Google Memo on Cost Cuts Sparks Heated Debate Inside Company

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-26/google-memo-on-cost-cuts-sparks-heated-debate-inside-company

by petethomas • 7 years ago

271 326 7 years ago

The brainstorming deck also proposed reducing wage bumps when workers get promoted. It also suggested changing Google’s approach to "spot bonuses," sums that managers can award at any time of year. Managers receive emails reminding them to dispense this money. The slide deck proposed ending the emails, arguing that few people would notice. The proposal also included converting holiday gifts to staff into charitable donations -- something Google did at the end of 2016.

As someone that works at a notoriously “resource efficient” company the fact that people would be mad about this is absolutely hysterical.

dlubarov• 7 years ago

As a former Googler, the way the company ended holiday gifts was irritating just because of the pretense. Leadership spun it as "we're redirecting the funds into Chromebook donations". As if money wasn't fungible, and the decision to donate Chromebooks was somehow intertwined with the decision to end the holiday gift.

ocdtrekkie• 7 years ago

The idea that they call distributing hardware that locks people to their ecosystems is a "donation" is also comical. Giving a school a bunch of Chromebooks is a way to expand your services business, not an act of generosity. It's like giving away a free printer: The money is in the ink.

cmrdporcupine10• 7 years ago

Yep most of us would have just been fine with them just saying "you're all paid well enough, the company is too big, we're stopping the holiday gift". Instead it was a long slow process of "pick your charity from the list" w/ a song and dance around it.

ehsankia4• 7 years ago

I thought they made it pretty clear that the logistics for distributing actual gifts at Google's growing scale was just not worth it anymore. It probably cost more in time and resources than the gift themselves were worth, let alone the extra tax offset they had to pay on it. I'm not sure why you were lead to believe the Chromebook solution was a "spin". I do agree that giving you a choice of charity though is much better, but I assume they couldn't have pulled it off on short notice.

ehsankia4• 7 years ago

Not only that, this was just a deck of ideas, not even actual policies. Apparently, you're not even allowed to have any controversial ideas in a brain storming session...

owaty• 7 years ago

The document also discussed how the proposals could be best presented to employees to minimize frustration, according to one of the people. That caused the most anger among some staff after the document was circulated, said this person.

Not leaking this slide deck was rather important to minimize frustration.

aboutruby• 7 years ago

"In case of employees having knowledge of those slides, ..."

saagarjha3• 7 years ago

The document also discussed how the proposals could be best presented to employees to minimize frustration, according to one of the people.
The document said this could be rolled out without upsetting staff because workers didn’t know what the existing rate was, so wouldn’t notice if it declined.

I really don't know what they expected. You're cutting the salaries of your employees; the best case, yet highly unlikely scenario is that nobody notices. More likely, your attrition rate will increase as Google becomes slightly less attractive for employees to stay at, or the worst case but highly likely scenario is that you have these slides get out and now everyone is unhappy because they're being paid less and having information willfully hidden from them.

BossingAround4• 7 years ago

You're cutting the salaries of your employees

They were allegedly cutting their bonuses, not salaries. That's a pretty significant difference if you ask me.

saagarjha3• 7 years ago

I'm using the term loosely to describe total compensation.

philjohn• 7 years ago

And giving less of a bump on promotion.

So someone promoted 2 years ago? They may be on a not insignificant amount more than you for no other reason than timing.

xvf22• 7 years ago

As someone caught up in this I welcome the Tesla approach...

Gibbon1• 7 years ago

GF worked at a game company. When she started they'd give bonuses based on the profits. Later they changed bonuses based on how well the company beat Wall Streets expectations.

Really demoralizing when the company posts a fat profit, the top managers take home a large bonus, you you get nothing because the quarterly profit was a little under expectations.

fyfy18• 7 years ago

I'd be surprised if there haven't been economic studies on this type of action. So either the executives don't care, as they know people are replaceable and it won't hurt the company either way, or they don't care as they know they will be moving on soon enough, and they just want to milk their positiion for what they can.

mikeash2• 7 years ago

Would they get a bonus if the company lost a ton of money, but less than the analysts expected?

11235813212• 7 years ago

How was her average total compensation affected by the change?

gaius8• 7 years ago

Seen this a few time in my career, "sorry guys, I know we had another record quarter/year, but we didn't make our stretch goals so there won't be any bonus". Then you read the filing which all public companies must do and it details 7- and 8-figure payouts to the big bosses.

Also, on a side note, I wonder if companies are trying to impress when they say that you bonus could be "up to" 10% or 20% of your salary. They way I read it is that no matter how well you do and how well the company does, your upside is capped!

username223• 7 years ago

I was immediately reminded of a scene from "Office Space": "Peter: You’re gonna lay off Samir and Michael?... Do they know this yet?

Bob: No! No, of course not! We find it’s always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there’s less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week."

It's all so hilariously penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Macha• 7 years ago

The document also discussed how the proposals could be best presented to employees to minimize frustration, according to one of the people.

These approaches always annoy me as it feels the company's leadership is unable to talk straight to their employees. E.g. my employer had some layoffs recently. The language used internally was that some people were "impacted" by "proposed changes". This language was used by so many execs in different business areas that it was clear that there was some top down direction that this was how they should be referred to. Is it that hard to just say "We missed our revenue targets, so we had to lay off some people"?

ikeboy• 7 years ago

No, they were discussing cutting the number of promotions. If say, the top 10% of people got promotions and now only the top 8% did, no one person can easily notice that they would've gotten promoted but now didn't.

flunhat2• 7 years ago

I've heard that getting promoted at Google is kind of a shitshow -- that your manager can't vouch for you and it's basically up to how well you summarize and present your work to a faceless promotion committee (i.e. how well you play politics). I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, per se. In light of this memo, however, I wonder if the layered bureaucracy of the promotion process is an intentional way of not promoting promotion-worthy employees and keeping costs down.

dmitrygr2• 7 years ago

"kind of a shitshow" would be an improvement over what it really is. If you intend to work at google, negotiate your title up front, while you still can.

ptd3• 7 years ago

Can entry level applicants do this?

