Google Memo on Cost Cuts Sparks Heated Debate Inside Company
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The only question is who gets to level up, and it becomes a dancing chair competition with none of the participants having a direct say (managers will take feedback and do whatever they want with it).
For a small and growing company it’s not rare for higher ups to explicitely fish around for people to promote as they just need to grow the ranks. The bigger it becomes the harder the competition is.
I stayed at one company for 9 years and made only $7K more in year 9 than I made in year 2. I stuck around mostly because of side businesses that I was hoping would turn into full time businesses.
But I did learn my lesson. A company has exactly two years to at least get me to local market value.
Now being on the other side of the bell curve, after working for 5 companies over the last 10 years, I either have to settle with just cost of living raises or move into an area that I am qualified for but doesn’t really excite me - consulting (“digital transformation consultant”, “cloud consulting”, etc.)
Wow, that's fairly presumptuous of you. Most software engineers make senior (L5) after they've worked in the industry for a few years.
Source: worked at Google and Facebook before.
Now I am 6 months into another team. I have a good manager on a good team who is unlikely to leave, and I'm on track to get promoted again.
It's also unclear what you mean by plugging away. If you make improvements to an existing system, you absolutely can get promoted. But on some scale, those improvements are probably viewable as a "new launch", so that's sort of tautological.
Googler here, speaking for myself.
Isn't what you describe literally the opposite of playing politics?
Except what does matter, and should be counted: your code, your design decisions, and the quality of your project output...
Brilliant jerks lower the morale and output of everyone around them.
I agree that promotion processes suck if they don't create room for understated high achievers, people who are just a little more shy or awkward or humble.
But focusing exclusively on individual output and ignoring more pathologic behaviors can lead to massive problems. And some team projects absolutely require communication as a core skill that influences overall output.
Someone else’s comment had it almost right: playing politics is anything you choose to do at work primarily for the purpose of making yourself look good to those you think have the power to promote or fire you.
So this idea of blindly sucking up to the promo committee doesn't happen. (And in practice I'd agree, everyone I've seen get promo deserved it).
And that's another thing that can't be decided by a committee where you go and play nice for a few hours...
Who decides what "good code is"? There is no gold standard for such defenition. Guess how that gets decided? Politics.
> your design decisions
In order to "get credit", how does anybody know your design decisions were the best? Hell, how do you even know it was the right move. Just like the code, there is no 100% correct design decisions. It's all trade offs. Knowing you chose the best path and more important trying to get credit for it is.... politics.
I mean, you had to convince people your design decisions were correct to get them implemented. That was political....
> and the quality of your project output
What does "quality" mean? Wanna define it? That is politics.
What does "project output" mean? Wanna define it? That, too, is politics.
Engineers always think they can avoid "politics". But politics is everywhere and is an unescapable feature of life. It isn't even a bad thing. Any time you have limited resources and people are in contention for those resources, you are gonna get politics.
Stop trying to avoid it and embrace it. Politics are part of every job if you want to be successful.
Hell, even attempting to convince people that they should ignore politics is itself a political move.
There doesn't have to be a "gold standard", just sensible experienced programmers doing code reviews, instead of office-politics-players and executive drones.
>In order to "get credit", how does anybody know your design decisions were the best? Hell, how do you even know it was the right move.
How about people with actual domain knowledge judge that?
All the rest of the comment is the same, as if any judgement of a project/code/design is impossible outside of "who likes whom" and "who kisses whose ass".
If that's the case where one works, they should get out pronto.
To be cynical, though, being successful with that kind of process requires knowing how to describe your accomplishments, what metrics to emphasize, and what projects are simply not worth spending time on because they won't scream "promote me!" during your review (even though they might be necessary & important).
It's still a human-based system. It's still vulnerable to nearly the same political bullshit you see elsewhere: cliques, favoritism, backstabbing, etc. Heck even your boss still affects your promo (there's a "private" section in the feedback you don't see). If you don't see this, then you're probably not getting promoted either.
Yet another friend, a brilliant, straight-talking techy, struggles at moving up the ranks Google.
Only one data point, but given the comments here, perhaps it is somewhat accurate.
Bonus is that these kind of jobs are often located outside of Silicon Valley, so your living costs will be much lower.
That is a pretty big "just". Bonuses aren't common everywhere, and unfortunately it seems like management being directly involved in the company can also go the other way. Since they have a larger incentive to short change you on salary as it is their own bottom line.
That said I think looking at the promotion structure is something underappreciated and should really be part of these "how to be successful" post rather than maxing out you credit card (or whatever).
If someone doesn't have the weaseling skills to weasel up the ladder at Google, they're going to be horribly exploited at a smaller company too
Easy to say but those "soul crushing meat grinders" can pay literally hundreds of thousands more in total annual comp than some dinky startup.
But some of us like to actually make things, and have a sense of purpose, and other things higher up on the Maslow's pyramid of needs. For them Google of 2019 is mostly not a good place, unless they end up on teams (and in positions on those teams) where they can do work that's meaningful to them, rather than copy proto buffers in some soon-to-be deprecated backend. Meaningful work is scarce there, and has been for at least the last decade, and a lot of people are competing for it.
In the grand scheme of things everybody is an inconsequential cog. You, me and everybody you know are average people who will grind away at whatever thing we happen do. You aren't gonna change the world. I'm not gonna change the world. Accept this and move on.
> Meaningful work is scarce there
"Meaningful work" is in the eye of the beholder. Learning to find joy in whatever task you are working on is an important skill to learn.
