6 ms·

My armchair thought: what if the CEO said "wow, Yegge is right, we've gotten really off trail here. you need to show leadership in maintaining a 3+ year old sys

My armchair thought: what if the CEO said "wow, Yegge is right, we've gotten really off trail here. you need to show leadership in maintaining a 3+ year old system at Google for promotions?" Could that happen and would it work?

londons_explore 6y ago
Yes, but there might be other downsides... Suddenly every developer turns into 'maintenance man' just refactoring existing code to make it neater without adding much.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- vmateixeira 6y ago
  Increasing performance and cutting down infrastructure costs? Looks like someone deserves a bonus
  - username90 6y ago
    Those are seen as launches at Google and are rewarded.
- skohan 6y ago
  The solution to this is more qualitative performance evaluations. People are really good at gaming quantitative systems, so once it becomes a rule that more releases == more promotions, people will prioritize that over actual value creation. Same for if maintenance work becomes the metric. You need the people evaluating performance to really understand the work, and make informed, discretionary decisions about who to promote to maximize real value creation.
  - bradleyjg 6y ago
    > You need the people evaluating performance to really understand the work, and make informed, discretionary decisions about who to promote to maximize real value creation. I agree but for everyone working at / running a company without a money printing machine it is worth noting that this is really expensive. You need to take someone that’s a good engineer—-one with judgment and a modicum of people skills—-and give them mostly thankless, stressful work.
Traster 6y ago
The promotion system isn't the issue, the promotion system was the issue 10 years ago. For the last 10 years Google has been hiring and promoting and keeping people who prioritize shiny new things more than maintaining old things. If you start rewarding maintaining old things you aren't going to suddenly get what you want, you're just going to lose a tonne of people because they don't want to do what you're telling them and you won't be able to hire good people with your priorities because no one is going to believe they can have a good career at Google by prioritizing stability and long term support. It's all downstream of culture, and culture change is very difficult. Of course if you do buy into this idea that this is the issue, then GCP has already lost. It would be years before they could make a dent in that culture, and more years after that for external customers to know and trust Google's new culture. By that time there's going to be a dominant player anyway. So maybe actually it's best to stick with the current culture - try and win on your strengths than try to fix your defficiencies.
- zimbatm 6y ago
  It might be even deeper than that. I don't know if it's representative, the few Googlers I talked to were there only for the money. Their view of the company was actually quite negative. Keeping backward-compatibility requires people that care. That have enough pride in their work to counter-balance the grind.
  - corin_ 6y ago
    Obviously having people that care about the work they do is a positive thing, but there are plenty of people in plenty of industries managing to do a good job despite only being in it for the money. It might not be a good business decision for Google, but surely if they create enough positions that are solely focussed on the boring stuff but are paid better to make up for it, there is a price point at which they'd get enough interested people.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      The fact that most people are there mostly for the money (which I'm pretty sure is the case) actually works in their favor if they wanted to prioritize maintenance more. Currently people don't do it because they're not rewarded for it, not because they don't care. It's actually far easier to steer people towards certain behaviors if you have lots of money and all you need to do is give more or fewer RSUs or bonus $$s.
lallysingh 6y ago
Direct OKRs for stability. "99.9% of customers unaffected by any change this quarter"

londons_explore 6y ago

Yes, but there might be other downsides... Suddenly every developer turns into 'maintenance man' just refactoring existing code to make it neater without adding much.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vmateixeira 6y ago
Increasing performance and cutting down infrastructure costs? Looks like someone deserves a bonus
- username90 6y ago
  Those are seen as launches at Google and are rewarded.
skohan 6y ago
The solution to this is more qualitative performance evaluations. People are really good at gaming quantitative systems, so once it becomes a rule that more releases == more promotions, people will prioritize that over actual value creation. Same for if maintenance work becomes the metric. You need the people evaluating performance to really understand the work, and make informed, discretionary decisions about who to promote to maximize real value creation.
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  > You need the people evaluating performance to really understand the work, and make informed, discretionary decisions about who to promote to maximize real value creation. I agree but for everyone working at / running a company without a money printing machine it is worth noting that this is really expensive. You need to take someone that’s a good engineer—-one with judgment and a modicum of people skills—-and give them mostly thankless, stressful work.

Traster 6y ago

The promotion system isn't the issue, the promotion system was the issue 10 years ago. For the last 10 years Google has been hiring and promoting and keeping people who prioritize shiny new things more than maintaining old things. If you start rewarding maintaining old things you aren't going to suddenly get what you want, you're just going to lose a tonne of people because they don't want to do what you're telling them and you won't be able to hire good people with your priorities because no one is going to believe they can have a good career at Google by prioritizing stability and long term support. It's all downstream of culture, and culture change is very difficult. Of course if you do buy into this idea that this is the issue, then GCP has already lost. It would be years before they could make a dent in that culture, and more years after that for external customers to know and trust Google's new culture. By that time there's going to be a dominant player anyway. So maybe actually it's best to stick with the current culture - try and win on your strengths than try to fix your defficiencies.

zimbatm 6y ago
It might be even deeper than that. I don't know if it's representative, the few Googlers I talked to were there only for the money. Their view of the company was actually quite negative. Keeping backward-compatibility requires people that care. That have enough pride in their work to counter-balance the grind.
- corin_ 6y ago
  Obviously having people that care about the work they do is a positive thing, but there are plenty of people in plenty of industries managing to do a good job despite only being in it for the money. It might not be a good business decision for Google, but surely if they create enough positions that are solely focussed on the boring stuff but are paid better to make up for it, there is a price point at which they'd get enough interested people.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    The fact that most people are there mostly for the money (which I'm pretty sure is the case) actually works in their favor if they wanted to prioritize maintenance more. Currently people don't do it because they're not rewarded for it, not because they don't care. It's actually far easier to steer people towards certain behaviors if you have lots of money and all you need to do is give more or fewer RSUs or bonus $$s.

lallysingh 6y ago

Direct OKRs for stability. "99.9% of customers unaffected by any change this quarter"