BossingAround4• 7 years ago

To be honest, promotion is a difficult process in general. I'd like to hear of a company where promotion isn't a 'shit show'. Generally, either companies like to err on the side of 'this is gonna be very difficult, buckle up!' or they promote too many people, which has a number of side effects. That leads to even worse results if you ask me.

hrktb2• 7 years ago

Promotions in other companies are usually in the year’s budget, so the number of seats is known in advance.

The only question is who gets to level up, and it becomes a dancing chair competition with none of the participants having a direct say (managers will take feedback and do whatever they want with it).

For a small and growing company it’s not rare for higher ups to explicitely fish around for people to promote as they just need to grow the ranks. The bigger it becomes the harder the competition is.

empath752• 7 years ago

I’ve literally gotten 1 promotion in a 15 year career. Every other title and salary change was from switching jobs.

sethammons2• 7 years ago

I like (what I've seen) at my workplace. We've designed a rubric across multiple dimensions (basically leveled epectations at each role, software engineer 1 through 4 plus two levels of principal engineer). Everyone knows what is expected at each level. You have goals tied to personal and team initiatives. Managers are limited in the count for direct reports and work daily with their teams, and the they also often solicit feedback on strengths and opportunities for growth from direct reports for teammates who have more interaction with each other. Managers then all get together and level set on performance and promotions. Managers have to defend a promo and performace with data. It helps protect against rubber stamping and from being overly hard. Sure there is a budget that is taken into account, and that is life. We announce all internal promotions, and when you know the person, you always can agree it was deserved. I've been promoted multiple times and have increased my salary a lot each time.

opportune• 7 years ago

Sure but all big, desirable tech companies have almost identical promotion processes: every 1.5-8 years (with higher levels generally taking longer) you get a title/full level bump. And the biggest, hardest bumps are always the bumps from IC to manager. Yeah it’s a shitshow but there’s much less diversity in process than you seem to think

alkibiades• 7 years ago

that’s only for people senior and above. (small amount of people). 99 pct of people reading this would never get to that level. although you are correct that it used to be the case for a lot more people.

forgotmyhnacc• 7 years ago

99 pct of people reading this would never get to that level.

Wow, that's fairly presumptuous of you. Most software engineers make senior (L5) after they've worked in the industry for a few years.

Source: worked at Google and Facebook before.

jlebar• 7 years ago

your manager can't vouch for you and it's basically up to how well you summarize and present your work to a faceless promotion committee (_i.e. how well you play politics_). (emphasis mine)

Googler here, speaking for myself.

Isn't what you describe literally the opposite of playing politics?

pfortuny• 7 years ago

Nope: playing politics mean talking corporatesse and a promotion commitee only understands that. Like when asking for scientific funds.

flunhat2• 7 years ago

Well, kind of. But it's still very bureaucratic.

To be cynical, though, being successful with that kind of process requires knowing how to describe your accomplishments, what metrics to emphasize, and what projects are simply not worth spending time on because they won't scream "promote me!" during your review (even though they might be necessary & important).

m0zg8• 7 years ago

You know, I'd even believe you if I did not observe with my own eyes, at Google, how people get promoted despite not really doing much themselves other than gaming the visibility, and people who are literally one of a kind and who delivered world class, pivotal work get denied promotion repeatedly.

It's still a human-based system. It's still vulnerable to nearly the same political bullshit you see elsewhere: cliques, favoritism, backstabbing, etc. Heck even your boss still affects your promo (there's a "private" section in the feedback you don't see). If you don't see this, then you're probably not getting promoted either.

arendtio• 7 years ago

Well, I would call everything you have to do besides the work itself to 'play politics'. Since very few tasks in a company require to present your work afterward, it is hard for managers to find out who did best without extra presentations.

In the end, I think it is the manager's job to motivate their people to present their work, but ultimately it is in the employee's interest.

My advice is to get used to having to present your work. Otherwise, you might end up doing a fantastic job and being disappointed when nobody notices that it was you who did it (probably resulting in promotions for people who didn't do as good as you did).

coldtea4• 7 years ago

Is it? It might not be playing inter-personal politics, but it's like doing a campaign speech.

Instead of a long term assessment of your work (and the real interactions within your team etc), it's how you represent it in a pitch that is measured... The most charismatic presenter (e.g. bullshit artist) wins.

drewg1238• 7 years ago

I'm an Xoogler and was promoted when I was there. (see sibling comment for details).

The way to get promoted at Google seems to be to play a game where you tick all the boxes for performance at the next level and have the right people write for you. In some ways, that helps the company (working across teams, for example). In other ways, it may hurt the company (launching potentially redundant products is seen by committees as being more valuable than incrementally improving existing products). I think that a lot depends on who writes recommendations for you in your promo packet (and that's pure politics)

In my case, I was basically gathering requirements and helping other teams integrate with an internal product. So I was perfectly positioned for promo. I was an L5, and talking to a lot of senior folks in other teams (sr. staff, director, vp) who were willing to write for me. I'm pretty sure having a VP who knew me and could write about me really made the difference.

akvadrako• 7 years ago

That sounds a lot like their interviewing style — treating people like cogs by reading from a script. Instead of immediate feedback and interaction the results are sent to a committee for analysis.

It is almost by definition more objective but there isn't evidence it achieves better results. It doesn't seem worth the cost; most people appreciate being treated like people.

cmrdporcupine10• 7 years ago

It makes sense for a company of Google's size, where there's an endless pool of candidates.

What I don't understand is why so many small companies are eager to copy Google's interview process. It's not for them.

ignoramous• 7 years ago

I can't speak if it was indeed true, but this was/is what engs at Amazon thought about the promotion process in place there, too.

