10,000 Google Employees Could Be Rated as Low Performers (theinformation.com) 95
Jon Victor, reporting for The Information: As layoffs spread across Silicon Valley, Google has stood out by not cutting employees so far. But as outside pressure builds on the company to improve the productivity of its workers, a new performance management system could help managers push out thousands of underperforming employees starting early next year. Managers could also use the ratings to avoid paying them bonuses and stock grants.
Under the new system, managers have been asked to categorize 6% of employees, or roughly 10,000 people, as low performers in terms of their impact for the business, according to people with knowledge of the system. In the previous performance review system, managers were expected to put 2% of employees in that bucket. The new system, which Google in May announced in broad terms, also reduces the percentage of employees that can score a high rating. Details of the rating system haven't been previously reported.
Under the new system, managers have been asked to categorize 6% of employees, or roughly 10,000 people, as low performers in terms of their impact for the business, according to people with knowledge of the system. In the previous performance review system, managers were expected to put 2% of employees in that bucket. The new system, which Google in May announced in broad terms, also reduces the percentage of employees that can score a high rating. Details of the rating system haven't been previously reported.
Jack Dorsey strikes again. (Score:5, Informative)
Quick everyone! Find out the metrics and work to the metric score to the detriment of everything else.
Half of them are below average (Score:3)
That's a lot
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In the Google context, performance can easily be measured by the number of cancelled Google projects.
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Obviously you can measure a developer's performance by how many commits or lines they change. I plan on making a bot that just adds extra lines everywhere and generates a bunch of unnecessary commits. LOL.
F'ing metrics ... (Score:5, Insightful)
You could literally have the 100 best workers in the entire world and still have to fire 6 of them for being 'underperformers'.
They don't want workers; they want robots.
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They'd just fire the robots too.
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This is all true pre-sentience. But wait until they go skynet on you. Then you'll wish you just had grumpy human workers again. /s
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> Humans often don't think rationally, a robot almost certainly always would.
Clearly you're not thinking rationally about this. You must be human.
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So what? If it makes the quarterly report look better, they'll fire anything.
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Unfortunately I think a lot of bosses would prefer a human at their mercy who they have to pay, vs. a robot that they don't. The bad resolution to the "robots will replace us" problem.
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Fire can melt things.
Re:F'ing metrics ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: F'ing metrics ... (Score:4, Informative)
PERF is a nightmare there. Your manager spends weeks tied up in meetings for the team's perf. You individual results depends on how much time your manager spent understanding your work and spent on defending your job to his manager. If you're a top contributor you aren't worried about getting fired, instead you're worried about bonus and advancement. If you're just average you are worried about keeping your job and some people quit in the middle of Perf just because the stress is too distracting to get any real work done. Especially for teams with too many people reporting to the same manager.
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OTOH If you had the 100 best workers in the entire world with a positive financial outlook you probably wouldn't be firing them in the first place. This doesn't seem like a consistent ongoing metrics policy like some scummy car dealership, where every few months the bottom x% are being fired and *replaced.* They aren't being turned over. This is a shrinkage amidst a massive industry-wide layoff and scaling back after years of heavy, speculative growth in a high-inflation and rising interest rate environment
Re:F'ing metrics ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the important thing is whether the performance expectations are solely individually based, or always in comparison to peers or the rest of your team. Also, are managers genuinely required to rank a certain number/percentage of their employees in this bucket, or are there just general stats about how they tend to be?
I've worked for companies that have done both. There were always different metrics for "underperforming" and what that exactly meant. Tickets closed, PRs merged, bug reports that came back, calls taken, etc. If you're constantly in competition with even your direct peers for fear of losing your job, it really hurts collaboration. People hoard knowledge and documentation, squabble over credit and recognition, and tend towards brown-nosing and playing to the higher-ups to make sure they're ahead of their peers. On the other hand, if performance is more personalized and it's more about your own skills, growth, and performance, there's much more motivation to work together and grow as a team. You might have slightly lower individual output but the cohesion and culture can make a difference.
