
Google Engineering Management Mistakes - auxbuss
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ajfcdscjzbvp_976rt9cfw
======
tptacek
Wow, this is one of the coolest things HN has found in awhile.

It's remarkable how, time and time again, formal incentive compensation
schemes are shown to cause more harm than benefit. I started paying attention
when Joel Spolsky called it out 6-7 years ago, and then read Peopleware (an
excellent book) which reiterates the point (and calls it "teamicide"), and
then read the Harvard Business Review article ("Why Incentive Plans Cannot
Work").

Why would a company as smart as Google forge ahead with schemes like this in
the face of all available evidence that it's a bad idea?

~~~
mattyb
Spolsky's article:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html>

~~~
mrcharles
One of my coworkers has one of those Ship It awards. It's... pretty sad.

------
plinkplonk
"Stack ranking system was harmful:"

whoa! I didn't know Google practiced stack ranking. There is a lot of
unnecessary stress generated at Microsoft due to this[1]. I would have thought
the Google folks would be wise enough to avoid it.

As for ".... SVP response: “If you wanted to get promoted for these non-
engineering tasks, move into management"

heh! How big company ish is that? The best way to join Google these days seems
to be as part of an acquired startup. Then you are at worst running out any
vesting period while enjoying those free massages.

[1] [http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/07/microsoft-stack-
ranking...](http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/07/microsoft-stack-ranking-is-
not-good.html)

~~~
tptacek
I had to look up "stack ranking" just now, so, for the benefit of the class:

Stack ranking means that if you have a group of 20 people, during each
performance review cycle the group manager is expected to rank them from 1 to
20, and the company distributes bonuses and promotions accordingly.

That just seems completely asinine.

~~~
plinkplonk
"Stack ranking means that if you have a group of 20 people, during each
performance review cycle the group manager is expected to rank them from 1 to
20, and the company distributes bonuses and promotions accordingly.

That just seems completely asinine."

Worse, there is often an associated ideal distribution ("the curve") with
fixed ratios for "exceeds expectations", "below expectations" and so on and
managers are under pressure to conform. If you have an all superstar team, a
certain number must still be in the bottom most bucket, and the bottommost
5-10 % is often let go or put on a watchlist (I am not saying this is how
Google does it).

Over a few years this gets _very_ political as you can imagine. The (bad)
middle managers love this part of their jobs.

~~~
shrikant
I was in a place that decided to give out bonuses to my team (consisting of 3
members and a leader) in the following way:

1\. Allocate fixed amount to give out per team

2\. Have team leader's manager determine how that pie would be shared between
team leader and us 3 team members.

3\. NOT have 360° feedback

4\. Incorporate team leader feedback on team's performance into this decision

I'm not sure what type of HR schmuck thought up that scheme. About a month
after 'self evaluation', we were called into 1-1 meetings with the TL, who
told us each separately how disappointing our performance had been, and the
usual spiel about 'taking initiative' and 'stepping up' and 'moving to the
next level'.

Shortly after that we found out the three of us had received 0% each of the
pie allotted to our team as a bonus. And the team leader had waltzed away with
_ALL_ of it.

That's right: an allegedly disappointing team who'd failed to achieve any of
its goals was compensated for by a super-human team leader who had somehow
magically overcome all our shortcomings to over-achieve so much, that even the
organisation-wide "curve" was left by the wayside to reward such awesomeness.

~~~
awakeasleep
It sounds like your manager actually suffered a bout of insanity or was a
thief.

~~~
jonhendry
I'm guessing thief. It's where the incentives lead.

------
LiveTheDream
"The sum of money just appeared in my bank account, but was so insulting low
that I felt devalued. If a manager had just talked to me about how much my
work was appreciated, it would have been better than money."

This is true at a certain threshold. Appreciation is _immeasurably_ better
than an demoralizing, insultingly-sized bonus. However on the other end, if
you go above and beyond normal expectations and save or earn the company
millions of dollars, a "thank you" from your boss on the company newsletter is
_not_ going to cut it.

