofbey 4y ago

Another example of this is their OKR system. If you meet all your quarterly goals at Google, that's not a success. In fact, you're frowned upon for not setting your goals high enough. Their whole management process encourages people to chase after impossible goals, and literally discourages people from getting things done.

xmprt 4y ago
Missing OKRs always seemed a little weird to me. It strikes me as a lack of vision and makes the numbers and goals chosen seem very arbitrary.
- nine_zeros 4y ago
  Missing OKRs means that the team cannot set achievable goals. It is a signal that the team has terrible foresight. I know the argument is that by being more ambitious and achieving 70%, you are setting ambitious goals. But then the goals are never met. The work doesn't finish. The projects falter. The users are unhappy. Engineers leave.
  - xmprt 4y ago
    In my experience, people make 10 goals during planning and then later decide on the 7 that they're going to hit. I wouldn't mind if the goals were ambitious but efforts were made to achieve 70% of them. However, in practice it seems like there's no vision during planning and instead they change course midway through the half. What's the point of planning if you can't stick to the plan.
jedberg 4y ago
Yeah from what I've heard you ideally want to hit 70-80% of your OKRs, and people game it to make sure they fail at one or two so they don't get accused of being "too easy".
- dekhn 4y ago
  One of the most hilarious things I've ever seen was the head of Google Plus loudly sharing his "1.0 OKR" regarding social adoption at TGIF. It was about that time folks got suspicious and some long-termers found out Vic was lying about adoption rates.
  - native_samples 4y ago
    Oof. Is that really why he got canned. I'd always assumed Gundotra just made too many enemies during the period where L&S empowered him to do whatever it takes to win in social, and when he didn't win, he had burned too many bridges to stay. Lying about adoption is something I didn't hear before.
- tuckerman 4y ago
  I've never seen or even heard of anyone throwing their OKRs to avoid the appearance that they were too easy. In fact, you rarely hear about another team's grading of OKRs at all. Plenty of teams inside Google also set OKRs expecting/hoping to hit 1.0 so it wouldn't be at all surprising to see lots of 1's/near 1's on teams.
  - jedberg 4y ago
    Well this was told to me by xooglers who were now working for other companies, so either they were the ones doing it and that's why they left, or they made it up to make Google sound worse. So I guess take it with a grain of salt?
    - ShamelessC 4y ago
      Here here! We don't have to believe everything internet strangers say. The presupposition that an unvetted internet comment will somehow become "vetted" by the probing of _another_ internet stranger doesn't make any sense.
    - vrc 4y ago
      12 years ago OKRs were huge. And yes, you graded them, managers and other teams viewed them, and you aimed for 0.7. Recently, it was a lot more lax. Many teams didn’t do them, drifted away from them, or didn’t bother grading them
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JJMcJ 4y ago
Had to look it up. Objectives and key results (OKR, alternatively OKRs). More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR. Hmm. If you are supposed to not meet all your OKRs, then that guarantees you will have a record of unmeet OKRs, which can be used as ammunition to deny promotion or even fire someone. So that encourages a sort of favoritism, where the people you want to promote anyway have their missed OKRs overlooked, while the rest of the pack aren't meeting their OKRs.
- ericbarrett 4y ago
  Never worked at Google but I have seen exactly this happening at other OKR-based companies. Ultimately whether missing your OKRs is framed as valiant struggle or disappointing failure does absolutely depend on external perception.

by oofbey 4y ago

xmprt 4y ago

Missing OKRs always seemed a little weird to me. It strikes me as a lack of vision and makes the numbers and goals chosen seem very arbitrary.

nine_zeros 4y ago
Missing OKRs means that the team cannot set achievable goals. It is a signal that the team has terrible foresight. I know the argument is that by being more ambitious and achieving 70%, you are setting ambitious goals. But then the goals are never met. The work doesn't finish. The projects falter. The users are unhappy. Engineers leave.
- xmprt 4y ago
  In my experience, people make 10 goals during planning and then later decide on the 7 that they're going to hit. I wouldn't mind if the goals were ambitious but efforts were made to achieve 70% of them. However, in practice it seems like there's no vision during planning and instead they change course midway through the half. What's the point of planning if you can't stick to the plan.

jedberg 4y ago

Yeah from what I've heard you ideally want to hit 70-80% of your OKRs, and people game it to make sure they fail at one or two so they don't get accused of being "too easy".

dekhn 4y ago
One of the most hilarious things I've ever seen was the head of Google Plus loudly sharing his "1.0 OKR" regarding social adoption at TGIF. It was about that time folks got suspicious and some long-termers found out Vic was lying about adoption rates.
- native_samples 4y ago
  Oof. Is that really why he got canned. I'd always assumed Gundotra just made too many enemies during the period where L&S empowered him to do whatever it takes to win in social, and when he didn't win, he had burned too many bridges to stay. Lying about adoption is something I didn't hear before.
tuckerman 4y ago
I've never seen or even heard of anyone throwing their OKRs to avoid the appearance that they were too easy. In fact, you rarely hear about another team's grading of OKRs at all. Plenty of teams inside Google also set OKRs expecting/hoping to hit 1.0 so it wouldn't be at all surprising to see lots of 1's/near 1's on teams.
- jedberg 4y ago
  Well this was told to me by xooglers who were now working for other companies, so either they were the ones doing it and that's why they left, or they made it up to make Google sound worse. So I guess take it with a grain of salt?
  - ShamelessC 4y ago
    Here here! We don't have to believe everything internet strangers say. The presupposition that an unvetted internet comment will somehow become "vetted" by the probing of _another_ internet stranger doesn't make any sense.
  - vrc 4y ago
    12 years ago OKRs were huge. And yes, you graded them, managers and other teams viewed them, and you aimed for 0.7. Recently, it was a lot more lax. Many teams didn’t do them, drifted away from them, or didn’t bother grading them

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JJMcJ 4y ago

Had to look it up. Objectives and key results (OKR, alternatively OKRs). More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR. Hmm. If you are supposed to not meet all your OKRs, then that guarantees you will have a record of unmeet OKRs, which can be used as ammunition to deny promotion or even fire someone. So that encourages a sort of favoritism, where the people you want to promote anyway have their missed OKRs overlooked, while the rest of the pack aren't meeting their OKRs.

ericbarrett 4y ago
Never worked at Google but I have seen exactly this happening at other OKR-based companies. Ultimately whether missing your OKRs is framed as valiant struggle or disappointing failure does absolutely depend on external perception.