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Comment by throwrioawfo | Hacker News Reader

I feel like things have become so much more cynical in the last 5 years, in this regard.

I feel like part of it is the "over-systemization" of promos. I see the logic behind it to some extent - if there's a system, it's "fairer"/"more democratic". But, then we end up with ridiculous gamified promo systems.

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objective systems become gamified

subjective systems become politicized

pick your poison

I'll pick small company, thank you.

This isn’t a bad approach but it’s not a panacea: small companies can be pretty messed up too, albeit perhaps in different ways.

The impact is local though, it would be only a problem if the median small company is more messed up than the large co.

It not likely to happen because being small there are more threats or market forces to deal with so they cannot do as they please. Monopolies or just economies of scale affords large co and the small number of executives that control them outsized influence - both good and bad.

Yeah... there are no systems that are not political. Even if you agree objectivity is a thing, someone has to persuade others to buy into whatever that objectivity is, and that's still politics, and not cynical at all.

This is great. I'd begun to conclude the pendulum swung too far towards "moneyball" and both approaches have trade-offs, but this is perfectly succinct

Why not both?

it is both because the "objective" system is also rife with subjective judgements

5 years ago they had the same incentives.

But five years ago they had a stronger engineering culture. The old values were rapidly eroding, but some still held.

It's funny whenever you talk to anyone their "five years ago" maps almost to the time they joined the company.

For me, it maps to pandemic, which was midway through my time at GOOG. That's when the COVID-sparked Zero Interest Rate Policy caused the company to hire engineers and PMs like crazy. There were suddenly too many new hires to inculcate with the old leadership and engineering ethos—especially via remote work—and the values got diluted, probably beyond the point of recovery.

It’s not about fairness or democracy (maybe you meant meritocracy?) at all although it’s sold that way to participants - it’s primarily about ownership’s ability to cascade management duties, including mitigating latent negotiation powers by individual workers and groups of workers

Eh, clearcut promo paths used to be a bigger thing in the 90s and they did work for a little while, they just didn't handle exceptions well, and then the whole developed world up and thought they were also exceptions. Certifications used to matter more, now they are so cheapened that you cannot do much without them.

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