Frugality is a core leadership principle at Amazon, after all, however misunderstood it may be.

talltimtom• 7 years ago

That sounds nothing like politics. Politics would be if you promotions depended on how Well your manager likes you.

3xblah2• 7 years ago

Who would know the employee's work better, her manager or the promotion committee? This reminds me of an interview process that does not include checking references.

A system like you describe would seem to favour the employee who is adept at promoting her work. It also might disadvantage employees who are better performers than promoters. It would fail to detect employees who are poor or average performers but adept at covering that up.

Does the promotion committee consult with the manager?

A system like this suggests the company is concerned about favouritism and may not trust managers. It also suggests they may be willing to blindly trust self-promoting employees without knowing much about them.

How does the system account for high-performing employees that are too busy working to prepare presentations for promotion committees? Is there no such thing as an unsolicited promotion based on performance under this system?

Surely managers are reporting on the employees they manage. Assuming that includes any information on performance, then a system like this could allow the company to ignore the issue of rewarding high-performers with promotions, unless and until those employees came forward and presented to a promotion committee.

However a system like this does seem potentially beneficial for employees who feel they are undervalued by their manager.

TravelAndFood• 7 years ago

"How does the system account for high-performing employees that are too busy working to prepare presentations for promotion committees? Is there no such thing as an unsolicited promotion based on performance under this system?"

I think maybe "high-performing employee", in this system, is simply defined at least in part as "one who prepares excellent presentations for promotion committees."

darkerside2• 7 years ago

In a few ways, the hurdles you outline are a helpful filter management skills. Presenting and promoting your team's work will become just as important as doing the work. Providing context for failures, which could be seen as covering up, is critical. If you are too busy working to prepare an important presentation, you are not ready to be a manager.

Even if the promotion keeps you at an IC, your responsibilities are still increasing, so I think most of those points stand.

chrisweekly• 7 years ago

My brother is an Xoogler, who told me a few years ago there was a de facto 3-year "up or out" policy. That is, if you go 3 years and haven't been promoted, you should probably expect to need to find work at another company.

drewg1238• 7 years ago

Xoogler here: I was promoted L5 -> L6 (senior -> staff SWE) in 2015, so I can talk a bit about this.

Your manager can actually be helpful, but the process is byzantine. In my case, my promo committee approved my promo. However, at L6 there was an automatic review of all promos to that level by a 2nd committee. The review committee denied my promo. My manager came in at this point and lodged an appeal on my behalf to the review committee's decision. That appeal took the promo to a 3rd committee that ultimately approved it.

I did not know any of the details of what was happening. I only learned what happened in my 1:1 with my manager when he told me the whole story. He was so happy and proud of himself that he managed to help me get promoted. The sad thing is that this was the 1:1 where I told him that I was leaving for Netflix (much better offer due to non-monetary factors).

The truly kafka-esque part of this: Since promo at Google is a huge deal, and since you if you are hired back, you retain the level at which you departed at, I really wanted to leave as a L6. So I delayed my start at Netflix until my promo went through. I resigned effective a day after the effective promo date. However, in the HR system, the resignation cancelled the promo. So I had to jump through some hoops to get the promo re-instated. I know it went through, because I had friends check go/epitaphs and I eventually got my promo jacket..

wdr1• 7 years ago

The process has changed in significant ways since you left.

ummonk13• 7 years ago

Ouch. You did nothing wrong, but that must have sucked for your manager.

sitkack• 7 years ago

However, in the HR system, the resignation cancelled the promo.

Can I ask you about occurrences of fence post errors?

There was a very important eng who was basically a sole contributor on a difficult component in a system. He announced his retirement date well in advance, but after the bonus payout period. HR terminated him early, denying him the bonus and leaving the team to scramble and organize a mini-summit to do knowledge transfer. The team itself had no control over the date. I believe it was a similar company.

curiousDog2• 7 years ago

Are you still at Netflix?

akdjflskd• 7 years ago

Congrats! I have a couple questions if you don't mind: - Did Google give you a counter offer? - In what ways is Netflix better for you?

paulie_a• 7 years ago

Damn that sounds insanely bureaucratic. I can't even imagine anyone would ever want to work there, it sounds like a shit show of stupidity.

Even skipping the complicated and pointless interview process, if I were offered a million a year I'd say no.

e40• 7 years ago

The highest paid people I've ever known, as developers, work at Google. And that top salary was $650,000/yr. I have no idea what the benefits were, but I'm guessing substantial. And, from an HR friend of a friend, I found out that managers in a group make at least as much as the highest paid report.

It may be my sample size is very senior or very desired, I don't know.

uuwp5• 7 years ago

650 is L6 which is maybe 5% of the Google's population. The median pay would be around 300.

coleifer• 7 years ago

Perhaps some people are content with their role. I know many engineers, who, by virtue of being productive, got themselves promoted into managing roles where they hardly ever write code.

Perhaps this system works because it allows "climbers" to proceed up the ranks, ensuring they don't become resentful, while ensuring productive engineers get to stay productive?

ummonk13• 7 years ago

Google has an IC ladder. You don’t need to go into management when you get promoted.

cmrdporcupine10• 7 years ago

The problem is that up until recently there was an expectation that you climb or you don't belong. If you stayed at L4 for too many years they'd start to take a close look at you and consider you for... ejection.

They say that's not the case anymore. Entering year 7 without promo, so I'll let you know how it goes.

cmrdporcupine10• 7 years ago

Been @ Google 7 years, and never gone for promo precisely because the process is obnoxious. I'm fine with my level and salary anyways. But the process is ... Very showboat. I just want to do a good job and be a person who contributes incrementally and care-takes a code base. Promo encourages another kind of personality entirely.