Being a very highly paid "inconsequential cog" at a mega-corp and working below market at some dinky startup can be the difference between actually affording to buy a house. It can mean you get to retire years earlier than you would have otherwise. It can mean putting your kids through a top notch education program. It buys you a lot of things.
Y’know, there is a whole world of companies out there that don’t depend on venture capital to survive...
same as it ever was.
And I'm sure even the worst at google are far from 'useless.' Figure of speech.
Edit: Possibly better than the alternative overall though. So frustrating to have competent people promoted as you're trying to put out a working product. Cancel those meetings and fix this code!
It's just the whole needing to give blunt assessments of underlings that may have consequences for their and their families livelihood that I'm not suited for.
But if your message is "it's better than elsewhere", then yes, it probably is.
Like a lot of jobs in tech, there is overlap. Managers can write code, and senior engineers can manage people if they want. Everyone needs at least some technical skills, and everyone needs at least some people skills. But the intent is to provide a good long-term path for people who want to focus more on one or the other.
If you are awesome only at cranking out code, you are stuck at L4.
In the end, I think it is the manager's job to motivate their people to present their work, but ultimately it is in the employee's interest.
My advice is to get used to having to present your work. Otherwise, you might end up doing a fantastic job and being disappointed when nobody notices that it was you who did it (probably resulting in promotions for people who didn't do as good as you did).
You're right that it's kind of pointless to "present your work afterward," and indeed, promotion committees at Google actually pay little attention to after-the-fact summaries of technical work. Instead, they look for artifacts of in-the-moment design and implementation discussions. This is the evidence showing that a given solution wasn't just one person's moment of inspired genius that he or she deigned to bestow upon the codebase, but rather the best of many possible solutions that the team chose, as a team, drawing on all the resources available such as literature, other projects past and present, the informed opinions of others in the field, the experience of senior engineers and former engineers now in management, the PMs who agree this solution achieves business goals, etc.
All too many junior engineers think a design document is "what we actually did." It's not. It's "why we picked the path we did, and why we rejected the alternatives." And yeah, as you say, nobody's going to care about what you actually did. That's kind of like being forced to look at a long series of selfies on Instagram. But they definitely will care if you asked their opinion which way to go at the start of the project, and later on they'll respect the fact that you consulted them and others on their area of expertise, because what you built has a little bit of them in it.
That's the difference between coding and engineering. Code is something that works. Engineering is the selecting the best of the possible working solutions, and being able to explain why it was the best.
Instead of a long term assessment of your work (and the real interactions within your team etc), it's how you represent it in a pitch that is measured... The most charismatic presenter (e.g. bullshit artist) wins.
The way to get promoted at Google seems to be to play a game where you tick all the boxes for performance at the next level and have the right people write for you. In some ways, that helps the company (working across teams, for example). In other ways, it may hurt the company (launching potentially redundant products is seen by committees as being more valuable than incrementally improving existing products). I think that a lot depends on who writes recommendations for you in your promo packet (and that's pure politics)
In my case, I was basically gathering requirements and helping other teams integrate with an internal product. So I was perfectly positioned for promo. I was an L5, and talking to a lot of senior folks in other teams (sr. staff, director, vp) who were willing to write for me. I'm pretty sure having a VP who knew me and could write about me really made the difference.
This is how it works at every company I’ve ever worked for. Companies don’t want to promote someone into a position where the outcome seems risky.
It sounds like that VP knew you because of the work you were doing, not because you bought him dinner or something. In that case, it's not pure politics, your work was apparently important and impacted a lot of people.
In this thread it sounds like a lot of people think promotion (and work performance in general) should be measured by purely technical contributions only, which is not realistic. That kind of work is important and makes sense for entry level work, but that's not how big projects get done.
But Google prides itself on being a meritocracy, when really it is just another case of "who you know" is as important as "what you know"
It is almost by definition more objective but there isn't evidence it achieves better results. It doesn't seem worth the cost; most people appreciate being treated like people.
What I don't understand is why so many small companies are eager to copy Google's interview process. It's not for them.
Frugality is a core leadership principle at Amazon, after all, however misunderstood it may be.
A system like you describe would seem to favour the employee who is adept at promoting her work. It also might disadvantage employees who are better performers than promoters. It would fail to detect employees who are poor or average performers but adept at covering that up.
Does the promotion committee consult with the manager?
A system like this suggests the company is concerned about favouritism and may not trust managers. It also suggests they may be willing to blindly trust self-promoting employees without knowing much about them.
How does the system account for high-performing employees that are too busy working to prepare presentations for promotion committees? Is there no such thing as an unsolicited promotion based on performance under this system?
Surely managers are reporting on the employees they manage. Assuming that includes any information on performance, then a system like this could allow the company to ignore the issue of rewarding high-performers with promotions, unless and until those employees came forward and presented to a promotion committee.
However a system like this does seem potentially beneficial for employees who feel they are undervalued by their manager.
I think maybe "high-performing employee", in this system, is simply defined at least in part as "one who prepares excellent presentations for promotion committees."
Even if the promotion keeps you at an IC, your responsibilities are still increasing, so I think most of those points stand.
Is that what is being promoted in a presentation to a promotion committee arguing that you individually should be promoted within the organization?
"... too busy to prepare an important presentation..."
Important to whom? You or the people you are working for?
I agree a system like this could filter for what we commonly recognise as "management qualities".
Although I am not sure they would be qualities such as selflessness and putting the needs of their reports and the organization ahead of their own aspirations.
