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Yea but then you also disincentivize the one guy who could potentially make an outsized contribution to the innovation of the company. What you’re saying is a

by twayt 4y ago

Yea but then you also disincentivize the one guy who could potentially make an outsized contribution to the innovation of the company. What you’re saying is a virtue in peacetime and a sin in wartime. Precisely the argument the author is trying to make

pm90 4y ago
I don’t think Big Tech needs to overtax its engineers to deliver innovation. They can afford to hire enough folks to keep the innovation engine humming without requiring heroics from ICs. I understand there are some exceptions: sometimes during outages/emergencies, you do want folks to fix issues ASAP regardless of how long they are up.
- kevinventullo 4y ago
  I don’t think innovation hums, it bursts.
  - thuuuomas 4y ago
    The opera singer shatters the wine glass with a humming
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    Mine itches.
- closeparen 4y ago
  You can just barely story point, Gantt chart, and JIRA ticket your way through routine CRUD development. I don’t think too much innovation is happening that way. Innovation in my experience comes from “off the books” deep dives by individuals, pairs, and occasionally groups as big as 3-5. It comes from going into territory that is not well defined, doesn’t have predictable timelines, and is otherwise anathema to formal BigCo project management and communication structures.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Absolutely, but you can do all that without heroics.
    - closeparen 4y ago
      Work done outside the formal assignment and tracking processes is normally what I would consider “heroics.”
Mechanical9 4y ago
Google doesn't disincentivize any of that, they just don't encourage it. Google has mechanisms for rewarding people for doing extraordinary work: peer bonuses, spot bonuses. People who make outsized contributions are compensated, and people who consistently contribute more than others are promoted. But systems that require heroic efforts to continue functioning are fundamentally broken and unsustainable, and need to be made easier to maintain.
- rileyphone 4y ago
  People just want their work to mean something, to be contributing to success. Heroism is the full commitment to that. Of course it’s riskier, and based on people over processes, but again and again it’s the inspired that build the future. Work-life balance needn’t suffer, work just needs to be more than a job.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Heroism at a corporate workplace is, first and foremost, self serving and egocentric.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    > Heroism is the full commitment to that. Definitely not. Heroism is nearly the opposite, in that it wants heroes to be significant, not the work.
- mcqueenjordan 4y ago
  I don't disagree with your broader point, but I'll make a small nit that I don't think peer/spot bonuses are a meaningful-enough portion of TC that they matter from a financial perspective (unless the numbers have changed significantly over the years). The 'kudos' part of it was more meaningful to me.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  I left Google recently, partly over the fact that they strongly disincentivize taking technical risks. Let's just level set for a second: * Peer bonuses are a fixed $175 and spot bonuses are usually under $1000, and pretty much always under $5000. * The coveted "feats of engineering award" (or whatever they changed the name to this time), which has the highest prestige factor of any of the internal awards, is $2000 cash or a trip somewhere. * A senior SWE at Google makes about $300k. A Staff SWE makes $400-500k. An entry-level SWE makes $150-200k. What this means is that the only REAL reward on offer (other than a token amount of cash and a serotonin-inducing certificate) is a promotion. Promotions almost always come when you launch products (actually, they changed the benchmark to "landing" products, which seems to always happen about 6-12 months after launch after the bugs are worked out). Launches at Google are almost always significant efforts - either in terms of engineering around the company's arcane systems that are changing underneath you or in terms of getting through all of the process checks that ensure your service is "googly." Further, to go from a "launch" to a "landing" is mostly a political process: you have to convince enough of your management team that you have met some arbitrary milestone that indicates a stable product. As such, people are not too happy to take significant technical risks if they involve spending more than a few months on a project - if you want to get promoted, wasting time on something that might fail is bad. Why would you want to "land" a risky product when you can "land" something that is already on the roadmap? Additionally, Google offers pretty much no promotion credit to engineers for "prospecting" - what I will call the process of identifying products that should go on the roadmap. That means that if you go out and do this sort of work, you are actively hindering your career: if you go prospecting, you are going to spend months not "landing" things. Conversely, prospecting seems to be a very good way to get peer and spot bonuses. This is why Google provides no real benefits for taking technical risks. The only real reward is promotion, and promotions come mostly from following the roadmap, not from rocking the boat. The other awards and bonuses are basically toys by comparison.
hgsgm 4y ago
Being a genius isn't being a hero. We need geniuses to create, not heroes to paper over our flaws. If you are busy being a hero, you don't have time to be a genius. And what happens when Superman takes a sick day?
fsckboy 4y ago
> What you’re saying is a virtue in peacetime and a sin in wartime. interesting! it's precisely the point made at the end of The Caine Mutiny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw6gwGawbXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw6gwGawbXA

by twayt 4y ago

pm90 4y ago

I don’t think Big Tech needs to overtax its engineers to deliver innovation. They can afford to hire enough folks to keep the innovation engine humming without requiring heroics from ICs. I understand there are some exceptions: sometimes during outages/emergencies, you do want folks to fix issues ASAP regardless of how long they are up.

