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It sounds like you have a good manager, so we have different experiences. Let me explain my Google manager. His MO was, about 1-2 months in, to use fake perfor
by michaelochurch 14y ago
It sounds like you have a good manager, so we have different experiences.
Let me explain my Google manager. His MO was, about 1-2 months in, to use fake performance problems to get people to disclose health problems, then use knowledge of their health issues to toy with them. I have tons of evidence for a pattern of this with him. I also have (verbally) that HR knows it to be a long-standing problem, but does nothing because if a manager has a reputation for "delivering", that's carte blanche to treat reports however one wishes.
HR's job is to step in and right things when managers fail, and at Google, they refuse to do that. They see their job as to protect managers. I know that most companies are this way, but it's disgusting.
There are a lot of abuses of power by management at Google, and HR does nothing about it. The going ideology is that if a manager is "delivering", his word is gold. Combine this with a Kafkaesque nightmare of closed allocation, and you get a lot of ugliness.
I have nothing but respect for the vast majority of the engineers I met at Google. But I cannot respect a management structure that thinks closed allocation is appropriate for a tech company, or that making political-success reviews part of the transfer process is morally acceptable. Google's performance review system is a play-for-play copy of Enron's. This has completely fucked up what should otherwise be an awesome technology company.
I would actually support a class-action suit by Google's shareholders against the managers who instituted closed allocation and calibration scores (breach of fiduciary duty). Those assholes are guilty of destroying several billion dollars worth of value, and justice should be sought against them. Employees who were burned by that horrible system should also be plaintiffs in this suit, because that shit fucks up peoples' careers, too. It's just all-around wrong.
- kyllo 14y agoHR's job is to step in and right things when managers fail, and at Google, they refuse to do that. No, that's a labor union's job. HR's job is to protect the company by mitigating risk from L&I related lawsuits. Period. Programming can be considered a trade, and I think 99% of the shit you complain about could be solved by programmers unionizing. But of course, that would bring its own new set of problems.
- yuhong 14y agomichaelochurch has blogged on this matter: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/programmers-dont-need-a-union-we-need-a-profession/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/programmers-d...
- kyllo 14y agoSure, a strong professional association might be better than a labor union then. Point is, though, if you're looking to HR to represent your rights and interests, you're barking up the wrong tree.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- michaelochurch 14y agoHR's job, I would say, is to keep employment relationships in a state that maximizes shareholder value. That includes recruiting, compensation fairness, firing of negative-impact personnel, and legal risk reduction. It doesn't align them always with employees, or always with management. It also means that good employees (who would deliver high value to the company if in a better managerial context) should be protected against bad managers. That's something HR rarely has the courage to do in most companies, but at Google, they don't even try.