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I see parent's point as how you'd evaluate the performance of an international superstar in your team. You'd do reviews where they'd have top performance, but

I see parent's point as how you'd evaluate the performance of an international superstar in your team. You'd do reviews where they'd have top performance, but not 3x or 4x more than the guy right below them. And if their presence didn't push your team to be #1 in that season, you could have an argument to replace them for someone cheaper and 90% as good. Of course, their sheer presence could be a booster for marketing for instance, and there's a lot more going on, so usually you'd keep them around even if on paper it doesn't make sense, but it would look like a complex balancing act.

taeric 4y ago
I somewhat get that, but if you are promoting people for amazing hits, then you are doing it wrong. You promote people not for being lucky and on a successful project, but for being a solid addition to the team that provides steady progress.
- nradov 4y ago
  It's tough to distinguish between luck and skill. A lot of cognitive biases come into play in performance evaluation, and managers have to make decisions based on very little data.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  > You promote people not for being lucky and on a successful project, At Google you are explicitly rewarded at L5 and up for picking the right project to work on. It's wisdom of the crowds. You pick what project you're working on and you should be picking a good high-impact one that actually brings value to the company, for which you might be promoted. This ensures that incentives are aligned. Google doesn't want experienced, highly capable engineers sitting around wasting their talents on dead-end projects, and they certainly won't be rewarded for it. You need to be proactive about ensuring that you're working on something valuable.
  - petre 4y ago
    So Google Feed, Chat, Hangouts, social networks are out because they're highly likely to get killed.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      It's so obvious for Google. And that's probably part of what's happening at Apple as well ? We've seen important, but not quite groundbreaking products get left for dead, and eventually killed when at Apple's size it probably wasn't that problematic to keep them alive. I'm thinking about their network router lineup for instance. Or how nobody cares enough to make a Calculator app for the iPad.
      - _cenw 4y ago
        > Or how nobody cares enough to make a Calculator app for the iPad. Supposedly Steve Jobs hated every iteration of the calculator on the first iPad, so they just didn't ship it at all. Might just be tradition at Apple to not touch that topic.
      - vineyardmike 4y ago
        I think its the opposite actually. Google pays over $300k a year for many of their engineers, and Apple pays quite well too. Regardless of how easy that calculator app is, it'll take a team of people to build, and that team is expensive, like millions of dollars expensive, and it'll never be worth it.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >Google doesn't want experienced, highly capable engineers sitting around wasting their talents on dead-end projects, and they certainly won't be rewarded for it. It's supposed to be management's responsibility to pick projects that will be successful. If a project turns out to be a dead-end, that's either management's fault, or just the way the market worked out and no one's fault (you can't always predict what's going to be popular or successful). And if a project is clearly a dead-end, then why is management wasting money on it instead of canceling it and moving the talent to better places? Basically, Google's system just rewards people for being lucky.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  You get paid for being a solid addition on a team providing steady progress. If you continue to do the same thing and make the same valuable but incremental progress, why should your job role change? This is one of the advantages of having reasonably wide pay bands at Google. Doing a great job within your level will earn you raises. You don't need promotion for that (to a limit). Why should promotion just be something earned after doing the same thing for a long time?
parthdesai 4y ago
The parent also says "what did this person do to redefine the industry this cycle?". How often are you expecting a person to redefine the industry?
- Viliam1234 4y ago
  I try to imagine the standups these people have: "Which industry have you redefined yesterday? Which industry are you redefining today? Do you have any blockers?"
- rvbissell 4y ago
  I assumed that was hyperbole.
  - dmix 4y ago
    Well it dilutes a conversation when someone implies a senior Google employee is surely to be expected to be at the tier of disrupting entire markets in order to get and keep their job. If that is what really defines an L9 job at Google I think we'd all have been praising the typical L9 Google employees on HN long ago. And we'd all be justified in being angry Google decided to fire such a person. Or maybe Google should pay their salary indefinitely because they were capable of disrupting a market at some point in their career? Or maybe yes, such a person needs to work at Google type company so all of us can benefit from the optimal situation from which to maximize their talent, even though such a company would let them go. Otherwise we'd all lose out on such a person being capable of contributing to the world if Google lays them off. What else could they do then without a company who doesn't appreciate keeping them on?
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      I’m not sure what exactly is a L9 at Google, but this looks a lot like research positions in many huge companies. For instance there was researchers on voice recognition at Yahoo! way before the voice assistants became a product, and if I could imagine one of them bring up a well working model 6 months before the competition, and have a voice assistant hit the market. It would disrupt an entire market. But they’re not alone of course, and I don’t know how many other researchers are on the payroll trying to breakthrough other fields. All of them have a “disrupt the entire market” expectation I think, and of course their employer is also expected to give them enough time and leeway to make progress. They probably bring small improvement on existing things, and the number of papers published every year could be another measure as a temporizing strategy. But their actual stated goal is probably very ambitious and they’d be failing at it for a very long time.
rlt 4y ago
It seems the right solution would be bonus-based compensation. If they redefine an industry, massive bonus, if they’re just a really good engineer, then get normal really good engineer salary. Or a demotion. Is that ever an option in companies, or do they have to go straight to firing?
- compiler-guy 4y ago
  Google at least never demotes for performance reasons.
  - drftghjbdv 4y ago
    they fire. q.e.d.
noam_compsci 4y ago
Yeah totally agree. It’s basically Moneyball but for CS.