To me, Google in many ways reflects the very academic background of its founders and senior employees. Larry & Sergey never worked in industry before Google -- they founded Google out of their project @ Stanford. The office is a campus, with cafeterias and layout like a university. Promotion and other things are done via committees like a graduate thesis committee. Design and planning is often about large documents and presentations like term papers or group assignments. When I worked in another product area there were poster sessions to present your work similar to what my wife had to do for some of her uni coursework. The interview process is like a test for your final year algorithms and data structures courses.

Its an environment that is immediately familiar to academics, researchers, and recent grads. At least that how it seems, to me, as someone self-taught who worked in smaller companies and startups for years before coming to Google.

BurningFrog• 7 years ago

I won't write a long whiny post, but when I left in 2009 it was really bad, at least where I was.

Since the committee that promotes you don't know anything about your daily work, you're free to lie about your accomplishments, and the promotion essays I saw and were asked to endorse took credit for vastly more than the person had done.

i_am_nomad2• 7 years ago

Am I crazy for thinking that type of presentation sounds like fun? I love that kind of thing. Not saying it’s the best way to determine who gets promoted, but I’d look forward to making a pitch like that.

tway23914265• 7 years ago

This changed for almost all promotions around when this slide deck was allegedly made. Now, below L5, it is more or less conventional, because your director effectively makes the decision. So your manager now has a LOT of influence, for all the promotions people care about (the mandatory ones). They had explicit promo budgets per org at least once. So if anything the more recent changes were made to facilitate something like this.

What was really interesting to me about this was that although it did seem like a good way to avoid politics, what the original promo process actually did was incentivize fire-and-forget projects that would be more promotable if they touched as many other moving pieces as possible. This to me explains a lot of Google.

BossingAround4• 7 years ago

It seems to me like Google is slowly becoming another one of these huge corporations that one works for simply to simply pay the bills. I mean, sure, it may not be such at this particular moment, but that's what it seems they are heading towards. Though they still have an amazing reputation, I don't buy it anymore.

curiousDog2• 7 years ago

They have close to a 100k employees. It’s hard to maintain “Googlyness” at even 1/10th of that size.

Aeolun5• 7 years ago

It’s not hard. It would just be utter chaos for any executive to oversee or steer in a certain direction.

Well, I guess that means it’s hard if you look at it from the perspective of running a listed company.

eikenberry• 7 years ago

Seems like they've been there for quite a while now.

rleigh• 7 years ago

It already looked this way to me when I interviewed with them 8 years ago. But it takes time for public perception to catch up with the reality. When they scaled up and hired tens of thousands, they became yet another faceless corporate entity. Perhaps not intentionally; I feel this is simply a factor of growing and having to establish the same corporate bureaucracy as all the rest.

vidarh2• 7 years ago

This reminded me of Kim Stanley Robinsons "Three Californias" trilogy. One of them is set in a future where to counter many of the effects of large corporations, companies are strictly restricted in terms of number of employees and other things. No company in the novel can have more than 100 employees. For projects that require more, companies have to establish consortia, but each company remained independent.

I have no opinion on whether that'd be viable or beneficial, but it's a fascinating idea to think about the consequences of, both externally in terms of effects on wider society, and what it'd mean for corporate cultures.

usrusr• 7 years ago

Wait until they realize that they don't even need those tens of thousands to keep the highly automated ad machine running. I don't think that Google has changed for the last time.

drawkbox• 7 years ago

Google 2018 == Microsoft 2005

The product people, innovators and engineers are no longer in charge. It appears Google may be entering their Ballmer era where it was marketing/metrics first over value creation. I hope some internal faction of product/developers can take it back.

jiveturkey• 7 years ago

Google 2015

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178227

vkou3• 7 years ago

This is precisely why tech employees need to negotiate collectively. When your employer is posting record profits, but is lowering compensation, you have a much stronger negotiating position when you work as a team.

AnthonyMouse3• 7 years ago

Only you don't.

If you go to a competitor and negotiate a 25% higher salary and bring it back to your current employer, either they give you a 25% raise or you leave. Either way you get 25% more money.

If you go to a union and ask for a raise, they go to the employer, the employer can't afford to give everyone a 25% raise, so they give everyone a 2.5% raise. Then you have to quit and go work for the competitor. Only now they won't pay you 25% more because now they know your current salary based on where you work, your position and the terms of the union contract, so they know they only have to pay you 5% more. So either way you're making less.

Meanwhile the competitor is still offering more, so your current employer starts bleeding talent, which reduces revenue generation and thereby the amount of money they have to pay employees in the future.

It's not as if many people still aspire to work for GM.

jakobegger4• 7 years ago

Is that how unions work in the US?

Here in Austria we have "collective contracts" which are negotiated by unions. The "collective contract" specifies a minimum salary (depending on job title/experience), but employees are free to negotiate higher salaries. Senior developers usually earn way more than the minimum.

The union also negotiates a minimum raise every year (I think it is 2.6% for IT workers in 2019). Employers are free to offer additional raises, and typically they do.

danaris4• 7 years ago

But chances are, no matter who you are, at any given time, you can't negotiate a 25% higher salary from a competitor. If you could have done that, why did you take this job in the first place?

On the other hand, at any given time, the union is always going to be fighting for you to get reasonable raises based on your position, and will be available to help you show that you deserve a significant raise if your current compensation does not match the going rates for what you're actually doing.

This is ignoring all the other things unions do, that don't directly relate to compensation, like ensuring that employees aren't taken advantage of by the company in a variety of creative and quasi-legal ways.

Frankly, if software developers of various types unionized, I would be shocked if that union bore much resemblance to the propagandistically stereotyped picture of unions we've had painted for us over the past several decades. I think it's much more likely that, given the prevalence of attitudes such as yours, it would be primarily concerned with the aforementioned protections, as well as setting wage floors for given levels of expected performance, while leaving the ceiling free for people who, like you, think they can negotiate something better.

It's not like there's some "union rulebook" that all unions must follow as soon as they come into existence, that says, "First, make sure absolutely everyone makes the same amount of money. Next, make really crappy employees unfireable."

