<story><title>I skipped to the ending</title><url>https://danangell.com/blog/posts/i-skipped-to-the-ending/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adrianmsmith</author><text>&amp;gt; One of the primary metrics for leadership success at Google is how many people you have under you.&lt;p&gt;Yeah this is definitely one of those things that sounds good on paper but has unintended &amp;quot;consequences&amp;quot; shall we say.&lt;p&gt;I worked for one company about a decade ago where the task was to redesign the corporate homepage. The &amp;quot;about us&amp;quot; pages on the homepage, not the actual product the company was selling. These pages got a few hundred hits a month. The decision was made to create two sub-teams, one would create a custom CMS, the other would &amp;quot;render&amp;quot; the data entered into the CMS to the website visitors. So that was about 10-20 people in total. The project took over a year. All completely unnecessary.&lt;p&gt;I didn&amp;#x27;t understand why this was happening. Who gained from this? I couldn&amp;#x27;t figure it out. I supposed it was just a lack of controls on how long things took, and this was the result, but that didn&amp;#x27;t really feel right to me. It felt like someone had to really gain from this, but I couldn&amp;#x27;t work it out.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, during my leaving drinks, after a few pints, my boss told me &amp;quot;yeah I think I&amp;#x27;m going to get promoted, the other managers who are applying for this job manage far fewer people so I think I&amp;#x27;m well positioned to get it&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The penny dropped. The purpose of this project was to occupy people, so that more people could get hired, so his headcount increased, so he could get a promotion, and a payrise.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BurningFrog</author><text>Google has Search and Ads, which generate vastly more money than they need to operate. Google Search is one of the Great Inventions in human history, so I think the money is well deserved.&lt;p&gt;But this creates an environment where the natural empire building among managers isn&amp;#x27;t tempered by the need for their units to produce revenue covering their costs. So the organization tends to grow to where it consumes all the billions raining from the sky.&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: Just a loose thought from a cynical ex Googler.</text></comment>
<story><title>I skipped to the ending</title><url>https://danangell.com/blog/posts/i-skipped-to-the-ending/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adrianmsmith</author><text>&amp;gt; One of the primary metrics for leadership success at Google is how many people you have under you.&lt;p&gt;Yeah this is definitely one of those things that sounds good on paper but has unintended &amp;quot;consequences&amp;quot; shall we say.&lt;p&gt;I worked for one company about a decade ago where the task was to redesign the corporate homepage. The &amp;quot;about us&amp;quot; pages on the homepage, not the actual product the company was selling. These pages got a few hundred hits a month. The decision was made to create two sub-teams, one would create a custom CMS, the other would &amp;quot;render&amp;quot; the data entered into the CMS to the website visitors. So that was about 10-20 people in total. The project took over a year. All completely unnecessary.&lt;p&gt;I didn&amp;#x27;t understand why this was happening. Who gained from this? I couldn&amp;#x27;t figure it out. I supposed it was just a lack of controls on how long things took, and this was the result, but that didn&amp;#x27;t really feel right to me. It felt like someone had to really gain from this, but I couldn&amp;#x27;t work it out.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, during my leaving drinks, after a few pints, my boss told me &amp;quot;yeah I think I&amp;#x27;m going to get promoted, the other managers who are applying for this job manage far fewer people so I think I&amp;#x27;m well positioned to get it&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The penny dropped. The purpose of this project was to occupy people, so that more people could get hired, so his headcount increased, so he could get a promotion, and a payrise.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>leosanchez</author><text>&amp;gt; So that was about 10-20 people in total. The project took over a year. All completely unnecessary.&lt;p&gt;What are the bosses above your boss are doing if resources are allocated on useless projects ?</text></comment>