So then we come to situations where a company does legitimately need to shrink their workforce. This is understandable and happens. But it should be a one-offish and individually handled circumstance rather than an ongoing company policy. Instead of pitting your employees against each other, it should indeed be about more holistic assessments. And sometimes there are hard decisions to be made where there are no particular underperformers on a team but there still has to be cuts made. In the end I think there's a difference between a company that needs to make hard choices to cut back workforce vs. one that has a culture of stack ranking or other sorts of employee competition that has some percentage on the chopping block even if they're otherwise meeting every expectation.
Re: F'ing metrics ... (Score:2, Interesting)
This is America. Have you been paying attention?
Workers are something companies use until robots are cheaper. In America, there is no civic value or virtue in having happy, healthy workers.
This is not Google's fault though. The blame lies squarely on partisan individuals and groups that manufacture discontent and division, fanning fervor and then selling the power they get from incensed people to corporate donors who then get to write the laws passed on the wave of incited support.
Feminists revealed they
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You could literally have the 100 best workers in the entire world and still have to fire 6 of them for being 'underperformers'.
They don't want workers; they want robots.
That's fantasy. You can find a handful out of a hundred you didn't really like anyway, but even if you couldn't, a hundred people is like a lake, looks flat, but one end is still lower than the other, and you can find five or six if you need to. It's not about underperforming, it's about cutting headcount, and if it has got to happen, ranking is less cruel than drawing straws, or what, everyone voting for who they want to go? Fuck that. If it has to happen, what's a better way, ask for volunteers, and th
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It's not about underperforming, it's about cutting headcount, and if it has got to happen
Well, there's the rub. Has it got to happen? They have $116.259B cash on hand, and they don't pay dividends but if they did they could probably keep paying them for years so... where's the fire?
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And it not that these workers were exemplary or meet all company objectives. They knew how to kiss ass. When a firm is flush, it is useful to have some fluff. But at some point you need to prioritize.
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Sure, but if you're losing money and only actually need 90 workers, you're still going to fire 10 of them. Might as well fire the bottom 10.
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Nah, slaves will do just fine.
To be fair, this is how all large corporation think of their employees.
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Boot PHB's also (Score:5, Insightful)
> managers have been asked to categorize 6% of employees, or roughly 10,000 people, as low performers
Let employees rank managers for once, at least in part. Top-down-only performance reviews are stupid because toxic managers who kiss up well are protected.
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No, promote low-quality workers to management, then fire the (new) bad managers six weeks later.
Then no one could complain about firing bad staff.
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Those good at management may not be good line employees and vice versa.
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No way that will fly. Every shitty jackass who fills a seat at the front line has a dim view upward. Every overachiever also has a dim view. Asking the front line to rate management is simply asking for every shitty grievance to be aired, both fairly and not. You also have people judging their management as a proxy for judging the organization.
Like it or not, top down reviews, as flawed as they are, is the option that works best. "Does the person who is most directly responsible for your cost approve of th
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Shouldn't managers of "low performing" teams, be considered low performing themselves?
\
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Only if they have the authority and the backing to change the team. Managers don't often get to handpick their team - they inherit them And if you insist they keep the people in it, there's only so much you can do.
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This.
My job title is not "manager", but I have been project manager for many projects, big and small. I never got to pick my team. In fact, unfortunately, I had a reputation for getting along and working with people that others didn't, so I often got saddled with underperformers.
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Neither perspective gives the whole view and thus you need both sides. I agree that bottom-up reviews/surveys should be taken with a grain of salt, but if they show a manager consistently failing a particular trait that upper management is not aware of, it at least puts pressure on the manager to correct their behavior.
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I don't disagree. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff.
An example.: I was in first tier management when the (large) company entered into a massive outsourcing initiative. The vitriol coming from the front line towards their immediate management was deafening. This is the "proxy anger". I had no ability to change the direction, of course. And it was universal - every front line leader got lambasted.
