<story><title>The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures</title><url>https://www.warp.dev/blog/problems-with-promotion-oriented-cultures</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lisper</author><text>Another former Googler here (from waaaaaaayyyy back -- I was employee #104).&lt;p&gt;The reason Google is the way it is, and many organizations are the way they are, is that they are trying to reproduce the circumstances that led to their initial success.  Google initially succeeded by solving what was at the time a Really Hard Problem, and so the people at the top want to reproduce that by encouraging people to solve more Really Hard Problems.  Apple has fallen into the exact same trap.  Their initial success came from building a Cool New Thing, and so they are constantly trying to build the next Cool New Thing.  The problem is that at some point the product has actually converged to a local design maximum and so making further changes to it in order to produce something New and Cool is not actually an improvement.&lt;p&gt;But it doesn&amp;#x27;t work because it&amp;#x27;s sn inductive fallacy.  Just because solving a Really Hard Problem or making a Cool New Thing led to success once does not mean that doing these things will lead to success in general.  But the memory of that initial success is really hard to get past, especially when it was as earth-shattering as the initial Google search engine, or the Mac or the iPhone.&lt;p&gt;(Apple has actually done better than most companies at reproducing their initial success.  They&amp;#x27;ve done it at least five times, with the Apple II, the Mac, OSX, the iPod and the iPhone.  But then there is the touch bar, the butterfly keyboard, the flat look...)</text></item><item><author>xoofoog</author><text>Former Googler here.  This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career&lt;p&gt;But the root cause isn&amp;#x27;t that people want to get promoted.  It&amp;#x27;s that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons.  Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for &amp;quot;solving hard problems&amp;quot; not for solving USEFUL problems.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if people did get promoted for fixing bugs instead of building a new product (to be abandoned)!  Or if maintaining an existing system was somehow on par with building a new system (which is just a bigger more complicated version of something perfectly good).  The googler would say &amp;quot;well those useful problems are too easy to merit a promotion.  Anybody can solve easy problems - we&amp;#x27;re google, and we&amp;#x27;re too smart to work on those easy problems.&amp;quot;  Grow up.&lt;p&gt;Y&amp;#x27;all value the wrong things.  That&amp;#x27;s why your culture is broken.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brokencode</author><text>I think Apple has done a fantastic job of incremental improvements on their products rather than chasing the next cool thing. Can you name a company that has actually been doing this better?&lt;p&gt;For instance, they often resist new technologies like high refresh rate or OLED screens, 5G, etc., until they feel the technology is developed sufficiently and won’t impact battery life. There are other brands that compete by making a list of features rather than a coherent product.&lt;p&gt;Of the examples you named, both the Touch Bar and the butterfly keyboard are gone now, and the latest Macs are the best Macs ever. That shows a willingness to try new things, while also showing that they have good judgement in the long term and a willingness to move away from what doesn’t work.&lt;p&gt;Also, the iPad and Apple Watch haven’t been as important to Apple as the iPhone, but they are still original and category-defining products that I would call innovative. Not every new product needs to double your company’s market cap to be a big success in the category.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures</title><url>https://www.warp.dev/blog/problems-with-promotion-oriented-cultures</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lisper</author><text>Another former Googler here (from waaaaaaayyyy back -- I was employee #104).&lt;p&gt;The reason Google is the way it is, and many organizations are the way they are, is that they are trying to reproduce the circumstances that led to their initial success.  Google initially succeeded by solving what was at the time a Really Hard Problem, and so the people at the top want to reproduce that by encouraging people to solve more Really Hard Problems.  Apple has fallen into the exact same trap.  Their initial success came from building a Cool New Thing, and so they are constantly trying to build the next Cool New Thing.  The problem is that at some point the product has actually converged to a local design maximum and so making further changes to it in order to produce something New and Cool is not actually an improvement.&lt;p&gt;But it doesn&amp;#x27;t work because it&amp;#x27;s sn inductive fallacy.  Just because solving a Really Hard Problem or making a Cool New Thing led to success once does not mean that doing these things will lead to success in general.  But the memory of that initial success is really hard to get past, especially when it was as earth-shattering as the initial Google search engine, or the Mac or the iPhone.&lt;p&gt;(Apple has actually done better than most companies at reproducing their initial success.  They&amp;#x27;ve done it at least five times, with the Apple II, the Mac, OSX, the iPod and the iPhone.  But then there is the touch bar, the butterfly keyboard, the flat look...)</text></item><item><author>xoofoog</author><text>Former Googler here.  This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career&lt;p&gt;But the root cause isn&amp;#x27;t that people want to get promoted.  It&amp;#x27;s that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons.  Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for &amp;quot;solving hard problems&amp;quot; not for solving USEFUL problems.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if people did get promoted for fixing bugs instead of building a new product (to be abandoned)!  Or if maintaining an existing system was somehow on par with building a new system (which is just a bigger more complicated version of something perfectly good).  The googler would say &amp;quot;well those useful problems are too easy to merit a promotion.  Anybody can solve easy problems - we&amp;#x27;re google, and we&amp;#x27;re too smart to work on those easy problems.&amp;quot;  Grow up.&lt;p&gt;Y&amp;#x27;all value the wrong things.  That&amp;#x27;s why your culture is broken.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>apozem</author><text>That makes sense. Googlers keep dumping out technically interesting products with no go-to-market strategy because one time doing that, they made a perpetual money machine (search ads). The problem is it’s 20 years later, technology has changed and not all markets are like search.&lt;p&gt;Throwing something out there is fine when it’s a magic website that answers your questions. When it’s, say, a half-baked messaging app none of your friends use, not so much.</text></comment>