[jrockway]

The "you must make something new to get promoted" was a common meme (literally) at Google, but I never saw that myself. I got promoted, and I sat on promotion committees, and it didn't seem that important. I did sort of start a new project to get from 4 to 5 (rather a prototype was handed to me by my more senior team members), but it was clear to me that the path to 6 was not starting a new project -- it was increasing the reach and value of my existing project. I left before that happened (Google Fiber got canceled, found a new team but it wasn't really my thing), so I'll never know for sure, but I didn't feel any pressure to make something new for the sake of making something new. There was, of course, pressure to make the thing that you did work on good, and nobody was really going to stop you from making something new.

Basically, that whole eng ladder thing is really important. I looked at that a lot for my own promotions and for evaluating candidates for promotions. Just dealing with churn isn't really on there, so it's probably not something you should focus too much on. I'd say that's true at any job; customers aren't going to purchase your SaaS because you upgraded from Postgres 12 to 13. They give zero fucks about things like that. You do upgrades like that because they're just something you have to do to make actual progress on your project. Maybe unfortunate, but also unavoidable. Finding a balance is the key, as with anything in engineering.

The biggest problem I found with promotions is that people wanted one because they thought they were doing their current job well. That isn't promotion, that's calibration, and doing well in calibration certainly opens up good raise / bonus options. Promotion is something different -- it's interviewing for a brand new job, by proving you're already doing that job. Whether or not that's fair is debatable, but the model does make a lot of sense to me.

Things could have changed; I haven't worked at Google for 4 years. But this was a common complaint back then, and it just wasn't my experience in actually evaluating candidates for promotion.

[chrisweekly]

"The biggest problem I found with promotions is that people wanted one because they thought they were doing their current job well. That isn't promotion, that's calibration, and doing well in calibration certainly opens up good raise / bonus options. Promotion is something different -- it's interviewing for a brand new job, by proving you're already doing that job. Whether or not that's fair is debatable, but the model does make a lot of sense to me."

Thanks for articulating this distinction so clearly; it's a simple enough idea, but it seems to elude so many.

[yunohn]

> Promotion is something different -- it's interviewing for a brand new job, by proving you're already doing that job.

Every large corporation has a concept of levels. It makes sense to use levels as a progression (they are numeric after all) rather than a new job each time. That’s what job titles/roles are for.

I’m not convinced by this summary, and it seems anecdotal rather than realistic.

[mettamage]

The reason things like this eludes so many people is because it never gets properly explained by anyone. What jrockway explained might be simple, but it is quite rare to see such an explanation.

[kevingadd]

With respect to your experience, the impact of promotion chasing was heavily felt by product teams and I wouldn't expect it to be that visible to people on the promo committees. I watched multiple fellow Googlers rush project work and cut corners in order to be able to "ship" and put the project in their promo package (and be frustrated when they missed promo). In some cases I got to watch them abandon the project and move on to something else even though it badly needed additional maintenance and cleanup due to all the corner-cutting. In one specific case, all the corner cutting led to multiple significant exploit chains (one of them delivered persistent root on Chromebooks)

Maybe it was just way worse in my org (Chrome).

[jrockway]

> I watched multiple fellow Googlers rush project work and cut corners in order to be able to "ship" and put the project in their promo package (and be frustrated when they missed promo)

This kind of confirms my point -- the committee isn't looking for "created a disaster area a month before promo packets were due". They want a consistent track record of success at the next level.

[paxys]

I definitely encountered this problem at Google (there was a reason it was a meme), but it was far more prevalent at the EM/PM/director level, and so still directly affected the overall product strategy for the org and what you as an IC got to work on.

[warrenm]

>Promotion is something different -- it's interviewing for a brand new job, by proving you're already doing that job

I've worked a couple places where getting a "meets expectations" on your annual review was expected

Their review processes were calibrated such that you should [almost] never get a 5 ("always exceeds")

A handful of 4s ("sometimes exceeds") was good - but not a requirement ('too many' 4s indicated you were in the wrong role, so titles/pay/etc would be adjusted)

More than one 2 ("sometimes doesn't meet") was reason for extra mentoring, one-on-ones, etc

There were no 1s ("fails to meet") - if you would otherwise have earned a 1 in any category, you'd've been let go already