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Comment by tensafefrogs | Hacker News Reader

No, Google uses the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) system to track performance. You set goals with measurable results, and you grade them every quarter.

That way you aren't evaluated so much on when/how you work, but on what you accomplish.

(I should also include a note here about how you are evaluated by your peers at Google, which has its own set of benefits and downsides, but OKRs are meant to be a somewhat objective measure of output)

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Gaming "Objectives and Key Results" type evaluations is far older than Google. It's not remotely an objective measure unless you have an organization that has extensive knowledge of how to accurately assess effort based on set objectives.

From what I've seen, many organizations that try to formalize evaluations this way are easier to game, because the very idea that there are somewhat reliable metrics makes it easier to justify not following up as closely.

(I'm not saying it will happen, but I've seen it far more often than I care to; including once having a manager that didn't even inquire about what my team had done lately for three years - I didn't mind, I delivered what I should to other parts of the business, but he should have: he had no effective oversight over a team officially reporting to him that handled tens of millions in revenue; if I had messed up, his head would've been on the chopping block next to mine)

> if I had messed up, his head would've been on the chopping block next to mine

Maybe he trusted you?

This is likely the case but there's absolutely no excuse for a manager to draw a paycheck without at least asking what you're doing. If things seem to be going well and you trust the team, perhaps that's an infrequent high-level "what we did, what we're thinking about next” email but you should know at least that much.

Not sure why you're getting voted down (your comment has gone grey as I type this). I don't recall the OKR system being there when I was (at least not in any sort of formal capacity). The author of the submitted piece was talking about the perception of productivity however, and that was something snippets were designed to provide (at least that was how they were presented to me)

Ah, I've always used snippets more for personal use, so when the time comes to evaluate yourself you have a record. Yes, they are public, but they've always felt more informational than a mandatory log of what you've done.

Everything about your post is correct except the "No,". Googlers have both OKRs and snippets.

The "no" was directed at this statement, which I believe to be not very accurate:

> Google tried to avoid this scenario with 'snippets'

My point is that OKRs are meant to be used for tracking performance (such as what the article was talking about) and snippets are more for personal use or casually for information among teammates or other curious people who want to know what you work on.

> Everything about your post is correct except the "No,"

My first thought when reading this was that I would have nodded in agreement 90% of the time no matter what the remaining content of the parent had been.

I remember dealing with both OKRs and snippets at Google. Personally the snippets were very helpful just helping me keep track of myself. I never ran into the issues the GP did which do sound unfortunate :(

>>You set goals with measurable results, and you grade them every quarter.

This unfortunately has never worked. I don't if it worked at Google. But as far as I remember 'Setting goals' by and large works like premature optimization or at most in the theme of water fall model.

When we used that approach we found half way down the goal timeline, our priorities as dictated by the business totally changed. We discovered better ways of doing things which altered goals. Some times we found we were simply measuring the wrong things. Some higher priority stuff just preempts the existing business goals and tend to get abandoned etc etc.

I can see how it may work for business folks. Having targets like 'Increase revenue by $100 million', or 'Hire 10 new team members'. But in the grass root level day to day life can hardly be lived in the scopes of rigid goals.

It would seem that OKR results have more to do with how the objectives were set rather than a measure of performance.

Yes - your manager should be helping you set good goals.

What happens when he goals change one what midway? Do you lose the progress on current goals when it finally comes time to evaluate your progress?

Ideally you'd be evaluated on the progress you made on both sets of goals with consideration given to the fact that you weren't working on either set of goals for the entire quarter.

I can't imagine a manager who helped you set quarterly goals with objective completion measurements and then penalized you if the goals changed partway through.

There would probably be some discussion as to why the goals needed to change. If they were not set appropriately to begin with that might be an issues between you and your manager or might be an issue between him and his manager (maybe priorities weren't communicated effectively from higher up the chain) or it might truly be a case of changed priorities in the company (changing markets, change financial outlook, whatever).

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