Comment by jjwiseman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjwiseman | Hacker News Reader

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Blind allocation got me too. They told me how allocation worked before I joined, but I was hopeful that they would put me on a project that had some overlap with what I was interested in and what I had worked on for the past 15 years (computer vision, robotics, natural language processing).

No. I found out on the last day of orientation I would be doing YouTube ads. I knew there was no way I could do that for 18 months, and I told my manager. He was understanding, but there wasn't really anything he could do. He passed my concerns up the management chain.

A couple weeks later my manager gave me their response, which was, literally, "We don't care." That shocked me a little, and I knew at that point I wouldn't be at Google for very long. Maybe that was even the right thing for them to do, since I was proving myself to be the kind of employee who wouldn't work on a project they weren't interested in for a year and a half just because it was good for Google, or good for their potential career at Google.

For a short time I led a 20% project with three other engineers that was in my interest area, and after we won an innovation award I hoped that it might make the Google bureaucracy more sympathetic to my preferences, but management didn't care. I left not long after that.

(tl;dr: I learned that Google is a bureaucratic megacorp.)

I've heard of the 18 month rule, but it wasn't how it worked in my experience. My first project lasted 4 months and ended with a successful launch. My second lasted two months and ended when I was pulled off (actually, I volunteered) to work on a project more suited to my abilities.

YMMV. Google is a giant corp, I'm sure there are bad managers somewhere (and I've heard of Nooglers getting stuck on a bad project and then leaving for Facebook), but if you keep your eyes open for opportunities and work to build relationships with your new team, you can usually transfer regardless of what the rules say.

Pretty much my naivete and experience as well (minus the 20% project because the one I wanted to do would have tipped some sacred cows had it succeeded)...

Exactly--I didn't quite say it explicitly, but part of the problem was my naiveté about working for a large company after a career of mostly startups.

(And my summary of the project may have been overly short. It was a week of full-time work, with a plan of making it an ongoing 20% project.)

I don't think this is a large company vs. startup thing. In most companies, large or small, you're hired to fill a particular job opening (that's described as part of the recruitment process) and usually interviewed by the group of people who you'd be working with. Does anyone know of any other companies that do this kind of random assignment the way Google does?

I wonder why google would choose to randomize assignments instead of recruiting for a particular skillset for a particular project/role.

If they are afraid of leaking information about what projects they are up to based on their job openings, that's actually easy to solve - advertise heaps and heaps of openings for many, varied and niche skill sets. Of course, only some of these adverts are real openings, but no one but outside google will know which ones are real openings. Hence, your competition cannot sniff your job openings to see what you are working on. This simply costs fees in administration and you reject every fake advert application.

Blind allocation is about grunt-work roulette, not secrecy.

Google wants to collect smart people, but it's impossible for a company to get to that size and have only smart-people work, so blind allocation is their way of getting PhDs to work on apps for HR-- the kind of work that a lower calibre of engineer would happily do for a Google salary, but Google just refuses to hire at-level for that kind of work when they can hire above-level and roulette someone into it.

That's also why it's frowned upon to transfer before the 18-month mark.

My issue with it is not that they expect 1.5 years of grunt work. That's fairly typical. Unpleasant, but common. What's worse about it is that people who land on grungy work for their first projects tend to keep getting bad work because they can't transfer to the good stuff, because they're competing against people who had better projects and could actually accomplish things. If the model was, "do this for 18 months, and then the company is open to you", that'd be one thing. The problem is that people suck it up for a year and a half, thinking things will get a lot better, but then when they get to the 1.5-year mark, they don't actually have the degree of optionality and autonomy that they were promised.

20% time can easily destroy your career. Most managers view it either as a waste of time or a flight risk. If the manager has to put someone on the 5% shit-list (which has more to do with his performance than yours) and you're 20%ing, then you're probably screwed.

Blind allocation is imbecilic, but I think even the idea that people need to be "allocated" to projects is moronic. It doesn't belong in this fucking century. Closed allocation makes managerial dinosaurs think they control something, but they lose control of the most important thing, which is their ability to retain talent and enthusiasm. If Google wanted to actually deserve its reputation, they'd man up and go for Open Allocation: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/tech-companie...

Wow, I never would have expected Google's perf management to be as bad as what I've read here - Glassdoor reviews all sound so peachy.

Take what Michael Church says with a grain of salt. I was around to observe his threads on the eng-misc mailing list while he was still at Google. Without his consent, I'd rather not say what went on, but I would advise you to get your information elsewhere.

Michael O'Church seems quite happy to share what went on. What's stopping you?

Michael O'Church's arguments are internally consistent, and more persuasive than vague statements impugning his character.

> What's stopping you?

Respect for the confidentiality of internal communications.