~~~
gruseom
I would challenge this. Let's replace your trivializing phrase "a 'thank you'
from your boss on the company newsletter" with just _recognition_ , which
obviously can take many forms. We have evidence, cited in this thread, that
recognition is generally more satisfying and motivating than financial rewards
are (at least those produced by formal incentive plans). What evidence do you
have that this effect only holds "at a certain threshold"? Or that it weakens
as one's work becomes more important?

It's important to resist one's intuitions when faced with a counterintuitive
finding, which this is. Most of us have been conditioned to think of "never
mind the touchy-feely, show me the money" as hard-nosed realism. That it turns
out not to be is immensely interesting.

~~~
LiveTheDream
I left "a certain threshold" undefined on purpose, because it varies from
person to person. The point is that the _reward must be meaningful to the
person being rewarded_ , otherwise it is much worse than no reward; the person
will become cynical, demoralized, and unmotivated.

The main problem is conflicting valuations of the work in question, which
holds true whether the the payment is money or recognition. Who is to define
how much recognition is satisfactory? Take the Microsoft "ship it" award[1] as
an example of a formal recognition plan, which failed.

My evidence, like the evidence in this thread and the presentation, is just
personal experience.

[1] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html>

~~~
gruseom
_My evidence, like the evidence in this thread and the presentation, is just
personal experience._

On the contrary, I was referring to the work of Dan Pink and others on the
science of motivation, which was mentioned elsewhere in the thread.

I don't usually discount personal experience but this is one area where the
empirical findings are surprising. A pretty important one, too, considering
the implications for good organizations and happy lives.

------
leelin
Wall Street solves this problem quite efficiently! The annual bonus is really
the same as the performance review, so they simply tell everyone "you did a
great job this year, here are your compensation numbers."

That way, as a rank and file employee you don't really know whether your
"review" was above, at, or below average. First order, because you'd have to
ask your peers about their compensation, which most people consider rude (at
least in the US). Second order, because the bonus is supposed to be an
aggregate of your group and individual performance (plus your seniority), so
it's usually impossible to find a suitable cohort for comparison.

------
kenjackson
This also reminds me of a paper I had submitted in the past. Randomly
promoting people is more effective than using merit:

<http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455>

~~~
VladRussian
do you know of any research on randomly electing people in the government
offices? I believe it would also be much more effective.

~~~
kenjackson
In the US we've been doing this for years.

------
mattyb
Context: <http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/10/facebook-and-google.html>

------
al_biglan
100% confirms my fear that this is a group of incredibly smart, hyper
intelligent people who don't understand that specializing in a field (like,
say... Management) isn't something you can "dabble" in and do well. My
experience is that most "managers" in Google (when I interviewed, I met a few
Directors, Managers and Tech Leads) are 99% technically focused. Google swung
the pendulum too far the other way. Engineering should be in charge of the
company, but rely on Managers to do management things, not have Engineers
dabble in it (with the best of intentions) I would think if Google applied the
same hiring practices to hire in hyper intelligent people with a management
focus and could integrate them into the teams correctly, this would be a huge
win. (I haven't interviewed there since '07, so things may have changed since
then)

~~~
brown9-2
I wouldn't spend too much time looking down your nose at Google's mistakes
here, as piaw cautions that they're still a really great company to work for:

 _-At 1500 people, Google was more agile and less political than most 200
person startups!

\- At any given size, Google was the best company in its class to work for.

\- At its current size, Google is still more desirable an employer for
engineers than Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, and many other well
known names._

I think you'd find many similar stories at other software companies if you
applied as focused of a lens at them.

------
sruffell
"biggest mistake is still having a tech ladder"?

What specifically is this referring to? A separate career progression for
techs vs managers? I thought that was desirable so you don't need to move your
best engineers out of engineering positions to promote them. I fear I'm
missing something.

~~~
mmt
If I understand correctly, it's suggesting that having formal levels,
regardless of whether managers do or not, is what's undesirable.

I infer the alternative to be flat, such that there's only difference in
compensation, with no difference in formal title.