Unions are made up of people in the industry they represent—that's the whole damn point—and their goals are set by those people. So in all likelihood, if there were a programmers' union, and you were in it, and you're really as good as you seem to think, you'd have negotiated your way to a position where you have at least some say over union policy. Then, even if there were, for some reason, union rules specifying that compensation for position title X could be no more than Y, you could work to change that.

TheCoelacanth• 7 years ago

TIL that professional athletes and Hollywood actors aren't allowed to negotiate their salaries /s. Both have very high levels of union participate, yet have extreme levels of salary negotiation.

Unions don't have to involve fixed pay scales to boost salaries for the participants, e.g. SAG-AFTRA mandates a portion of revenue go to actors in addition to salaries, NFLPA requires that a certain portion of revenue be paid in player salaries, neither prevents individuals from negotiating a higher salary for themselves.

gaius8• 7 years ago

Techies: we’re all different skill levels we cannot possibly bargain collectively

Hollywood unions: lol srsly, we have millionaires in our unions

miguelmota• 7 years ago

I've worked in a large corporation before and getting promoted is not easy because you're just a tiny cog in a large machine so it's hard for people in position of giving out promotions to see that you're worth being given a promotion because you're seen as any other grunt in the company. You pretty much need to suck up to the managers and the managers need to suck up to their managers, etc till it reaches someone with promotion powers.

Working at a startup however is much easier because you work very closely with execs and people in positions that have power to give you promotions so the value you bring is easily visible and recognized.

sethammons2• 7 years ago

The advice I've heard: if you want to grow professionally, work at a place that's growing.

partingshots• 7 years ago

To me, it feels like people not getting the promotions they think they deserve is an extremely mundane problem. That’s fine though, since I can see how such a thing might be of legitimate concern for many of us and is worth discussing overall.

What mainly bothers me mostly, is how click-baity this article is. Such a heavy emphasis on drama and controversy, with every attempt to garner as much divisiveness as possible. It’s annoying, and I notice Bloomberg is notorious for almost always putting out these types of highly charged articles.

Do authors get bonuses for releasing fiery volatile articles at Bloomberg or something?

googlerx• 7 years ago

To me, it feels like people not getting the promotions they think they deserve is an extremely mundane problem.

Google management to this day claims that eligibility for promotion is based solely on whether or not an employee is consistently performing at the next level on a well defined job ladder. If they are, they're promoted.

The problem is not the lack of promotions. The problem is that introducing promotion quotas or limits directly conflicts with the merit-ONLY-based promotion system that management claims exists.

Aeolun5• 7 years ago

More clicks gathered is more money gained.

gaius8• 7 years ago

Do authors get bonuses for releasing fiery volatile articles at Bloomberg or something?

Actually, yes: https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...

It isn't necessarily nefarious, it's a metric for gauging how important a story is and to direct their staff towards reporting on important stuff. But nevertheless, it does happen.

GhostVII2• 7 years ago

One worker asked why Pichai was paid hundreds of millions of dollars, while some Google employees struggle to afford to live in Silicon Valley

I mean I understand getting upset at the income gap between CEO's and regular people, but it seems kind of strange to be complaining about your salary as a Google employee, where you are almost certainly making well over $100k, and walk past rows of camper trailers and homeless people on the way to work. Saying that you are struggling to afford to live in Silicon Valley seems like a bit of a stretch if you are an engineer at Google. I can sympathize with non-tech workers at Google who are probably making less though.

hrktb2• 7 years ago

I feel a lot of Google employee’s request would be to not struggle to live.

Whatever the place and salary, if it’s enough that they don’t have to think about it, they would be fine.

pgeorgi• 7 years ago

your salary as a Google employee, where you are almost certainly making well over $100k ... I can sympathize with non-tech workers at Google who are probably making less though.

Quite a few of these "non-tech workers" are employees, too.

gaius8• 7 years ago

Quite a few of these "non-tech workers" are employees, too

Google (et al) go to considerable, some might say elaborate, lengths to keep their service staff - cleaners, catering, security, etc - off the payroll and partitioned off. It makes no sense really, treating these people with respect would cost barely a rounding error in Google's bottom line. But even so they have a pathological urge to do it, to stratify a caste system almost.

lrem2• 7 years ago

Chances are the question was asked by a childcare provider or a cook (some of them are still proper FTEs)...

Edit: for clarity, even if you're a Google FTE, Google will only pay you "nearly top of the market for your job description", which for professions mentioned won't be all that much.

tway23914265• 7 years ago

None of those roles are allowed at TGIF. Nor are the cooks FTEs, though I will give you that one of the most inane "digital well being" proponents was a nursery teacher.

CydeWeys2• 7 years ago

You haven't looked at housing prices in Mountain View recently. If your goal in life is simply to own your own home (which seems reasonable to me), then even lower-level engineers are struggling.

nostrademons2• 7 years ago

That wouldn't really be affected by how much Google pays its engineers, though. There's a fixed supply of single-family housing in Mountain View, and >>> available supply seeks to live there. Under those conditions, housing prices adjust upwards until they reach the amount that the Nth bidder (where N = houses for sale <<< Google employees in Mountain View) is willing to pay. Increase salaries and you just increase the amount that everyone is willing to pay, and then you still get outbid by your coworkers.

Assuming that owning a single-family home is non-negotiable, the only ways out of this are a.) get all your coworkers fired or b.) move out of the Bay Area. Mountain View (and the rest of the Bay Area) is basically fully built-out: there simply is no more land for 1/4 acre lots.

(If you're willing to compromise on "single family home", there's another alternative: build up. This is the most realistic solution, but requires that people give up on the idea of a detached house with a yard and settle for condos instead.)