It might also filter for self-serving behaviour.
Your manager can actually be helpful, but the process is byzantine. In my case, my promo committee approved my promo. However, at L6 there was an automatic review of all promos to that level by a 2nd committee. The review committee denied my promo. My manager came in at this point and lodged an appeal on my behalf to the review committee's decision. That appeal took the promo to a 3rd committee that ultimately approved it.
I did not know any of the details of what was happening. I only learned what happened in my 1:1 with my manager when he told me the whole story. He was so happy and proud of himself that he managed to help me get promoted. The sad thing is that this was the 1:1 where I told him that I was leaving for Netflix (much better offer due to non-monetary factors).
The truly kafka-esque part of this: Since promo at Google is a huge deal, and since you if you are hired back, you retain the level at which you departed at, I really wanted to leave as a L6. So I delayed my start at Netflix until my promo went through. I resigned effective a day after the effective promo date. However, in the HR system, the resignation cancelled the promo. So I had to jump through some hoops to get the promo re-instated. I know it went through, because I had friends check go/epitaphs and I eventually got my promo jacket..
(I realized after re-reading my comment that it was ambiguous; I didn't mean to suggest that your eventual yes would have turned into a no. I merely meant that the process to get there today would have been different, and hopefully more predictably efficient.)
EDIT: actually there is one hugely confidential scoop that certainly would have affected you and that I'm totally going to share with you. They no longer have promotion jackets. (Readers, these were lightweight zippered jackets or pullovers that read "Google Engineering" near the breast-pocket area. They were so understated that they triggered this sort of CrossFit reflex that compelled some wearers to tell everyone within earshot about them.) In the past couple years the company has tried to tone down promotion celebrations, at least in Tech, so many of the broadcasted congratulations are gone, along with the jackets. Fine with me -- promotion season is nice for those who get what they asked for, painful for those who didn't, and in either case something that should be private by default, like your salary.
Can I ask you about occurrences of fence post errors?
There was a very important eng who was basically a sole contributor on a difficult component in a system. He announced his retirement date well in advance, but after the bonus payout period. HR terminated him early, denying him the bonus and leaving the team to scramble and organize a mini-summit to do knowledge transfer. The team itself had no control over the date. I believe it was a similar company.
Arbitrators do not need to have any understanding of the law, and are notoriously employer-friendly.
I felt really bad that he went to bat for me for the promo.
I hope he said “no bonus, no knowledge” because that’s the only reasonable response!
Netflix is much faster to let people go (famous for no PIPs, etc). But I've never seen anybody shown the door with 0 warning.
Also, every company talks a big game about setting a high bar and only wanting the best performers, so if you want to accurately convey the notion that you really do set a high bar and really do only want the best performers, you have to overstate the point to a degree that sounds brutal or even sociopathic.
At Netflix, I get to contribute to an open source project that I'm passionate about (and which Google does not use). Netflix is also much smaller, and I had more impact at Netflix in my first 2 months than I did in my entire time at Google.
I should mention that Google was a fantastic place to work. I loved my co-workers, and I loved working for Google. Netflix just happened to be a much better fit for me.
Even skipping the complicated and pointless interview process, if I were offered a million a year I'd say no.
It may be my sample size is very senior or very desired, I don't know.
Perhaps this system works because it allows "climbers" to proceed up the ranks, ensuring they don't become resentful, while ensuring productive engineers get to stay productive?
They say that's not the case anymore. Entering year 7 without promo, so I'll let you know how it goes.
To me, Google in many ways reflects the very academic background of its founders and senior employees. Larry & Sergey never worked in industry before Google -- they founded Google out of their project @ Stanford. The office is a campus, with cafeterias and layout like a university. Promotion and other things are done via committees like a graduate thesis committee. Design and planning is often about large documents and presentations like term papers or group assignments. When I worked in another product area there were poster sessions to present your work similar to what my wife had to do for some of her uni coursework. The interview process is like a test for your final year algorithms and data structures courses.
Its an environment that is immediately familiar to academics, researchers, and recent grads. At least that how it seems, to me, as someone self-taught who worked in smaller companies and startups for years before coming to Google.
Since the committee that promotes you don't know anything about your daily work, you're free to lie about your accomplishments, and the promotion essays I saw and were asked to endorse took credit for vastly more than the person had done.
What was really interesting to me about this was that although it did seem like a good way to avoid politics, what the original promo process actually did was incentivize fire-and-forget projects that would be more promotable if they touched as many other moving pieces as possible. This to me explains a lot of Google.
That last sentence is quite telling about Google's attitude toward its employees.
But I would agree with you that there's probably nothing special about Google in this context.
Promotions don't increase performance, they simply cost money, in exchange for improved retention, maybe.
You can't create larger scope/etc roles out of thin air (you actually have to need the work done), and levels always seem to right shift over time.
That's job title inflation! Banking is the poster boy for that. Any junior has the title of "Vice President", and a typical large bank has a few thousands "Directors". Zimbabwe-style job title inflation!
It’s partly that sure, but it is also that to enter into financial contracts on behalf of the company you need to be an officer of the company, and VP is the lowest reasonable title for such an officer, and entering into such contracts is a bank’s core business.
VP is mid-level too, you would expect a VP to have 8-10 years experience usually. More experience than many who call themselves senior software engineers!
I should note that I do not now nor have I ever worked for Google.
