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I agree to the overall tone, but there are also counter points. One of them is the Google example. To get promoted beyond a certain level, you must have brough

I agree to the overall tone, but there are also counter points. One of them is the Google example. To get promoted beyond a certain level, you must have brought some new product over the finish line. Result? They have so many new things happening all the time, all of them suck, and then just move on to the next. Eg how many chat products do they need to invent before they settle on one and let it mature?

nutrie 2y ago
100 %. There's a sweet spot. I worked for both, start-ups and huge corporations. It's not one or the other, you want the right combination of maturity and fresh attitude. We often don't realize it can take years to steer back to find the balance again, but not oversteer, which is usually the default :) Just as with any other organism.
adverbly 2y ago
> To get promoted beyond a certain level, you must have brought some new product over the finish line This always confused me. It looked from the outside like Google does so many things right on the innovation front, but after some early success they have had a rough streak. I'd argue that one thing that Google is doing wrong is gatekeeping promotions based on (overly) well-defined criteria such as new products. Goodhart's Law applies to this situation: you're sure to see lots of new products if its highly rewarded - a lot more than you'd see naturally. As the author mentioned - this might still be desirable depending on the market conditions, but there is a lot more to this discussion, and it's not entirely clear that Google has it wrong. I'd argue that they emphasize comparability of assessment results(e.g. being able to quantify someone's output like a percentage grade in a course) over the actual relevancy of the assessment criteria/work/kpi to the company's bottom line(e.g. does the course's test actually prepare students for the real world). This probably comes as a by-product of the organization's heavily academic-focused staff - so it might actually be the best culture choice for them given that context - but it might also lose to companies that can successfully put a bigger weighting on the right "intangibles".
- immibis 2y ago
  You would think that. I would think that. But can you actually name more than a handful of things Google created that were good? Because I can't. There's search, obviously. Gmail, if that wasn't an acquisition.... What else?
  - mdorazio 2y ago
    Ones I personally use because they are/were good: Maps. Android (+ Auto). Chrome. Docs/Sheets. Translate. The issue is that most of these originated a long time ago and recent Google creations, like Bard/Gemini, tend to be mediocre copies of other things.
    - saulpw 2y ago
      Google Maps: acquired in 2004 Android: acquired in 2005 Google Sheets: acquired in 2006 Translate: launched in 2006 Chrome: launched in 2008 So only 2/5 of the ones you mentioned were started in-house, and all were pre-2010 (pre-Sundar) creations. edit: Sundar joined Google in 2004 and apparently led Maps, Chrome, and eventually Android before becoming CEO. So "pre-Sundar" is technically incorrect.
      - mdorazio 2y ago
        This characterization is pretty misleading. For example, the Google Maps that was acquired was a C++ desktop application. What most people think of as Google Maps (the AJAX web app) was built and launched by Google.
  - adverbly 2y ago
    You're kidding right? Maps, android, camera, calendar, hangout, pay/wallet, docs, sheets, slides, voice to text stuff, YouTube, chrome/debugger, kubernetes, grpc, Gmail, music, ads... Pretty ubiquitous suite of products both consumer facing and business facing... I don't think you can question that Google has been successful at innovation. You can question if they could be doing it better but impossible to say they aren't having some success doing what they're doing...
laidoffamazon 2y ago
The promotion thing seems severely overstated. At the higher levels for IC and management this is basically how all tech companies that build products are run. But you don't see this said about Microsoft or Amazon, even though they also have hundreds of new features and discrete new products per year. My theory for why Google is different remains unpopular, however.
- p_j_w 2y ago
  >My theory for why Google is different remains unpopular, however. May we hear it?
  - laidoffamazon 2y ago
    I think it's because Google has created an insular, navel-gazing culture that is excessively engineer driven rather than customer driven, to the extent of thinking people not at Google are just inferior.
dekhn 2y ago
beyond just launching a product, the launch has to have some sort of "impact" (at least, this was true in the time period where I was trying to get promoted, roughly 2010-2013). Something that is not perceived as impactful by the promo committee is likely not going to count towards promotion. It's the job of the employee and manager to document the "impact". If your manager is a director or higher, they can appeal the promo denial and an appeals committee can be manipulated into giving a promotion. That's what happened to me- promo saw no impact to my launch. Then my director went to appeals and basically said "promote him, he's doing good work". Everything about Google messed up my expectations and planning around career. To work anywhere else (a startup, or a pharma) I had to unlearn all the bad habits of self-promotion and cookie-licking and impact-demonstration. Of course many people joke the best way to get promoted at Google is to leave, get promoted elsewhere, and return to Google at a higher level (using all your newly learned negotiation skills).
loceng 2y ago
So that will result in an "innovation hero" improving on Google's model so the fundamentals don't create such waste, no?