GhostVII2• 7 years ago

There is a big difference between struggling to live, and struggling to afford a detached house in Mountain View. I don't think it is reasonable for every Google employee to be able to afford a house there - there just isn't enough supply, and that isn't Google's fault.

scarface743• 7 years ago

If only there were somewhere else in the entire United States where software engineers could enjoy a great standard of living and easily be able to afford a nice large house in the burbs....

artpop• 7 years ago

The tech boom is over. Now we should incentivise the restoration of the environment to keep both the economy afloat and us breathing.

warp_factor3• 7 years ago

I would love to see more details on the actual compensation at Google.

My anecdotal feeling after discussing with multiple googlers is that the top performers are overly well paid, but most engineers are paid under what they could get at another company.

They use their marketing hype/PR and their brand name to be able to achieve this, with an unlimited supply of fanboys that want to get in even possibly while being paid under market rate.

koalaman• 7 years ago

This is not true. Google pays better than pretty much everybody except for fintech and Facebook.

warp_factor3• 7 years ago

On average, maybe due to their top earners. But not sure that the median salary is any higher than other companies in the bay.

vonmoltke3• 7 years ago

Are you accounting for levels here? It may well be that Google pays better than almost anyone for a given level, but a given engineer at Google may be able to level up by leaving.

ummonk13• 7 years ago

In tech, Facebook and LinkedIn are clearly higher payers, especially when you account for Google’s tendency to down level. AirBnB, Uber, and Lyft also provide much higher base pay than Google so assuming they have half decent IPOs their total comp will be higher, particularly after accounting for downleveling.

Google is clearly in this too tier of companies that compensate well, but it seems to rely on its brand name to be a little stingy. Anecdotally though, a lot of Google engineers seem to work a lot less than people at these other companies, except maybe LinkedIn.

And of course it is significantly better paying then Amazon and Apple.

victorhooi• 7 years ago

I used to work in fintech, and yes, the pay was substantially better there (I'm at Google now - I took a pay cut to go across).

Likewise, I had an offer from Amazon around the same time as Google's offer - which was actually quite a bit higher. So from my own experience, and from friends, Amazon does indeed pay substantially more than Google.

I've heard other tech is sightly higher - however, I didn't go to Google for the pay (although I wouldn't say no to competitive pay, haha), but there were other drivers for me (work/life balance etc.).

tomrod2• 7 years ago

Levels.fyi I understand to be a decent information resource.

brown9-25• 7 years ago

I had an ex-colleague whose offer to join Google was 2x the total compensation at our company.

cmrdporcupine10• 7 years ago

Base salary is competitive, but it's the stock grants that add up. After a few years the golden handcuffs are extremely tight.

warp_factor3• 7 years ago

This is a fallacy, and it only holds up because Google stocks went up over the past years. You need to account for the value of the stocks at the time of signing your offer. (As the increase of stock is not foreseen and as nothing to do with your offer).

TACIXAT• 7 years ago

This site is accurate for my level - https://levels.fyi

austincheney• 7 years ago

Weird that people are complaining about this now, but not a few years ago when $16m salaries (not bonuses) were a common thing at Waymo.

https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&client=firefox-b-1...

vonmoltke3• 7 years ago

$16m salaries (not bonuses)

The second link in that search explicitly says they were bonuses, and the first strongly implies it.

shereadsthenews2• 7 years ago

Remember that Google pays Porat over $40 million per year to do what is probably one of the easier jobs at the company. If I was going to cut costs I know where I’d start.

cobookman2• 7 years ago

Her job is not just to cut costs. And its not a simple job by any stretch.

shereadsthenews2• 7 years ago

Neither is writing optimizer passes for llvm, but the people doing that are making less than a million a year while having a huge impact on the company’s bottom line. For some management clown to come along and suggest that those people should not get promoted so that Porat et al can continue taking helicopters to work is disgusting.

tomrod2• 7 years ago

I know how much it hurts to have these kind of documents become known. It's an unfortunate reality in corporate structure that the incentives of employers are not aligned with the best interest of employees. That doesn't mean every employer is out to get employees--only that discussions of this type are a harsh reality among folks who are judged by how much they cut costs.

drugme3• 7 years ago

Perhaps the most significant change in the proposal called for trimming the rate of promotions. Each year, a certain number of employees are up for promotions based on performance and other metrics. The slide deck suggested reducing this by 2 percentage points. The document said this could be rolled out without upsetting staff because workers didn’t know what the existing rate was, so wouldn’t notice if it declined.

That last sentence is quite telling about Google's attitude toward its employees.

joezydeco2• 7 years ago

Is this public knowledge where you work? Because in my entire career I've never seen management talk about these kinds of metrics to employees.

drugme3• 7 years ago

Companies on the smaller side tend not to have "metrics" like these, actually.

But I would agree with you that there's probably nothing special about Google in this context.

alexashka• 7 years ago

This is the attitude of every employer, please do not be fooled into believing otherwise.

Promotions don't increase performance, they simply cost money, in exchange for improved retention, maybe.

DannyBee• 7 years ago

It also said that Google doesn't have enough higher level work for people if it promoted them (because the promo rate is so much higher than industry average, and Google has shifted right in levels) but just about everyone ignored that.

You can't create larger scope/etc roles out of thin air (you actually have to need the work done), and levels always seem to right shift over time.

cmrdporcupine10• 7 years ago

Then maybe Google needs to stop advertising that it needs and has the most intelligent engineers in the industry. If they don't have enough work to feed them, they don't need to have them.

011000112• 7 years ago

This is my biggest issue with their hiring process. They clearly need grunts like me to do shit work and fix bugs in products like Android, but they won't hire me because I don't reflexively vomit whiteboard code and lack knowledge of website design. They are so intelligent in so many ways yet they fail to have enough self-introspection to adapt to their current situation.

cm2187• 7 years ago

It also said that Google doesn't have enough higher level work for people if it promoted them

That's job title inflation! Banking is the poster boy for that. Any junior has the title of "Vice President", and a typical large bank has a few thousands "Directors". Zimbabwe-style job title inflation!

mehrdada2• 7 years ago

Haha. It’s the first time I hear Google finally admitting to this under duress. Normally, in the recruiting propaganda there’s always room for “Doing Things That Matter”, and the lobbying for immigration expansion message always echos the need for additional “best and brightest” folks, who when hired get assigned to do the most basic gruntwork (affectionately known as “moving protos”).

enjo• 7 years ago

No. It’s indicative of what one group of HR staff thinks about Google employees. It’s a brainstorming deck, not company policy.

