9 ms·

Google tells employees more of them will be at risk for low performance ratings

69 points by latchkey 4y ago

vineyardmike 4y ago
I often hear a lot of people speak poorly about Googlers, claiming they’re lazy/entitled/whatever, but I hope we can all agree that performance reviews should be fair and not expect “the near impossible”. It seems likely that Google over-hired and is trying to avoid public layoffs or just raise productivity/velocity. I wish employers who wanted to layoff workers would do it directly instead.
- zug_zug 4y ago
  I'd go a step further and say that several marketplaces are moving toward a trend of "Overhire, overwork, attempt to cut the 'bottom' 15%, repeat" [tech support, amazon, now engineers] It's dehumanizing and unsustainable -- any job that sets a pace you can't keep up until retirement (i.e. 30+ more years) is overtaxing you. Not to mention the lack of psychological safety -- no point befriending anybody at work if you're all interchangeable at a moment's notice. I think to turn this trend around we need to say "no" to places that treat you this way, and not glorify them simply because they are big (I'm referring to the F-word).
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Other than the overhire part the trades have been this way for decades...
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    > It's dehumanizing and unsustainable Absolutely. And there are a variety of legal solutions to this. Unions are the big scary one in the US. Other nations give employees equal voting power to shareholders etc. I think tech unions could be good. Everyone always defaults to “blue collar” unions like factories that set wages but there are “high skill” unions where wages aren’t set (eg Hollywood unions). They spread the protection around too. Eg if you want to hire a famous Union actor, you need Union cameramen. Everyone wants the famous actor, and that protects the camera crew. In Hollywood unions, they set hours and expectations and basic standards but not salaries and other perks. Another benefit a Union could get is related to on-call load and getting paid for that overtime.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Is it not factored into the high salary? It's always an option to not work at these high comp/high stress companies.
    - catchnear4321 4y ago
      It’s modern, white collar hazard pay, even if it will take some time for that to be recognized. There are absolutely lower stress, lower pay jobs out there for a lot of these “high stress” skill sets. The declining economy does the same with these choices as it does everywhere - make the risk more acceptable.
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      Yes but realistically they’re not paying that much. Most of US salaries have stagnated for years (thanks inflation) but factoring in inflation, this is where white collar salaries should be. A starting salary of 100k (lower than most FAANGs) may be excessive but in most of America 100k is barely enough for a house, car, kids (especially with college), and a comfortable retirement savings. It’s more than enough for a young single person, but not to support a family. Obviously most people make less, and most households in America make less, but a solid, comfortable, stress free, middle-class life expects that now.
      - ethics13 4y ago
        >>A starting salary of 100k (lower than most FAANGs) may be excessive but in most >>of America 100k is barely enough for a house, car, kids (especially with >>college), and a comfortable retirement savings. It’s more than enough for a >>young single person, but not to support a family. Especially in cities like New York, San Francisco, etc...
    - olliej 4y ago
      The salaries aren't particularly high at google vs any other tech company, especially when you look at the cost of living where they are located. A lot of total comp is in the form a stock grants, which given stagnating and decreasing stock price represents a reduction in total comp for folk who are there long enough. But also there's a difference between "this is your salary" and "this is your salary, but your job is no longer any safer than a contractor's"
  - throwaway128128 4y ago
    It's called "rank and yank", a philosophy invented by Jack Welch at GE and wielded heartlessly Microsoft for decades.
- mathverse 4y ago
  I dont get overhiring for money printing companies like Google. Cant they just move these people into some “experiment, r&d divisions”?
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Google hasn’t built new income streams though, despite being famously R&D focused. Look at stadia, or their countless other paid products they killed.
    - steve1977 4y ago
      As customer, I haven’t really seen any innovation from Google in the last couple of years and the quality of their core products (search, YouTube, Gmail) has rather deteriorated than improved.
  - thefourthchime 4y ago
    That’s all they do. They come up with something, make it a product for a couple years. Then kill it. They have zero commitment to any of these products. If they don’t suddenly become the next search they’re dead.
    - astrange 4y ago