They re-architected the promo process for 95% of promos (according to another comment itt, but for sure closer to 80% than 20%), making it more conventional. Allegedly to prevent orgs from promoting wildly (for... Some reason I guess), "promo budgets" were floated. This rightfully pissed people off because Google only promotes you after you demonstrate consistency at the next level, meaning you would be working at LN getting paid as an LN-1 for at least another cycle if not longer. It also really upset the orgs that are structured by function rather than area. Allegedly these budgets never existed, but personally, after my management chain bluntly and directly lied about the Maven contract, I never believed anything they said. I'm sure they're all excellent people, but capitalism gives us all incentive to do things we otherwise wouldn't. Lying about Maven, and restructuring promo to make it your managers decision, were certainly company policies. Budgets might not have been, but then, even if there's no evidence now, it took us decades to find out the truth about Tonkin Bay.
So, for a brainstorming deck, a lot of stuff from it actually happened. Given that, you have to start questioning how accurate other parts are.
I left Google recently, though I knew what a "company" was going in and didn't expect anything different. I was very sad to leave my immediate team, but not at all sad to leave Google, mostly because of how glaring the difference is between what they say they value and what they actually value. I wouldn't even begrudge them the honesty; every other "conventional" company somehow manages to keep employees.
Doesn't mean it's a great idea. While Google is a great cash cow, I'm not sure we will continue to see great innovation.
- tensorflow, I think a huge innovation and a big win for google.
- great work in self driving cars, but that has yet to come to fruition.
- the tech behind gmail has also been really important to the web.
- chrome is great, though not a huge leap in innovation over what firefox was doing
a lot of their other products i would argue were just purchases from a company with a lot of money and weight such as:
- android
- youtube
- google maps (its my understanding that the creator wouldnt allow google to buy his company unless he could do this but i could be wrong)
so hmm, yes I would say they are innovative and we have seen some great innovations from them; though, not at break neck speeds a lot of people assume. curious to others thoughts
I think companies should pay employees what they are worth, after taking a fair cut. Common opinion is that should pay what they can get away with, using any and all cultural forces, information asymmetries, etc available to them.
One of the ways companies pay women less is by taking advantage of the fact that women are less likely to think they are worth as much as they are. It's easy for companies to take advantage of this things, so they do. I still think it's wrong.
I won't think less of you for disagreeing, because as you say it's quite normal. I would say it's a common wrongdoing. Many/most employers aren't aware of the harm they are causing. And common (therefore often subconscious) wrongdoing is a lesser evil than conscious wrongdoing. But it's still wrongdoing.
I’m not aware of any other term that captures a practice that is both commonplace and wrong.
This is good and I’m adding it to my lexicon. Thanks!
There is so much money to be made by companies in paying someone for this: think about how much lost productivity there is because underpriced employees aren't bothering to solve problems they have the skills to solve!
Essentially: someone who efficiently uses capital to pay themselves to find ways to give more capital to employees who can efficiently use it. Micro VC I guess you could think of it is? Like each employee is a place to invest capital, and that is inevitably disbursed as higher wages.
The problem is that while this was happening, Google was issuing large stock buybacks, essentially transferring their balance sheet away from wages for the rank and file to investors and the executive team.
Instead of leading by example or applying their principles, Google treated it with the same HR analysis any other company would do. I can see how Google's employees, especially the earlier "Don't be evil" hires, would be upset by the lack of innovation in this space.
And when every firm behaves the same way, the long slow decay of the middle class (see charts below) starts to boil over into the political space. It's a serious problem.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/C...
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/W...
Unless a company is small, maybe below 20-50, where everyone knows each other transparency is something HR will always lack, because they are there for the company, not the individual. That's why apps like Blind are so popular amongst some employees that like these rumor mills. My advise is to stay out of it and focus on your job, do what you like and dont be jealous about other coworkers when they get promoted but you don't. There are much more important things in life then status and earning anything beyond 100K is already an amazing achievement (luck?) that majority of citizens dont have.
Different, no. Actually this is exactly how I would expect Google to behave.
(trying to) Forcing bad products (g+), adding a top bar everywhere (look! we are a portal!), and cheaping out on labour which leads to missing out the only people capable of innovating.
This is the natural progression of an organization worth over half-a-trillion. Growth slows and they have too many people competing for too few high-level slots. Most companies at this stage just keep adding more mid-level titles so you end up as a "senior executive vice president II" on a meaningless ladder focused on politics over product.
I mean I understand getting upset at the income gap between CEO's and regular people, but it seems kind of strange to be complaining about your salary as a Google employee, where you are almost certainly making well over $100k, and walk past rows of camper trailers and homeless people on the way to work. Saying that you are struggling to afford to live in Silicon Valley seems like a bit of a stretch if you are an engineer at Google. I can sympathize with non-tech workers at Google who are probably making less though.
Whatever the place and salary, if it’s enough that they don’t have to think about it, they would be fine.
Quite a few of these "non-tech workers" are employees, too.
Google (et al) go to considerable, some might say elaborate, lengths to keep their service staff - cleaners, catering, security, etc - off the payroll and partitioned off. It makes no sense really, treating these people with respect would cost barely a rounding error in Google's bottom line. But even so they have a pathological urge to do it, to stratify a caste system almost.
Edit: for clarity, even if you're a Google FTE, Google will only pay you "nearly top of the market for your job description", which for professions mentioned won't be all that much.