Anyone is free to share their own impressions, but it is inappropriate to pull someone else's privileged documents and wave them in public.

what about anonymizing and cleaning the communication such that you cannot decipher any actual information, but can grasp the gist of the topic about which this thread discusses?

Just how respectful and appropriate is it to make public claims about someone's character without giving evidence?

I find it quite disconcerting when people write comments like this. If you're not willing to share what was said, so that we can judge whether or not it supports your veiled allegations, then don't make the allegations. It is in bad taste, and reflects badly on you.

I know it can be hard to resist talking if you believe you have inside information, but giving "warnings" like this without sharing details that are directly relevant to the claims he made in effect boils down to nothing more than an ad hominem supported by appeals to authority about the reasons for his claims.

Yet you leak the name of an internal mailing list. Well done!

The negative comments here haven't really been my experience either. I once heard a VP say that perf is an "eventually consistent system", meaning that mistakes are often made over the short term (1 review cycle), but over the long term high performers get promoted. That's basically what I observed: it can be maddeningly slow for people to notice you've been working your ass off, but if you keep at it, they do notice and the rewards do come. If you stick around long enough for them.

The real world isn't all that different - if you found a startup, you're likely to go through 3-4 years of nobody giving a shit before everybody suddenly discovers your a genius.

If you identify high performance by the performance review system, and people who perform highly according to that system are more likely to be promoted than those who don't, then of course over the long term high performers are the ones who get promoted. And it might well be merely "eventually" consistent if a few dings early on (or later on!) don't destroy your chances to, over time, be considered a high performer by that system. It would be very hard for such a system to be anything but consistent, since the consistency is just self-consistency.

The relevant question isn't "do promotion decisions get made consistently with the tools used to rank performance" but "do the tools used to rank performance adequately track potential, and does the environment generally adequately make potential actual?". A system in which lots of people are dissatisfied and bored but some luck into positions for which they're suited, excel, and are promoted is, indeed, consistent, but it's also pretty wasteful.

I don't identify high performance by the performance review system. I identify high performance by "Who would I like to have on my team if I were to found a startup?" I've found a fairly high correlation between these people and the people who get promoted.

To be fair, Google has a lot of very good engineers, so of course there are a lot of great engineers who are getting promoted. I'm pretty sure you could find an equal number of good engineers who don't get promoted. The rank-and-file programmers are just very good, with almost no deadweight.

Google's promotion process isn't, as far as I can tell, that broken. What's broken is the policy of making political-success (or, "perf") scores part of the transfer process. It's mean-spirited and creates an autocorrelation in project quality that many people never overcome.

Google would be a real company with a culture actually worth caring about if the executives manned up and did the following:

1. Go to open allocation. When you have that much fucking cash, you can invest in employee autonomy. No excuses. Do it. Learn from Valve, because you're not a cultural leader anymore, Google. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/tech-companie...

2. Get rid of the "calibration" nonsense. It's stupid, and it goes against the idea of a peer-review driven company because that bus is driven by managers only. Fire the B-student management consultants who came up with it. Get rid of the 5% firing rate, too. (I know that Google rarely actually fires people, instead humiliating them with those insipid PIPs and transfer blocks. No real difference. Firing people with a real severance package is a lot more decent than wasting their time with kangaroo-court PIPs and tearing up their careers slowly.) Firing should be saved for real problem employees, rather than a threat that turns no-fault lack of fit into a problem employee. This tactic of-- without a business need (such as in a cash-crisis layoff)-- firing some set percentage (who tend to just be unlucky) to keep people "on their toes" is mean-spirited thuggery that doesn't belong in this century.

> 20% time can easily destroy your career. Most managers view it either as a waste of time or a flight risk.

So at Google, you're job isn't to make Google more successful, but to make your manager look good.

Yes, which doesn't make Google any worse than most companies, but does mean it has regressed into the meaningless, incoherent, parochial grey glop that is standard corporate working life.

You know, I work for a 122 year old > 100,000 employee megacorp, and it is not so bad. It takes longer to do things, and you have to work around a lot of problems, but the vastness of the problems and systems has some appeal.

This statement out of michaelochurch is just silly. Most managers I know consider 20% time to be important to those engineers that desire taking it. That said, not everyone tries, and you can lose your ability to do 20% if you underperform.

michaelochurch appears to have had a very strongly negative experience with his time at Google - I'd implore you (and everyone) to not base your assessment of what the company is like on his experience alone, especially since I've got pretty much entirely opposite experience.

Actually, my reason for spilling on Google is that someone from Google did something unethical after I left and Google refused to investigate (knowing they'd have to fire the person if they did). If Google had done the proper investigation and canned the person, I would never have said a word about them.

I'm pretty much over it by this point, but I still think the terrorists who thought it would be fun to destroy Google from the inside with their imbecilic "calibration scores" need to be named, shamed, and buried. They have attacked what was once a great company, and they are destroying it. I am pointing this out as a public service.