      They also make up internal projects because external software can’t handle their “scale” they also made up. And rewrite all their internal projects every few years because that’s the best way to deal with their changing environment, which changes due to their policy of rewriting everything every few years. Basically what I’m saying is they’d do fine if all their engineers just stayed home for a year.
      - dilyevsky 4y ago
        > They also make up internal projects because external software can’t handle their “scale” they also made up Which part of their scale did companies like Google and Netflix make up?
- justin_oaks 4y ago
  Performance reviews should be fair, but I dare say that none of them are. They're based on the subjective views of the bosses. I wish we could all just drop the charade and eliminate formal performance reviews. Bosses should provide frequent feedback on employees' performance, not just once a year. I don't believe that low performers (or perhaps employees that the boss dislikes) should be surprised that they're getting fired. They should be able to see it coming well before it happens.
  - wildrhythms 4y ago
    >Bosses should provide frequent feedback on employees' performance, not just once a year. I agree, but I don't think this addresses the problem; a boss with an axe to grind, or some quota to fulfill still leaves the worker with no means of pushback within the organization (absent of collective action).
  - gcheong 4y ago
    It's more or less a CYA thing for HR when someone is let go for "performance reasons".
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    Fun fact, these are all things that the new system encodes. Before you can officially be given bad ratings, you have to have like 1-2 quarters of official warnings and you get feedback/check-ins on performance quarterly as opposed to 1-2x a year under Google's own system.
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  The expectations for that top rating band (previously "Superb", now "Transformative") have always been high. Something like 3-4% of people are expected to get it per cycle. I've been promoted at a well above average pace, and even with strong performance and a strongly supportive manager, only managed to come close to that top rating once. There's really no expectation that anyone ever get that top rating. Most employees never will. That's fine.
UncleMeat 4y ago
More headlines for a system that was announced in April.
- olliej 4y ago
  Because this is a new meeting, and it sounds like - from some of the quoted questions - executives have been requiring managers provide feedback/checkin ruling in a way that impacts the ranking of the IC without any time for the IC to address the concern. Presumably the perf review/ranking can then reference the unaddressed concern.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    Nope. Expected ratings distributions were published immediately on the the rollout of GRAD in the spring. The support check in process was explained not too long after. The rollout was indeed messy, with a lot of support check ins being given in December as a “check the box” process to make getting a low rating possible, with no time for a report to adjust. But this is only because the new system requires a formal check in before making it possible to get the lower ratings. This is portrayed as insidious but actually makes it strictly more difficult to get low ratings. The new “meets most” rating captures an implicit “low CME” from the old system and does mean that more people will now officially get undesirable ratings. But this was known ahead of time. None of the material in this article is new.
    - olliej 4y ago
      > The rollout was indeed messy, with a lot of support check ins being given in December > The rollout was indeed messy, with a lot of support check ins being given in December as a “check the box” process to make getting a low rating possible, with no time for a report to adjust. That is what said: "managers provide feedback/checkin ruling in a way that impacts the ranking of the IC without any time for the IC to address the concern" Given that it is December still, and it's apparently only in December that this is seems to have started occurring, I fail to see how "None of the material in this article is new" unless this was also reported as happening some other report in the last two weeks that I missed. I am not saying the details of the stack ranking are new, I'm saying the events described in the article (the December shafting of ICs) is new.
VincentEvans 4y ago
Speaking of job performance, can anyone who looked at gmail settings screens tell me that this shitshow of halfass mismatched UX is what one ought to expect from decade-old established and widely-used software from one of the largest companies with some of the highest salaries and hardest job interviews in the software engineering profession? P.S - in a recent past I also had to take over administration of a google apps account for a small company and discovered that the admin UIs for that product were too a barely passable garbage lacking bulk operations and defaulting grids to 20 items per page.
deterministic 4y ago
Google: “We hire the best most productive SWE in the world!” Also Google: “We have hired a bunch of slackers who need to be fired!”
fsociety 4y ago
I have heard that Google has a lot of cutthroat kingdom building, politics, and doc writing. I wonder what would improve performance better: rank and yank, or disincentivizing the politics and doc writing?