About the time I joined (I assume you can look that up) there was a bit of a ruckus about too many non-tech folk being contractors. Quite a few of them have been converted to FTEs, I assumed cooks were in that crowd and some are still around. Can be wrong about that. But I'm pretty sure that Charlie was truly a FTE ;)
Assuming that owning a single-family home is non-negotiable, the only ways out of this are a.) get all your coworkers fired or b.) move out of the Bay Area. Mountain View (and the rest of the Bay Area) is basically fully built-out: there simply is no more land for 1/4 acre lots.
(If you're willing to compromise on "single family home", there's another alternative: build up. This is the most realistic solution, but requires that people give up on the idea of a detached house with a yard and settle for condos instead.)
But overall, yes, I agree that the primary problem there is restrictions on development of denser housing. Earning more money would help though (it always does).
Well, that is the whole problem right there. It doesn’t have to be fixed.
Even if we're talking about multi-family housing, there is still a limit on space, resources, traffic capacity, etc.
It is a social choice to limit housing like this.
> The document said this could be rolled out without upsetting staff because workers didn’t know what the existing rate was, so wouldn’t notice if it declined.
I really don't know what they expected. You're cutting the salaries of your employees; the best case, yet highly unlikely scenario is that nobody notices. More likely, your attrition rate will increase as Google becomes slightly less attractive for employees to stay at, or the worst case but highly likely scenario is that you have these slides get out and now everyone is unhappy because they're being paid less and having information willfully hidden from them.
They were allegedly cutting their bonuses, not salaries. That's a pretty significant difference if you ask me.
Getting angry because of this is rather strange. That's precisely what you sign up for with bonuses: "This part is variable and may go up or down."
So someone promoted 2 years ago? They may be on a not insignificant amount more than you for no other reason than timing.
Really demoralizing when the company posts a fat profit, the top managers take home a large bonus, you you get nothing because the quarterly profit was a little under expectations.
Also, on a side note, I wonder if companies are trying to impress when they say that you bonus could be "up to" 10% or 20% of your salary. They way I read it is that no matter how well you do and how well the company does, your upside is capped!
Bob: No! No, of course not! We find it’s always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there’s less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week."
It's all so hilariously penny-wise and pound-foolish.
These approaches always annoy me as it feels the company's leadership is unable to talk straight to their employees. E.g. my employer had some layoffs recently. The language used internally was that some people were "impacted" by "proposed changes". This language was used by so many execs in different business areas that it was clear that there was some top down direction that this was how they should be referred to. Is it that hard to just say "We missed our revenue targets, so we had to lay off some people"?
IMO it speaks to the "skills" that big tech want in their HR people. The fact that they did all these things is exactly what they look for in "good" HR people e.g. protect the company at all cost and no mercy for employees.
Well, I guess that means it’s hard if you look at it from the perspective of running a listed company.
I have no opinion on whether that'd be viable or beneficial, but it's a fascinating idea to think about the consequences of, both externally in terms of effects on wider society, and what it'd mean for corporate cultures.
Thinking along those lines would suggest we need to reduce a lot of legal and communication friction or else capping corporations will make everything much more expensive. It’d certainly be worth improving those things regardless of the end goal. Whether we would naturally see average company size reduce is unknown, but the theory that they would recognize the financial incentive to do so is plausible.
The product people, innovators and engineers are no longer in charge. It appears Google may be entering their Ballmer era where it was marketing/metrics first over value creation. I hope some internal faction of product/developers can take it back.
I graduated less than a year ago and have been working at a startup in my hometown since then, and didn't bother applying to Google because I thought I'd never make it. Actually it was a thread on HN that convinced me to go for it. I'm moving away from everything and everyone I've ever known because I've always heard that Google is the place to be to really grow as an engineer.
I'm still excited, and I was nervous with or without reading these threads, but can someone chime in and give me some hope?
If you listened to the Internet, my town of San Francisco is a faeces filled shithole where people will mug you at every corner. My other home in London is a bastion of knife crime and Sharia law with a bit of terrorism mixed in. I should live in perpetual fear that my life may be ended at any moment by actively malicious people bent upon religious and culture war.
In truth, life is pretty good in both these places. I love them both.
What you actually should do is stop giving these people any credence. Any fool can write a blog. And recycled news like this article is usually written by bottom feeders.
The world is a lovely place. Don't let the losers keep you down.
This stuff happens at all companies and Google is not immune to those dynamics.
The problem is that our culture in general, and some parts of the tech industry in particular, have a habit of pampering and infantilizing adult professionals. And, just as you would expect, these infantilized adults get spoiled and throw temper tantrums from time to time.
If you act like an adult, be a professional, do your job, don't pick stupid political fights you can't win, and hone your skills, you'll be fine. This is true at any company that has at least an adequate level of sanity, even though most of these companies engage in hypocrisy and mock displays of insanity to appease their more childish employees.
- design software that can be incrementally rolled out
- design software interfaces before building
- build secure, internationalized, and accessible web frontends
- write pull requests that are easy to understand
- work across multiple teams and codebases
It's a really good opportunity, congratulations on your offer!
Sidenote, anyone have an extension to hide all HN headlines with a keyword filter?
What mainly bothers me mostly, is how click-baity this article is. Such a heavy emphasis on drama and controversy, with every attempt to garner as much divisiveness as possible. It’s annoying, and I notice Bloomberg is notorious for almost always putting out these types of highly charged articles.
Do authors get bonuses for releasing fiery volatile articles at Bloomberg or something?
Google management to this day claims that eligibility for promotion is based solely on whether or not an employee is consistently performing at the next level on a well defined job ladder. If they are, they're promoted.