taeric 4y ago

I somewhat get that, but if you are promoting people for amazing hits, then you are doing it wrong. You promote people not for being lucky and on a successful project, but for being a solid addition to the team that provides steady progress.

nradov 4y ago
It's tough to distinguish between luck and skill. A lot of cognitive biases come into play in performance evaluation, and managers have to make decisions based on very little data.
CydeWeys 4y ago
> You promote people not for being lucky and on a successful project, At Google you are explicitly rewarded at L5 and up for picking the right project to work on. It's wisdom of the crowds. You pick what project you're working on and you should be picking a good high-impact one that actually brings value to the company, for which you might be promoted. This ensures that incentives are aligned. Google doesn't want experienced, highly capable engineers sitting around wasting their talents on dead-end projects, and they certainly won't be rewarded for it. You need to be proactive about ensuring that you're working on something valuable.
- petre 4y ago
  So Google Feed, Chat, Hangouts, social networks are out because they're highly likely to get killed.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    It's so obvious for Google. And that's probably part of what's happening at Apple as well ? We've seen important, but not quite groundbreaking products get left for dead, and eventually killed when at Apple's size it probably wasn't that problematic to keep them alive. I'm thinking about their network router lineup for instance. Or how nobody cares enough to make a Calculator app for the iPad.
    - _cenw 4y ago
      > Or how nobody cares enough to make a Calculator app for the iPad. Supposedly Steve Jobs hated every iteration of the calculator on the first iPad, so they just didn't ship it at all. Might just be tradition at Apple to not touch that topic.
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      I think its the opposite actually. Google pays over $300k a year for many of their engineers, and Apple pays quite well too. Regardless of how easy that calculator app is, it'll take a team of people to build, and that team is expensive, like millions of dollars expensive, and it'll never be worth it.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >Google doesn't want experienced, highly capable engineers sitting around wasting their talents on dead-end projects, and they certainly won't be rewarded for it. It's supposed to be management's responsibility to pick projects that will be successful. If a project turns out to be a dead-end, that's either management's fault, or just the way the market worked out and no one's fault (you can't always predict what's going to be popular or successful). And if a project is clearly a dead-end, then why is management wasting money on it instead of canceling it and moving the talent to better places? Basically, Google's system just rewards people for being lucky.
UncleMeat 4y ago
You get paid for being a solid addition on a team providing steady progress. If you continue to do the same thing and make the same valuable but incremental progress, why should your job role change? This is one of the advantages of having reasonably wide pay bands at Google. Doing a great job within your level will earn you raises. You don't need promotion for that (to a limit). Why should promotion just be something earned after doing the same thing for a long time?

parthdesai 4y ago

The parent also says "what did this person do to redefine the industry this cycle?". How often are you expecting a person to redefine the industry?

Viliam1234 4y ago
I try to imagine the standups these people have: "Which industry have you redefined yesterday? Which industry are you redefining today? Do you have any blockers?"
rvbissell 4y ago
I assumed that was hyperbole.
- dmix 4y ago
  Well it dilutes a conversation when someone implies a senior Google employee is surely to be expected to be at the tier of disrupting entire markets in order to get and keep their job. If that is what really defines an L9 job at Google I think we'd all have been praising the typical L9 Google employees on HN long ago. And we'd all be justified in being angry Google decided to fire such a person. Or maybe Google should pay their salary indefinitely because they were capable of disrupting a market at some point in their career? Or maybe yes, such a person needs to work at Google type company so all of us can benefit from the optimal situation from which to maximize their talent, even though such a company would let them go. Otherwise we'd all lose out on such a person being capable of contributing to the world if Google lays them off. What else could they do then without a company who doesn't appreciate keeping them on?
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    I’m not sure what exactly is a L9 at Google, but this looks a lot like research positions in many huge companies. For instance there was researchers on voice recognition at Yahoo! way before the voice assistants became a product, and if I could imagine one of them bring up a well working model 6 months before the competition, and have a voice assistant hit the market. It would disrupt an entire market. But they’re not alone of course, and I don’t know how many other researchers are on the payroll trying to breakthrough other fields. All of them have a “disrupt the entire market” expectation I think, and of course their employer is also expected to give them enough time and leeway to make progress. They probably bring small improvement on existing things, and the number of papers published every year could be another measure as a temporizing strategy. But their actual stated goal is probably very ambitious and they’d be failing at it for a very long time.

rlt 4y ago

It seems the right solution would be bonus-based compensation. If they redefine an industry, massive bonus, if they’re just a really good engineer, then get normal really good engineer salary. Or a demotion. Is that ever an option in companies, or do they have to go straight to firing?

compiler-guy 4y ago
Google at least never demotes for performance reasons.
- drftghjbdv 4y ago
  they fire. q.e.d.

noam_compsci 4y ago

Yeah totally agree. It’s basically Moneyball but for CS.