69 points by latchkey 4y ago

I often hear a lot of people speak poorly about Googlers, claiming they’re lazy/entitled/whatever, but I hope we can all agree that performance reviews should be fair and not expect “the near impossible”. It seems likely that Google over-hired and is trying to avoid public layoffs or just raise productivity/velocity. I wish employers who wanted to layoff workers would do it directly instead.

zug_zug 4y ago
I'd go a step further and say that several marketplaces are moving toward a trend of "Overhire, overwork, attempt to cut the 'bottom' 15%, repeat" [tech support, amazon, now engineers] It's dehumanizing and unsustainable -- any job that sets a pace you can't keep up until retirement (i.e. 30+ more years) is overtaxing you. Not to mention the lack of psychological safety -- no point befriending anybody at work if you're all interchangeable at a moment's notice. I think to turn this trend around we need to say "no" to places that treat you this way, and not glorify them simply because they are big (I'm referring to the F-word).
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Other than the overhire part the trades have been this way for decades...
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > It's dehumanizing and unsustainable Absolutely. And there are a variety of legal solutions to this. Unions are the big scary one in the US. Other nations give employees equal voting power to shareholders etc. I think tech unions could be good. Everyone always defaults to “blue collar” unions like factories that set wages but there are “high skill” unions where wages aren’t set (eg Hollywood unions). They spread the protection around too. Eg if you want to hire a famous Union actor, you need Union cameramen. Everyone wants the famous actor, and that protects the camera crew. In Hollywood unions, they set hours and expectations and basic standards but not salaries and other perks. Another benefit a Union could get is related to on-call load and getting paid for that overtime.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Is it not factored into the high salary? It's always an option to not work at these high comp/high stress companies.
  - catchnear4321 4y ago
    It’s modern, white collar hazard pay, even if it will take some time for that to be recognized. There are absolutely lower stress, lower pay jobs out there for a lot of these “high stress” skill sets. The declining economy does the same with these choices as it does everywhere - make the risk more acceptable.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Yes but realistically they’re not paying that much. Most of US salaries have stagnated for years (thanks inflation) but factoring in inflation, this is where white collar salaries should be. A starting salary of 100k (lower than most FAANGs) may be excessive but in most of America 100k is barely enough for a house, car, kids (especially with college), and a comfortable retirement savings. It’s more than enough for a young single person, but not to support a family. Obviously most people make less, and most households in America make less, but a solid, comfortable, stress free, middle-class life expects that now.
    - ethics13 4y ago
      >>A starting salary of 100k (lower than most FAANGs) may be excessive but in most >>of America 100k is barely enough for a house, car, kids (especially with >>college), and a comfortable retirement savings. It’s more than enough for a >>young single person, but not to support a family. Especially in cities like New York, San Francisco, etc...
  - olliej 4y ago
    The salaries aren't particularly high at google vs any other tech company, especially when you look at the cost of living where they are located. A lot of total comp is in the form a stock grants, which given stagnating and decreasing stock price represents a reduction in total comp for folk who are there long enough. But also there's a difference between "this is your salary" and "this is your salary, but your job is no longer any safer than a contractor's"
- throwaway128128 4y ago
  It's called "rank and yank", a philosophy invented by Jack Welch at GE and wielded heartlessly Microsoft for decades.
mathverse 4y ago
I dont get overhiring for money printing companies like Google. Cant they just move these people into some “experiment, r&d divisions”?
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  Google hasn’t built new income streams though, despite being famously R&D focused. Look at stadia, or their countless other paid products they killed.
  - steve1977 4y ago
    As customer, I haven’t really seen any innovation from Google in the last couple of years and the quality of their core products (search, YouTube, Gmail) has rather deteriorated than improved.
- thefourthchime 4y ago
  That’s all they do. They come up with something, make it a product for a couple years. Then kill it. They have zero commitment to any of these products. If they don’t suddenly become the next search they’re dead.
  - astrange 4y ago
    They also make up internal projects because external software can’t handle their “scale” they also made up. And rewrite all their internal projects every few years because that’s the best way to deal with their changing environment, which changes due to their policy of rewriting everything every few years. Basically what I’m saying is they’d do fine if all their engineers just stayed home for a year.
    - dilyevsky 4y ago
      > They also make up internal projects because external software can’t handle their “scale” they also made up Which part of their scale did companies like Google and Netflix make up?
justin_oaks 4y ago
Performance reviews should be fair, but I dare say that none of them are. They're based on the subjective views of the bosses. I wish we could all just drop the charade and eliminate formal performance reviews. Bosses should provide frequent feedback on employees' performance, not just once a year. I don't believe that low performers (or perhaps employees that the boss dislikes) should be surprised that they're getting fired. They should be able to see it coming well before it happens.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  >Bosses should provide frequent feedback on employees' performance, not just once a year. I agree, but I don't think this addresses the problem; a boss with an axe to grind, or some quota to fulfill still leaves the worker with no means of pushback within the organization (absent of collective action).
- gcheong 4y ago
  It's more or less a CYA thing for HR when someone is let go for "performance reasons".
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  Fun fact, these are all things that the new system encodes. Before you can officially be given bad ratings, you have to have like 1-2 quarters of official warnings and you get feedback/check-ins on performance quarterly as opposed to 1-2x a year under Google's own system.
joshuamorton 4y ago
The expectations for that top rating band (previously "Superb", now "Transformative") have always been high. Something like 3-4% of people are expected to get it per cycle. I've been promoted at a well above average pace, and even with strong performance and a strongly supportive manager, only managed to come close to that top rating once. There's really no expectation that anyone ever get that top rating. Most employees never will. That's fine.