The problem is not the lack of promotions. The problem is that introducing promotion quotas or limits directly conflicts with the merit-ONLY-based promotion system that management claims exists.
Actually, yes: https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...
It isn't necessarily nefarious, it's a metric for gauging how important a story is and to direct their staff towards reporting on important stuff. But nevertheless, it does happen.
Google/Alphabet is still doing badly at anything consumer-facing that isn't ad-supported. Not for lack of trying. Google Fiber, Google Express, etc. They've had some success at enterprise apps and cloud services, but they're not the major player in that space. The self-driving car thing is not going as well as expected. Ads are still 94% of Google revenue, and they're probably overstaffed for that business.
Hmm. Do you count Fi, Flights, and Hardware in that category? (Particularly Nest, Home and Pixel).
One could argue that some longer term plan for Home is ads/cross-sell, but let's just focus on whatever the hardware sales turns out to be. I don't think those need to be on the scale of Apple's or Samsung's revenue to be considered as not "doing badly".
Similarly, I assume (but have no knowledge!) that Flights is mostly a referral business. That's not "ads" to me in the same classic sense. That is I've never heard anyone refer to Kayak as "ad-supported".
Not leaking this slide deck was rather important to minimize frustration.
Working at a startup however is much easier because you work very closely with execs and people in positions that have power to give you promotions so the value you bring is easily visible and recognized.
https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&client=firefox-b-1...
The second link in that search explicitly says they were bonuses, and the first strongly implies it.
My anecdotal feeling after discussing with multiple googlers is that the top performers are overly well paid, but most engineers are paid under what they could get at another company.
They use their marketing hype/PR and their brand name to be able to achieve this, with an unlimited supply of fanboys that want to get in even possibly while being paid under market rate.
It didn't happen for snap.
Otherwise, they're only profitable in some markets and have gotten regulated out of others. That leaves them with the options of scaling back or running at a loss. Neither if those confidently signal "value me higher than Costco or Adobe".
Uber already has more net revenue than Adobe. It has slightly negative profit margins but is growing significantly faster than Adobe, suggesting that there is plenty of room to let off the gas and let profitability take over at the expense of rapid growth.
In that light, it seems perfectly reasonable that it would IPO at a valuation similar to Adobe.
Google is clearly in this too tier of companies that compensate well, but it seems to rely on its brand name to be a little stingy. Anecdotally though, a lot of Google engineers seem to work a lot less than people at these other companies, except maybe LinkedIn.
And of course it is significantly better paying then Amazon and Apple.
The stats are skewed by the fact that a lot of people who get L4/T4/E4 offers at other companies get downleveled to L3 by Google.
EDIT: It seems like Lyft, LinkedIn and Airbnb consistantly rank higher, I'm curious do they have similar perks though (free food for example)?
I'd say the general pattern is that Lyft and AirBnB are more selective in their hiring (which they can do with their smaller employee numbers), in exchange for paying more. There is also a risk premium since the value of their RSUs probably has more variability for companies that haven't IPO'd yet. And just a few years back it wasn't even clear when employees would get liquidity for their stock, though that has obviously changed now with the pending IPOs.
LinkedIn is an interesting case though. It's consistently the highest compensating company with liquid comp, and has a good reputation for work life balance. It's also not any more selective than Facebook or Google in hiring. I think being only a small division of Microsoft means it can be bankrolled and has less pressure to cut costs (I haven't seen any numbers for Github but it wouldn't surprise me if their comp is similar for the same reason). LinkedIn also likely compensates more to overcome the brand value / reputation that Facebook and especially Google have in comparison.
I should say though, having joined Facebook recently, that I'm noticing there are a ton of miscellaneous things that the company does to make employees' lives easier that may not have all that much monetary value, but really add up towards life quality. E.g. on-campus medical centers and insurance provider with really good customer service, e-waste dropoffs, and so on and so forth.
Also note that Pinterest probably didn't have enough data to make it onto the list, but it's up there with Lyft and AirBnB as a top paying decacorn - https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Pinterest&track=Software%20E... Amongst public companies, Snap (https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Snap&track=Software%20Engine...) is up there as is Cruise Automation (which doesn't have any data on levels.fyi but from what I've heard is also reasonably high paying).
Likewise, I had an offer from Amazon around the same time as Google's offer - which was actually quite a bit higher. So from my own experience, and from friends, Amazon does indeed pay substantially more than Google.
I've heard other tech is sightly higher - however, I didn't go to Google for the pay (although I wouldn't say no to competitive pay, haha), but there were other drivers for me (work/life balance etc.).
Now if Google lost 50% of its stock value overnight, that'd be a different story. But that would be reflected in the next round of refreshes, which are based on a monetary value at the time of grant.
As someone that works at a notoriously “resource efficient” company the fact that people would be mad about this is absolutely hysterical.
If you go to a competitor and negotiate a 25% higher salary and bring it back to your current employer, either they give you a 25% raise or you leave. Either way you get 25% more money.
If you go to a union and ask for a raise, they go to the employer, the employer can't afford to give everyone a 25% raise, so they give everyone a 2.5% raise. Then you have to quit and go work for the competitor. Only now they won't pay you 25% more because now they know your current salary based on where you work, your position and the terms of the union contract, so they know they only have to pay you 5% more. So either way you're making less.
Meanwhile the competitor is still offering more, so your current employer starts bleeding talent, which reduces revenue generation and thereby the amount of money they have to pay employees in the future.
It's not as if many people still aspire to work for GM.