Perhaps I'm biased, since I very much believe you can call me whatever you
want, as long as I'm suitably paid. This function-over-form attitude is why I
prefer startups.

~~~
bmj
_Perhaps I'm biased, since I very much believe you can call me whatever you
want, as long as I'm suitably paid. This function-over-form attitude is why I
prefer startups._

Then I'm biased, too. I don't work for a start-up (100+ employees, with only
seven of us doing software development), but we really don't have "career
tracks." There are two management positions in our group (VP and lead
engineer), so unless one of them leaves the company, no one is moving up, nor
do titles change, even with raises. And this suits me perfectly fine.

------
silverlake
There is no perfect review and compensation scheme. People will figure out how
to game the system. Perhaps the best scheme is to randomly change it every few
years so people can't game the system permanently.

~~~
piaw
I've often thought about that. I think it would be a worthwhile experiment.

------
jfb
It's funny how you could take "Google" out of that slide and put "Apple" in it
and it would be almost word-for-word applicable. Or maybe it's not funny.

Too, I recognize that this author of this presentation spent time to make it
public, and sharing this sort of information is always welcome, so moaning
about the format might seem a little rich. But in the glorious tradition of
the internet, I'ma gonna bitch about it anyway. I _really_ __really __hate
this new fad of posting these Powerpoint-style slide decks. I would _always_
prefer to read prose, even inexpert prose, than <next> through yet another
comically inept link on scribd or google docs.

Moaning off. Thanks again to the author.

~~~
piaw
Sorry, the slide deck was there as a presentation to Facebook's VP of
engineering. I wasn't about to transcribe my own talk.

~~~
jfb
Like I said, I appreciate that you took the time. I was just being J. Random
Internet Asshole.

(But I really do hate slide decks.)

~~~
piaw
The slide deck was part of a blog post. It's not my fault that
news.ycombinator.com only linked to the slide deck and did not provide
context: <http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/10/facebook-and-google.html>

~~~
jfb
Very true, and the added context is really helpful. Thanks for responding
civilly to my not-very-civil bitchery.

------
kenjackson
Curious, why does he end the presentation saying that a tech ladder is bad? Is
the idea that they should have a management ladder, but all engineers are at
the same level? That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

~~~
dpritchett
Career ladders are wishful thinking and an easy way to undervalue
contributions. They imply that professional development largely occurs along a
single axis rather than multiple ones.

Who's worth more, Peter Norvig or Marissa Mayer? What about an overachieving
SWE I vs an mailing-it-in SWE III?

~~~
clr
The worst part about career ladders at Microsoft was that it put people who
were great engineers but terrible, terrible managers in positions of
authority, because there was only one advancement path. When I left,they were
just starting to create a career ladder for individual achievers, because they
had finally realized this. I don't know if it actually ever happened.

~~~
bmalicoat
Dunno when you left, but you can go up many levels as an IC currently.

------
sdizdar
I think the problem is much more general. It seems like the underlying problem
is that technology companies have idea to divide people into two categories:
manager and individual contributors (developers). And then rank them into
levels.

This might work for non-tech companies, but I think that is wrong approach for
tech companies. One of the key problems is that big money is in "management
career path", thus very smart young people which are unable or not willing to
go into management will leave to start their own companies.

For example, if you look around you, you see that your fellow colleges and
managers are quite different. Some of them are "mentors" (people who like to
mentor), "intrapreneur" (people with weird ideas), "fire-fighters" (people who
are good in fire mode), "coordinators", etc.

I'm not sure what is the solution. Maybe something like mash up structure
where person who is deciding on ones bonus and raise is not his/her manager.

~~~
sriramk
I actually think this is one of the places Microsoft has done very well in
over the years. I don't think used to be the case a decade ago though but the
IC career path is as lucrative/supported now as the management path. One can
choose to be a Anders Hejlsberg/Dave Cutler as much as one chooses to be a
Steven Sinofsky.

------
othermaciej
He says offhand that Google is a better place for engineers to work than
Apple, but as far as I can tell, Apple makes none of these five mistakes.

~~~
piaw
I know several Apple and ex-Apple engineers. Let's just say that the
environment isn't even comparable. Google wins hands down. One of my friends
at Apple had to file for an information request so that she could debug a
problem that spanned multiple layers of abstraction. A Google engineer faced
with that kind of inanity would just quit.