nutrie 2y ago

100 %. There's a sweet spot. I worked for both, start-ups and huge corporations. It's not one or the other, you want the right combination of maturity and fresh attitude. We often don't realize it can take years to steer back to find the balance again, but not oversteer, which is usually the default :) Just as with any other organism.

adverbly 2y ago

> To get promoted beyond a certain level, you must have brought some new product over the finish line This always confused me. It looked from the outside like Google does so many things right on the innovation front, but after some early success they have had a rough streak. I'd argue that one thing that Google is doing wrong is gatekeeping promotions based on (overly) well-defined criteria such as new products. Goodhart's Law applies to this situation: you're sure to see lots of new products if its highly rewarded - a lot more than you'd see naturally. As the author mentioned - this might still be desirable depending on the market conditions, but there is a lot more to this discussion, and it's not entirely clear that Google has it wrong. I'd argue that they emphasize comparability of assessment results(e.g. being able to quantify someone's output like a percentage grade in a course) over the actual relevancy of the assessment criteria/work/kpi to the company's bottom line(e.g. does the course's test actually prepare students for the real world). This probably comes as a by-product of the organization's heavily academic-focused staff - so it might actually be the best culture choice for them given that context - but it might also lose to companies that can successfully put a bigger weighting on the right "intangibles".

immibis 2y ago
You would think that. I would think that. But can you actually name more than a handful of things Google created that were good? Because I can't. There's search, obviously. Gmail, if that wasn't an acquisition.... What else?
- mdorazio 2y ago
  Ones I personally use because they are/were good: Maps. Android (+ Auto). Chrome. Docs/Sheets. Translate. The issue is that most of these originated a long time ago and recent Google creations, like Bard/Gemini, tend to be mediocre copies of other things.
  - saulpw 2y ago
    Google Maps: acquired in 2004 Android: acquired in 2005 Google Sheets: acquired in 2006 Translate: launched in 2006 Chrome: launched in 2008 So only 2/5 of the ones you mentioned were started in-house, and all were pre-2010 (pre-Sundar) creations. edit: Sundar joined Google in 2004 and apparently led Maps, Chrome, and eventually Android before becoming CEO. So "pre-Sundar" is technically incorrect.
    - mdorazio 2y ago
      This characterization is pretty misleading. For example, the Google Maps that was acquired was a C++ desktop application. What most people think of as Google Maps (the AJAX web app) was built and launched by Google.
- adverbly 2y ago
  You're kidding right? Maps, android, camera, calendar, hangout, pay/wallet, docs, sheets, slides, voice to text stuff, YouTube, chrome/debugger, kubernetes, grpc, Gmail, music, ads... Pretty ubiquitous suite of products both consumer facing and business facing... I don't think you can question that Google has been successful at innovation. You can question if they could be doing it better but impossible to say they aren't having some success doing what they're doing...

laidoffamazon 2y ago

The promotion thing seems severely overstated. At the higher levels for IC and management this is basically how all tech companies that build products are run. But you don't see this said about Microsoft or Amazon, even though they also have hundreds of new features and discrete new products per year. My theory for why Google is different remains unpopular, however.

p_j_w 2y ago
>My theory for why Google is different remains unpopular, however. May we hear it?
- laidoffamazon 2y ago
  I think it's because Google has created an insular, navel-gazing culture that is excessively engineer driven rather than customer driven, to the extent of thinking people not at Google are just inferior.

dekhn 2y ago

beyond just launching a product, the launch has to have some sort of "impact" (at least, this was true in the time period where I was trying to get promoted, roughly 2010-2013). Something that is not perceived as impactful by the promo committee is likely not going to count towards promotion. It's the job of the employee and manager to document the "impact". If your manager is a director or higher, they can appeal the promo denial and an appeals committee can be manipulated into giving a promotion. That's what happened to me- promo saw no impact to my launch. Then my director went to appeals and basically said "promote him, he's doing good work". Everything about Google messed up my expectations and planning around career. To work anywhere else (a startup, or a pharma) I had to unlearn all the bad habits of self-promotion and cookie-licking and impact-demonstration. Of course many people joke the best way to get promoted at Google is to leave, get promoted elsewhere, and return to Google at a higher level (using all your newly learned negotiation skills).

loceng 2y ago

So that will result in an "innovation hero" improving on Google's model so the fundamentals don't create such waste, no?