Here in Austria we have "collective contracts" which are negotiated by unions. The "collective contract" specifies a minimum salary (depending on job title/experience), but employees are free to negotiate higher salaries. Senior developers usually earn way more than the minimum.
The union also negotiates a minimum raise every year (I think it is 2.6% for IT workers in 2019). Employers are free to offer additional raises, and typically they do.
I've never been the alpha chimp, but I've also never been the bottom of the heap. It strikes me that your lack of empathy strongly implies you think you not only would do better, but that you deserve to.
Let me put it to you that you're wrong: you would actually do better long term fighting to get better pay across the board and incentives for high achievers actually do better long term (as in vesting) when everyone wins.
A: [Proposal for collective organization] B: [Explains logical holes in proposal] A: You're a bad person!
Every single discussion on this topic eventually devolves into people demanding that others support a system that's not in their interest on the basis of specious moral principles that happen to benefit the person making the moralistic argument, for example, "you lack empathy" or "you hate democracy". The truth is, nobody is required to support a system that's not in his interest, and if organizers can't create a system that makes everyone better off, they'll fail to achieve their goals. Shame is no substitute for incentive.
I agree with this part.
However, "but unions would try to level the playing field so I would not be able to maintain my (obviously well-deserved) elite status" is not a logical argument.
And "you appear not to want to make things more equitable" is not saying "you're a bad person"—and you saying it is says, I think, more about you than it does about ggm's post, which stated things in fairly value-neutral terms. Even his final remark was not a moral judgement of any kind, but rather an economic argument.
Of course nobody's required to support a system that doesn't benefit them. But (to take your position to its illogical extreme) if everybody fought tooth and nail to ensure that they got the very most possible without regard for what anyone else got, I don't think anyone would be very happy with the result.
So yes, this thread is very much a microcosm of every unionization discussion I've seen on the Internet.
A: [proposal for collective organization]
B: [objects that with a union, they wouldn't be able to use their Mad (Negotiating/Programming) Skillz to get hugely better compensation]
A: [attempts to argue that with a union, more people would be better off on average]
B: [You're a socialist!]
But I do also really believe an economics story here: fairer wage structure with less super pay for geniuses and shit pay for everyone else makes better sense. More people can spend disposable income so the economy does better overall and the company is more profitable.
I've worked with genius programmers and they're not team players and whilst it's exhilarating, the outcome is mixed.
The boring programmers make staid reliable systems. They sell because they work.
That doesn't mean those who oppose collectivism (particularly the "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" style) don't have empathy. There are many here for example who support vigorous free market competition (both in goods and services and in labor) run by supply and demand but also advocate a basic income out of empathy to make sure everyone is ensured a minimum humane standard of living.
>But I do also really believe an economics story here: fairer wage structure with less super pay for geniuses and shit pay for everyone else makes better sense. More people can spend disposable income so the economy does better overall and the company is more profitable.
There are plenty of companies that have a primarily tenure-based system of pay and promotion. At least in tech, those legacy incumbents tend to be far less successful and profitable than the merit-based companies disrupting them. I know which kind of company I'd rather work for.
>I've worked with genius programmers and they're not team players and whilst it's exhilarating, the outcome is mixed.
Systems for career advancement / promotions are never perfect, but rarely do they just hire and promote the smartest geniuses. Generally, being a team player is a very important part of career improvement / advancement.
>The boring programmers make staid reliable systems. They sell because they work.
That's not why IBM software sells.
You're framing this as some kind of 99th percentile elites vs. everyone else situation, when the real issue is that 65th percentile employees have different interests than 35th percentile employees. Who themselves have different interests than 2nd percentile employees.
And there is a difference between leveling the playing field and leveling the players.
Correct. I do not want to work at a place where no matter how much I invest in improving myself (learning a new coding technic in my free time rather than going to a movie) I will earn the same (or similar) to that of the cleaners.
> Presumably you also don't mind that your elitism assumes a lot of upside benefit for a few and a lot of downside consequences for most.
Me upgrading my TV to a 50' does not make your 20' TV worse.
> It strikes me that your lack of empathy strongly implies you think you not only would do better, but that you deserve to.
I have a lot of empathy. I give more than minimum wage in charitable donations.
> Let me put it to you that you're wrong: you would actually do better long term fighting to get better pay across the board and incentives for high achievers actually do better long term (as in vesting) when everyone wins.
Why?
Even if I’m paid a ton more, I’d be happy knowing that at least my coworkers are not being exploited.
The contract really benefits everyone, regardless of salary level.
And you don't even need to be a union member. The contract is binding for every employer in Austria, but union membership is voluntary. (Unions offer additional benefits to members, eg. legal assistance)
The system really isn't that bad.
The on-call policy is discussed in paragraph 7.
Summary: At most 10 times on call per month, no more than 168 hours per month, no more than 30 days in 3 months, payment of 4,33€ per hour for being on call, as soon as you start doing something it counts as regular working time.
In Poland it is, we have limits of how much overtime one can have, how much money you get when working overtime (e.g. during the week it is +50% more per hour, during the weekend it is +100% more). One has to have at least I think 11 hours of free time from work ("on call" + usual office time hours) per 24hrs during the week and it is 36 hrs during the weekend.
As far as overtime goes, in Japan you are basically pre-paid for 35 hours of overtime a month regardless of whether you actually work it, so I’ll probably never get any extra money for it unless things get really crazy.
And yes, it probably does depress salaries for the people on the top of the curve. But they are also often not the highest performers either, but the people best at marketing themselves. Sometimes the two intersect, but often it does not.