I should note that I do not now nor have I ever worked for Google.

tway23914265• 7 years ago

I started at Google right around when this deck was made. I never got a holiday gift. I got three "badges" for this (one for not getting a 2016 gift, one for, at the time presumably, never receiving one, and one for being in the first year of employees to have such a distinction). In a very characteristic example of Googliness all three were silently rm'd from the central server in between when I got my morning badge summary email and when I got to my desk. To be explicit, that means it became company policy sometime in that hour for those badges not to exist.

They re-architected the promo process for 95% of promos (according to another comment itt, but for sure closer to 80% than 20%), making it more conventional. Allegedly to prevent orgs from promoting wildly (for... Some reason I guess), "promo budgets" were floated. This rightfully pissed people off because Google only promotes you after you demonstrate consistency at the next level, meaning you would be working at LN getting paid as an LN-1 for at least another cycle if not longer. It also really upset the orgs that are structured by function rather than area. Allegedly these budgets never existed, but personally, after my management chain bluntly and directly lied about the Maven contract, I never believed anything they said. I'm sure they're all excellent people, but capitalism gives us all incentive to do things we otherwise wouldn't. Lying about Maven, and restructuring promo to make it your managers decision, were certainly company policies. Budgets might not have been, but then, even if there's no evidence now, it took us decades to find out the truth about Tonkin Bay.

So, for a brainstorming deck, a lot of stuff from it actually happened. Given that, you have to start questioning how accurate other parts are.

I left Google recently, though I knew what a "company" was going in and didn't expect anything different. I was very sad to leave my immediate team, but not at all sad to leave Google, mostly because of how glaring the difference is between what they say they value and what they actually value. I wouldn't even begrudge them the honesty; every other "conventional" company somehow manages to keep employees.

beaner• 7 years ago

It doesn't suggest anything unless it was adopted.

ajross2• 7 years ago

Oh come on, that's the way employers everywhere treat their employees. There's nothing specific to Google here at all, really. Every company that reaches the end of a growth curve needs to start finding revenue growth in the higher hanging fruit. That means fewer perks and lower compenstation. It happens everywhere.

joelthelion• 7 years ago

It happens everywhere.

Doesn't mean it's a great idea. While Google is a great cash cow, I'm not sure we will continue to see great innovation.

erikpukinskis2• 7 years ago

Consider that it might be an abuse of power for companies to use information asymmetry to create an unfair pricing mechanism.

I think companies should pay employees what they are worth, after taking a fair cut. Common opinion is that should pay what they can get away with, using any and all cultural forces, information asymmetries, etc available to them.

One of the ways companies pay women less is by taking advantage of the fact that women are less likely to think they are worth as much as they are. It's easy for companies to take advantage of this things, so they do. I still think it's wrong.

I won't think less of you for disagreeing, because as you say it's quite normal. I would say it's a common wrongdoing. Many/most employers aren't aware of the harm they are causing. And common (therefore often subconscious) wrongdoing is a lesser evil than conscious wrongdoing. But it's still wrongdoing.

CoolGuySteve• 7 years ago

You're right, it happens everywhere and it's been happening for years now.

The problem is that while this was happening, Google was issuing large stock buybacks, essentially transferring their balance sheet away from wages for the rank and file to investors and the executive team.

Instead of leading by example or applying their principles, Google treated it with the same HR analysis any other company would do. I can see how Google's employees, especially the earlier "Don't be evil" hires, would be upset by the lack of innovation in this space.

And when every firm behaves the same way, the long slow decay of the middle class (see charts below) starts to boil over into the political space. It's a serious problem.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/C...

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/W...

kerng• 7 years ago

Welcome to the world of HR. If you thought Google would be different I wonder why you thought so?

Unless a company is small, maybe below 20-50, where everyone knows each other transparency is something HR will always lack, because they are there for the company, not the individual. That's why apps like Blind are so popular amongst some employees that like these rumor mills. My advise is to stay out of it and focus on your job, do what you like and dont be jealous about other coworkers when they get promoted but you don't. There are much more important things in life then status and earning anything beyond 100K is already an amazing achievement (luck?) that majority of citizens dont have.

drugme3• 7 years ago

If you thought Google would be different I wonder why you thought so?

Different, no. Actually this is exactly how I would expect Google to behave.

gcb0• 7 years ago

Google is doing a Yahoo.

(trying to) Forcing bad products (g+), adding a top bar everywhere (look! we are a portal!), and cheaping out on labour which leads to missing out the only people capable of innovating.

manigandham2• 7 years ago

You mean the company that is known for some of the best working conditions, benefits, and salaries in the corporate world?

This is the natural progression of an organization worth over half-a-trillion. Growth slows and they have too many people competing for too few high-level slots. Most companies at this stage just keep adding more mid-level titles so you end up as a "senior executive vice president II" on a meaningless ladder focused on politics over product.

ummonk13• 7 years ago

To be fair, it sounds like it was some group brainstorming ways to reduce costs and throwing ideas out there, not something the senior leadership were actively planning. Probably one of those brainstorming sessions where they say “there are no bad ideas, just throw everything out there!”

tmp0923• 7 years ago

This is only semi-related, but I just finished Bad Blood (Theranos book) and started looking up some of the characters on LinkedIn to see what they were up to. The infamous HR person (Balwani's right hand person) just started a new position at no other than Google less than 2 months ago!

i_am_nomad2• 7 years ago

That is indeed troubling. Keep in mind, though, that lots of great people worked at Theranos - I’ve hired one and she’s the standout on an already very talented team. And of course, I would hire Tyler Schultz without a second thought.

tmp0923• 7 years ago

Sure, would have no issue with an IC or someone not cozy with management, but this was a specific senior HR person close to Balwani who was complicit in intimidating/spying on employees and trying to get them to sign shady NDAs, among other atrocities. And Google still hired them.