Google is a great place if you have a good manager and an interesting project. If you land on an interesting, relevant project, and your manager supports you in the political processes, it's a great place to work. I've never argued against that, because it's true.

The same is true of 20% time. If your manager believes in 20% time, you have that benefit. If your manager thinks it's a waste of time and will express it by threatening you with a perf smear, then you don't have 20% time.

>>Google is a great place if you have a good manager and an interesting project. If you land on an interesting, relevant project, and your manager supports you in the political processes, it's a great place to work. I've never argued against that, because it's true.

That's true for any company I know of, Hardly an interesting proposition to work at Google.

"If Google had done the proper investigation and canned the person, I would never have said a word about them."

I don't get this. The faults you mention here and elsewhere (closed allocation, lousy managers, unfairly rating expectations, 20% dooming you etc) have nothing to do with Google investigating unethical behaviour, right?

So, does Google really have none of these faults, but you say they do because they refused to investigate your claim; or do the really have these faults, but if they had investigated your claim, you would have kept quiet and let everyone think that it's a fantastic place (as far as you were concerned)?

(Serious question, I'm not trying to flame you. I just don't really understand how your various criticisms and this specific ethics issue are connected)

or do the really have these faults, but if they had investigated your claim, you would have kept quiet and let everyone think that it's a fantastic place (as far as you were concerned)?

Disparaging an ex-employer in the public, even if the ills disclosed are minor-- which in Google's case, they are-- can do considerable damage. Or it might not. It's hard to measure the cost of lost opportunity (in this case, lost recruiting). In any case, it's a move to take seriously, because it involves downside risk for both employer and whistleblower and the upside is quite minimal. It's not something to do just because you have a negative experience, because 3/4 of work experiences are pretty negative (by which, I mean they get less out of the job and the company than they should) for most people. If a company is going to get a public smear, it has to earn it.

If Google had done the right thing and investigated, then terminated the person, I probably would still have warned my friends about the death of "Google culture" but I wouldn't have leaked Perf and the death of 20%T to the public.

I see. Thanks for the rationale :)

The key to success at most companies is to please your boss's boss, indirectly of course.

The key to success at most companies is to be a unicorn.

Let's quantify ambition using the letter A. At A > 1.0, people are interested in advancing their own careers and are only going to work hard on their assigned stuff when there's a long-term, career benefit. If they have a surplus of time (which is common, because they're good at getting shit done) they will pursue their own education rather than asking for more work. They are hard-working, but they focus on their own objectives and take a mercenary attitude. They only go "above and beyond" in the context of a mentorship arrangement where someone senior is genuinely looking out for their careers. Otherwise, they calculate exactly how much to invest in their assigned role and how much to put in the skill or networking bank.

People at A < 1.0 just don't see career growth as very important, and it's hard to motivate them to work more than an 8-9 hour day. They're not lazy-- they're often more than competent enough, and they tend to consistently do good work-- but they have more interest in life outside of work than in their paid labor. Give them 6 weeks of vacation, and while they'll generally give decent notice, they will take it.

People at A = 1.0 are ideal employees, but that's a single-point set, and we don't have Dirac delta functions in this analysis, so that's probability zero. It's a unicorn. (Note: I know that probability zero doesn't mean "impossible". Unicorns are also not impossible.)

Succeeding at work is about pretending to be at A = 1.0... or at least fading A to 1.0 enough to keep people unaware of your true leaning-- which is that you're either too ambitious to prioritize your boss's objectives over yours, or you're too lazy to care about anyone's goals.

How close you are to A = 1.0 determines how long you can stay at a job. At A = 0.5 or 2.0, you'll last 6 months and get cold-fired. At A = 0.9 or 1.1, you have an expectancy of two years and will get a severance. At A = 0.99 or 1.01, you can probably stick around for 10 years and you'll be gently "managed out".

I'm at A < 1.0 (even 6 weeks of vacation, which I always take with plenty of notice), but have no problem getting or keeping a job long term. I'm A < 1.0 because I'm ambitious about "working to live", rather than "living to work" like the A > 1.0 types. I do expect to be "managed out", but only because everyone but top management gets laid off eventually, to keep the staff young.

As my manager told me a while ago: "making our company successful is well above our pay-grade: we need to make our managers look good".

What was your 20% project?

Doesn't matter. The whole point in the 20% projects is not to ensure rewarding best projects, but to reward trying. Because eventually the good projects will flush out.

If you say you will punish failed 20% projects. Nobody is going to buy into a concept where you people are likely to be punished for failing to try and do something good for the company in the spare time.

I don't think michaelochurch did a 20% project, which is why it's interesting that he speaks so authoritatively on what happens to someone with one.

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