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Comment by spiritcat | Hacker News Reader

so they keep the smart people doing useful work, rather than convert them to useless managers?

same as it ever was.

Promotion at Google does not mean management.

Specifically, there are two job ladders in this area, one for management and one for engineering. People are welcome to switch ladders, though there's some friction in the process because they actually are different jobs. The idea is that people shouldn't sacrifice talents to progress in their careers, as often happens when talented engineers are pushed into people management at other companies.

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.

That is true, but what's also true is that it's _way_ easier to get promoted beyond L5 as a manager, and darn near impossible to get promoted beyond L6 as an IC. Google values managers more, just like any other company. That's why you see like 7 layers of management there by now and directors reporting to directors and VPs reporting to VPs: people want more money but can't get to the next level as ICs. Fun fact: when I left Google, I was 1 level deeper in the hierarchy than I've ever been at Microsoft, a company that at the time I left was twice the size of Google I left 7 years later.

I wouldn't say it's easier to get promoted in the sense that the work is easier. A company with 85,000 employees needs a lot of managers (who themselves need managers, and so on), so there's definitely demand. But that demand need not change the stringency of the job requirements.

Google could let half its managers go tomorrow and things would only improve. And you know it, even if you are a manager. :-)

... until you figure out that maybe comparing numbers of high level technical engineers to numbers of high level managers would be the correct way to gauge this. Your chances of becoming a high level manager are very slim, but your chances of becoming a high level engineer are much slimmer.

But if your message is "it's better than elsewhere", then yes, it probably is.

It usually means "tech lead" which is management without the labor relations legalities (except where NLRB calls the bluff?.

If Google could distinguish between smart people and useless people, why keep the useless people?

I guess i should clarify. Useless in a technical sense, not in a bureaucratic sense. You still need them of course.

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!

But just to be clear for when this comment gets mined by some future HR department. It is of course very important to have good people making the high level architectural decisions, and you should absolutely hire me for your senior technical positions to maximize the output of all those around me!

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.

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