IMO it speaks to the "skills" that big tech want in their HR people. The fact that they did all these things is exactly what they look for in "good" HR people e.g. protect the company at all cost and no mercy for employees.

bitpush• 7 years ago

Source?

tmp0923• 7 years ago

I don't care to name names, but if you've read the book you should know who I'm talking about and can easily search on LinkedIn for this person.

throwaway15273• 7 years ago

Maybe I need to stop reading Google related articles on HN. I'm joining Google in less than a month, and some of the comments in threads like these get me worried.

I graduated less than a year ago and have been working at a startup in my hometown since then, and didn't bother applying to Google because I thought I'd never make it. Actually it was a thread on HN that convinced me to go for it. I'm moving away from everything and everyone I've ever known because I've always heard that Google is the place to be to really grow as an engineer.

I'm still excited, and I was nervous with or without reading these threads, but can someone chime in and give me some hope?

fermentation• 7 years ago

HN is very pessimistic. You've got a good job and there is a pretty good chance you'll enjoy it.

scarejunba2• 7 years ago

All my friends at Google are happy. You're going to be fine and you'll find that your work will probably be enjoyable.

If you listened to the Internet, my town of San Francisco is a faeces filled shithole where people will mug you at every corner. My other home in London is a bastion of knife crime and Sharia law with a bit of terrorism mixed in. I should live in perpetual fear that my life may be ended at any moment by actively malicious people bent upon religious and culture war.

In truth, life is pretty good in both these places. I love them both.

What you actually should do is stop giving these people any credence. Any fool can write a blog. And recycled news like this article is usually written by bottom feeders.

The world is a lovely place. Don't let the losers keep you down.

mindfulplay• 7 years ago

A vocal tiny majority has gotten hold of the loudest most annoying sound box. It's hard to even close your ears.

madrox• 7 years ago

You’re still going to work for a top notch company, and you’ll learn quite a bit about how to be a good engineer. Scrutiny is the price you pay for having influence.

supercanuck• 7 years ago

You don't need to be worried but you need to realize this is the real world.

This stuff happens at all companies and Google is not immune to those dynamics.

darawk• 7 years ago

Don't worry about it. The internet is awash in people whining about things. I don't work at Google but I know some people who do, and they love it. It only takes a tiny disaffected minority to complain louder than all of the people that are perfectly happy there.

muststopmyths• 7 years ago

I recommend doing a few years at a large software company to pretty much everyone, especially as a first job. It will build a foundation of good software development practices that will hold you in good stead for the rest of your career.

quadcore• 7 years ago

Don't know about google, but last I heard it's close enough from amazon. At amazon, the processes are very modern and smart, compared to most companies. You also work with bright people overall. So yeah, both are big companies and this come with some crap, but you shouldn't worry to much about it. If you're junior, you will learn a hell of a lot and the best of stuff.

philwelch4• 7 years ago

You'll be fine.

The problem is that our culture in general, and some parts of the tech industry in particular, have a habit of pampering and infantilizing adult professionals. And, just as you would expect, these infantilized adults get spoiled and throw temper tantrums from time to time.

If you act like an adult, be a professional, do your job, don't pick stupid political fights you can't win, and hone your skills, you'll be fine. This is true at any company that has at least an adequate level of sanity, even though most of these companies engage in hypocrisy and mock displays of insanity to appease their more childish employees.

uuwp5• 7 years ago

The advice that I would give to myself in my early 20s is (1) nobody cares about your career except you: people come and go, change companies and have their own careers; (2) the only way to move up the ranks is by shifting between companies and getting multiple competing offers; this applies even to outstanding devs; so you are expected to move every 3-4 years if you don't want to get stuck at your entry level pay.

stevenwliao2• 7 years ago

Google helped me grow as an engineer. I learned how to:

- design software that can be incrementally rolled out

- design software interfaces before building

- build secure, internationalized, and accessible web frontends

- write pull requests that are easy to understand

- work across multiple teams and codebases

It's a really good opportunity, congratulations on your offer!

sa46• 7 years ago

Congrats! Google is still fantastic. You'll have a blast and learn a ton.

Sidenote, anyone have an extension to hide all HN headlines with a keyword filter?

Animats• 7 years ago

"Most of the cost cuts that emerged since then have focused on divisions outside the core internet business, such as drones, wearable devices and other "moonshots."

Google/Alphabet is still doing badly at anything consumer-facing that isn't ad-supported. Not for lack of trying. Google Fiber, Google Express, etc. They've had some success at enterprise apps and cloud services, but they're not the major player in that space. The self-driving car thing is not going as well as expected. Ads are still 94% of Google revenue, and they're probably overstaffed for that business.

manigandham2• 7 years ago

The entire ad industry is overstaffed. Could easily remove 50% and have no effect, or actually improve results.

stevenwliao2• 7 years ago

You're now the dictator of the industry. Which 50% needs to go and how do you identify them? How do you prevent your metrics from being gamed?

boulos• 7 years ago

Disclosure: I work at Google.

Hmm. Do you count Fi, Flights, and Hardware in that category? (Particularly Nest, Home and Pixel).

One could argue that some longer term plan for Home is ads/cross-sell, but let's just focus on whatever the hardware sales turns out to be. I don't think those need to be on the scale of Apple's or Samsung's revenue to be considered as not "doing badly".

Similarly, I assume (but have no knowledge!) that Flights is mostly a referral business. That's not "ads" to me in the same classic sense. That is I've never heard anyone refer to Kayak as "ad-supported".

Google Memo on Cost Cuts Sparks Heated Debate Inside Company

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