kevinventullo 4y ago
I don’t think innovation hums, it bursts.
- thuuuomas 4y ago
  The opera singer shatters the wine glass with a humming
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  Mine itches.
closeparen 4y ago
You can just barely story point, Gantt chart, and JIRA ticket your way through routine CRUD development. I don’t think too much innovation is happening that way. Innovation in my experience comes from “off the books” deep dives by individuals, pairs, and occasionally groups as big as 3-5. It comes from going into territory that is not well defined, doesn’t have predictable timelines, and is otherwise anathema to formal BigCo project management and communication structures.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Absolutely, but you can do all that without heroics.
  - closeparen 4y ago
    Work done outside the formal assignment and tracking processes is normally what I would consider “heroics.”

Mechanical9 4y ago

Google doesn't disincentivize any of that, they just don't encourage it. Google has mechanisms for rewarding people for doing extraordinary work: peer bonuses, spot bonuses. People who make outsized contributions are compensated, and people who consistently contribute more than others are promoted. But systems that require heroic efforts to continue functioning are fundamentally broken and unsustainable, and need to be made easier to maintain.

rileyphone 4y ago
People just want their work to mean something, to be contributing to success. Heroism is the full commitment to that. Of course it’s riskier, and based on people over processes, but again and again it’s the inspired that build the future. Work-life balance needn’t suffer, work just needs to be more than a job.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Heroism at a corporate workplace is, first and foremost, self serving and egocentric.
- wpietri 4y ago
  > Heroism is the full commitment to that. Definitely not. Heroism is nearly the opposite, in that it wants heroes to be significant, not the work.
mcqueenjordan 4y ago
I don't disagree with your broader point, but I'll make a small nit that I don't think peer/spot bonuses are a meaningful-enough portion of TC that they matter from a financial perspective (unless the numbers have changed significantly over the years). The 'kudos' part of it was more meaningful to me.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
I left Google recently, partly over the fact that they strongly disincentivize taking technical risks. Let's just level set for a second: * Peer bonuses are a fixed $175 and spot bonuses are usually under $1000, and pretty much always under $5000. * The coveted "feats of engineering award" (or whatever they changed the name to this time), which has the highest prestige factor of any of the internal awards, is $2000 cash or a trip somewhere. * A senior SWE at Google makes about $300k. A Staff SWE makes $400-500k. An entry-level SWE makes $150-200k. What this means is that the only REAL reward on offer (other than a token amount of cash and a serotonin-inducing certificate) is a promotion. Promotions almost always come when you launch products (actually, they changed the benchmark to "landing" products, which seems to always happen about 6-12 months after launch after the bugs are worked out). Launches at Google are almost always significant efforts - either in terms of engineering around the company's arcane systems that are changing underneath you or in terms of getting through all of the process checks that ensure your service is "googly." Further, to go from a "launch" to a "landing" is mostly a political process: you have to convince enough of your management team that you have met some arbitrary milestone that indicates a stable product. As such, people are not too happy to take significant technical risks if they involve spending more than a few months on a project - if you want to get promoted, wasting time on something that might fail is bad. Why would you want to "land" a risky product when you can "land" something that is already on the roadmap? Additionally, Google offers pretty much no promotion credit to engineers for "prospecting" - what I will call the process of identifying products that should go on the roadmap. That means that if you go out and do this sort of work, you are actively hindering your career: if you go prospecting, you are going to spend months not "landing" things. Conversely, prospecting seems to be a very good way to get peer and spot bonuses. This is why Google provides no real benefits for taking technical risks. The only real reward is promotion, and promotions come mostly from following the roadmap, not from rocking the boat. The other awards and bonuses are basically toys by comparison.

hgsgm 4y ago

Being a genius isn't being a hero. We need geniuses to create, not heroes to paper over our flaws. If you are busy being a hero, you don't have time to be a genius. And what happens when Superman takes a sick day?

fsckboy 4y ago

> What you’re saying is a virtue in peacetime and a sin in wartime. interesting! it's precisely the point made at the end of The Caine Mutiny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw6gwGawbXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw6gwGawbXA