The reality is that what you're suggesting in terms of employers avoiding union employees rarely is an issue in countries with high proportions of unionized employees.
I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. I’m nowhere near the west coast, but I can definitely tell you that the stagnation of my salary during the first decade of my career and the rapid rise during the second decade is much more attributable to the increase in my emotional intelligence, knowing how to play the game, and knowing how to get to know the right people and networking.
No, that isn't really how it works. Unions are basically insurance. Some of that insurance is minimum wage, but others are vacation, promotions, non-disclosures, arbitration, work environment etc.
Minimum wage in white collar unions usually isn't very high. It is usually just protection against the company dumping salaries below the level of reasonable living conditions.
> That means that not so many top employees wound want to join unions, making employers even less likely to employ union workers.
Talented employees have the most to lose by being unfairly treated. To be underpaid, to have your career interrupted, to not be able to take other opportunities etc. Again it is insurance.
Say you are a talented employee at company X. You have invested time and effort in a project for the last three years and done good work. Now you get into a dispute with a manager over the future of the project. They start playing office politics and eventually get your project defunded, blocks your promotion and requires you to sign a non-compete to get your bonus.
While you can just quit and join company Y the first thing they will ask is what you did the last three years, what your project was and which position you attained. Chances are you are back in a similar position, having to reinvest that time and effort. Thing like this can really mess up your career.
If you are just working on a average project, not really expecting a promotion or in other ways are average, you don't have as much to lose. Sure, if you don't get treated right at company X, you go join company Y in a similar position. On the other hand since you don't expect a trajectory attaining things like good pension, vacation and overtime early matters a lot.
On the other hand, at any given time, the union is always going to be fighting for you to get reasonable raises based on your position, and will be available to help you show that you deserve a significant raise if your current compensation does not match the going rates for what you're actually doing.
This is ignoring all the other things unions do, that don't directly relate to compensation, like ensuring that employees aren't taken advantage of by the company in a variety of creative and quasi-legal ways.
Frankly, if software developers of various types unionized, I would be shocked if that union bore much resemblance to the propagandistically stereotyped picture of unions we've had painted for us over the past several decades. I think it's much more likely that, given the prevalence of attitudes such as yours, it would be primarily concerned with the aforementioned protections, as well as setting wage floors for given levels of expected performance, while leaving the ceiling free for people who, like you, think they can negotiate something better.
It's not like there's some "union rulebook" that all unions must follow as soon as they come into existence, that says, "First, make sure absolutely everyone makes the same amount of money. Next, make really crappy employees unfireable."
Unions are made up of people in the industry they represent—that's the whole damn point—and their goals are set by those people. So in all likelihood, if there were a programmers' union, and you were in it, and you're really as good as you seem to think, you'd have negotiated your way to a position where you have at least some say over union policy. Then, even if there were, for some reason, union rules specifying that compensation for position title X could be no more than Y, you could work to change that.
Because you took it before you had your current level of experience or list of accomplishments that makes you worth 25% more money.
> It's not like there's some "union rulebook" that all unions must follow as soon as they come into existence, that says, "First, make sure absolutely everyone makes the same amount of money. Next, make really crappy employees unfireable."
There kind of is. What above average employees want is above average wages and competent peers. What below average employees want is average wages (i.e. more than they're worth). What really crappy employees want is to not be fired.
You can't have them all at the same time. So if the union nominally represents all of them, who is it supposed to throw under the bus? If the company can spend a given amount of resources on employees, which employees should get them? A union representing multiple types of employees inherently has that conflict of interest.
You can't just assume that the best employees will control the union. It's the worst employees that have the most incentive to make sure the union keeps them in their jobs -- the best employees can make the calculation that they're better off at a competitor without a union than to have to engage in constant struggle with not only management but also the other employees with conflicting goals.
> On the other hand, at any given time, the union is always going to be fighting for you to get reasonable raises based on your position, and will be available to help you show that you deserve a significant raise if your current compensation does not match the going rates for what you're actually doing.
How is that any different than what you can do on your own, or hire someone to do who doesn't have the conflict of interest of representing other employees competing for the same pool of company resources?
> This is ignoring all the other things unions do, that don't directly relate to compensation, like ensuring that employees aren't taken advantage of by the company in a variety of creative and quasi-legal ways.
That seems like the role of the various attorneys general.
> I think it's much more likely that, given the prevalence of attitudes such as yours, it would be primarily concerned with the aforementioned protections, as well as setting wage floors for given levels of expected performance, while leaving the ceiling free for people who, like you, think they can negotiate something better.
Then you're paying dues so they can negotiate higher wages for people who aren't you but come from the same pool of available employee compensation, leaving less for you when you still have to spend your own time/resources on top of that to negotiate your own compensation.
Good employees and bad employees have different interests. And if you put them together in the same union, the bad employees are usually more interested in not getting fired than the good employees are in making sure that they do -- because the good employees have plenty of prospects at other companies where they don't have to constantly struggle to keep their own union from acting against their interests.
Then good employees leaving impairs the long-term health of the company, which hurts even most of the employees left behind. (Though presumably not the ones that would otherwise have been fired for incompetence.)
Unions don't have to involve fixed pay scales to boost salaries for the participants, e.g. SAG-AFTRA mandates a portion of revenue go to actors in addition to salaries, NFLPA requires that a certain portion of revenue be paid in player salaries, neither prevents individuals from negotiating a higher salary for themselves.
Hollywood unions: lol srsly, we have millionaires in our unions