UncleMeat 4y ago

More headlines for a system that was announced in April.

olliej 4y ago
Because this is a new meeting, and it sounds like - from some of the quoted questions - executives have been requiring managers provide feedback/checkin ruling in a way that impacts the ranking of the IC without any time for the IC to address the concern. Presumably the perf review/ranking can then reference the unaddressed concern.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Nope. Expected ratings distributions were published immediately on the the rollout of GRAD in the spring. The support check in process was explained not too long after. The rollout was indeed messy, with a lot of support check ins being given in December as a “check the box” process to make getting a low rating possible, with no time for a report to adjust. But this is only because the new system requires a formal check in before making it possible to get the lower ratings. This is portrayed as insidious but actually makes it strictly more difficult to get low ratings. The new “meets most” rating captures an implicit “low CME” from the old system and does mean that more people will now officially get undesirable ratings. But this was known ahead of time. None of the material in this article is new.
  - olliej 4y ago
    > The rollout was indeed messy, with a lot of support check ins being given in December > The rollout was indeed messy, with a lot of support check ins being given in December as a “check the box” process to make getting a low rating possible, with no time for a report to adjust. That is what said: "managers provide feedback/checkin ruling in a way that impacts the ranking of the IC without any time for the IC to address the concern" Given that it is December still, and it's apparently only in December that this is seems to have started occurring, I fail to see how "None of the material in this article is new" unless this was also reported as happening some other report in the last two weeks that I missed. I am not saying the details of the stack ranking are new, I'm saying the events described in the article (the December shafting of ICs) is new.

VincentEvans 4y ago

Speaking of job performance, can anyone who looked at gmail settings screens tell me that this shitshow of halfass mismatched UX is what one ought to expect from decade-old established and widely-used software from one of the largest companies with some of the highest salaries and hardest job interviews in the software engineering profession? P.S - in a recent past I also had to take over administration of a google apps account for a small company and discovered that the admin UIs for that product were too a barely passable garbage lacking bulk operations and defaulting grids to 20 items per page.

deterministic 4y ago

Google: “We hire the best most productive SWE in the world!” Also Google: “We have hired a bunch of slackers who need to be fired!”

fsociety 4y ago

I have heard that Google has a lot of cutthroat kingdom building, politics, and doc writing. I wonder what would improve performance better: rank and yank, or disincentivizing the politics and doc writing?