~~~
othermaciej
I've also heard complaints from Google and ex-Google people that wouldn't come
up at Apple. Examples: \- Launching a hard-to-understand product and providing
it with scant marketing support, so it promptly goes nowhere (when Apple
launches a product we are committed to making it a success). \- Central hiring
leads to o way of knowing what kind of project you will end up working on, and
high risk that it will be infrastructure grunt work which is not respected by
the culture.

Does internal secrecy suck more or less than those kinds of things? I dunno. I
would not be so bold as to make a claim either way without firsthand
experience of both environments.

~~~
endtime
I'm sure having the trains run on time is nice, but I have to concur with piaw
- from the people I've talked to, Apple sounds like a remarkably stifling
place to work.

------
martincmartin
What is a "Peer bonus structure"? I appears in #3 Recognition, "Peer bonus
structure was very well done, but not widely used inside engineering."

~~~
shadowmatter
You can give a peer bonus of $200 to any individual with their manager's
approval (which is very easy to get). They encourage giving peer bonuses for
when someone goes the extra mile on something, but very few engineers initiate
giving a peer bonus. After tax, it's about $100, hence the "I can poop $100"
bit.

~~~
swolchok
Is "close to 50%" the going marginal tax rate in general? I calculate ~30%
federal + ~10% California + possibly ~6% social security & Medicare to get
that number; did I miss anything? (current grad student with a marginal rate a
lot closer to 20%, haven't had the joy of full-on taxes yet)

~~~
kscaldef
Closer to 8% for SS & Medicare. Also, you'll typically have deductions taken
out of bonuses for your 401(k) and ESPP contributions (maybe another 20-25%).
Technically, those are still your money; and ESPP will come back to you before
too long, but the psychological impact of opening up your paycheck and only
seeing 30-40% of the gross you were told was your bonus is pretty frustrating.

~~~
mturmon
Most of those people would hopefully be above the social security threshold of
around $100K/year so that would not apply. I think a marginal tax rate of more
like 30-40% is more accurate.

~~~
kscaldef
It depends on when in the year the bonus is delivered. If it's early in the
year, it doesn't matter if you're going to hit the Social Security ceiling
eventually, they take it out of your bonus. I speak from personal experience
both on this matter, and on my previous accounting of only 30-40% of bonuses
actually hitting my bank account.

------
brlewis
I'd like to hear Paul Buchheit's take on this. He was thinking a lot about
company culture issues at FriendFeed, and now at Facebook.

~~~
piaw
Paul "liked" the blog post on Facebook. :-)

------
BenSS
This is great, but I think EVERY tech company struggles with finding the right
balance here. Where I currently work, they also fail each and every one of
these.

~~~
piaw
That's not true. I think the traditional management systems do a good job of
not setting bad incentives for tech leads.

------
benzheren
There is no perfect system and it is always very difficult to find the right
incentives for everyone in the company.

------
paradox95
Any large company is going to have those same mistakes. There is really no way
around it. Especially the part about only the big sexy project got recognition
and not the little grungy tasks. In a company of 20,000, unless you have a 1:5
manager to employee ration at all levels you can't avoid that. If these are
Google's biggest mistakes then I would happily go to work for them.

~~~
piaw
I think that it is possible to build a culture where the grunchy unsexy work
becomes much less un-thanked. Microsoft at its best did it: Raymond Chen was
much celebrated for his heroic efforts at preserving backwards compatibility
in Windows. In fact, when the Raymond Chen camp lost its political battle,
Microsoft got Windows Vista, which arguably cost it billions. I think the
stakes are very high in exactly this sort of political battle, and it is worth
while for top engineers to spend their time fighting for precisely this sort
of culture shift.

------
gaius
_biggest mistake is still having a "tech ladder"_

What does that mean - there there shouldn't be an engineering career track,
the only promotions are into management? (To avoid conflict of team leads
being evaluated as individual contributors)

~~~
piaw
See the contextual blog post above and below this comment.