There's too much noise for formally requesting the front line rank upwards. Informally, sure - bu
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Grade on a curve, since every manager would be taking a scoring hit from such. For example, a survey may ask a given employee to score their boss on:
- Treats you with respect
- Listens to and gives reasonable consideration to your suggestions
- Gives you clear feedback on your performance
- Treats each team member fairly
- Is honest
During bad times like you talk about, the average score would indeed probably drop, but if a given boss is significantly lower than average on one or more of these, it can at least b
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Fair enough. The other complication is the cost. Each layer is responsible for a larger group under it. The largest group, of course, is the front line. Inverting the pyramid creates a vast number of upward reviews that then need to be analyzed by the tier above theirs.
For instance, let's say you have 1 manager for every 4 team leads, and 1 team lead for 5 front line folks. Because the team leads can't evaluate themselves, that manager gets 20 reviews to handle. In a flatter organization that problem is com
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Automate it. Make it a scored survey with questions similar to my sample list, along with an optional Comment box. Let everyone know that the manager being evaluated cannot see specific evaluations, only summary counts by question category. Their supervisor can paraphrase any comments they wish to share with the evaluee.
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Ignoring your non-productive response title... sure. It's the responsibility of that manager's manager to spot the problems and deal with them. I'm making no claims about the respective abilities of any manager. I'm saying that the opinion of the front line is extremely polluted.
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It's worth mentioning that in terms of "impact on business," managers almost certainly make up the majority of the low performers.
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Why is that worth mentioning? I challenge it's truth. I suspect the distribution of low to high performers is fairly constant across occupations. Doctor, plumber, programmer, manager... I'll bet the bell curve looks remarkably consistent.
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Why is that worth mentioning?
Because zero managers will be marked as low performers as a result of this new policy.
I suspect the distribution of low to high performers is fairly constant across occupations
The natural distribution is disturbed when it comes to managers because managers are the ones deciding who gets laid off.
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Senior managers decide which managers... usually... directors decide which senior managers... Grouping them all together as "managers" implies somehow they act in unison, don't judge each other, and protect the collective. In my experience that isn't true at all. Managers don't cover for each other, or artificially bolster each other's perception.
I've been through four major reorganizations in large companies. If you did the analysis, middle and lower management usually got hit harder per capita than the fr
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Managers act as though they were playing a game of survivor. It's about connections and ability to kiss up, not about skill. They don't act in unison at all, they fight against each other, judge each other, etc.
But workers aren't even playing the game. You have to be a manager to do that.
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It doesn't actually. There's been actual research in the area. It is true that people tend to get promoted until they're no longer good at their job, then don't get promoted anymore. In most systems you get promoted into management, so management gets enriched with people who aren't particularly good at their job.
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Let employees rank managers for once, at least in part. Top-down-only performance reviews are stupid because toxic managers who kiss up well are protected.
Let's hope the new system allows exactly that kind of bi-directional rating, but I kind of doubt it.
That being said, I don't see how you would rate 10,000 employees as basically shitty/worthless and not catch a few hundred shitty/worthless managers in default rating scam. After all, upper management has to rate their employees too.
The last time I worked for a large corporation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when I was younger and more naive and obviously still very much naive, I had a review ...
My manager literally told me that he was impressed how everyone else on the team used me as a reference, how I'd been recommended in the past year numerous times by my collegues, and how our clients loved my approach when working with them but that there wasn't any room in the budget for raises "this year".
So now I know what was going on. Because I didn't kiss enough back side my colleagues who "recommended" me got the raises and I was the 6%? Interesting how that works. And you wonder why there's no loyalty anymore in the American workforce. Corporations decry how people don't want to give their blood, sweat, tears, and firstborns to them. Then they go and require recommending that people must be classified as "underperforming" even when they don't.
Corporations definitely are NOT people.
Good example. (Score:5, Interesting)
Having sat in the seat where I was given no budget changes in the yearly cycle, I see both sides of it. That's a sad reality. 'You're great, but there's no budget" is often a simple truth,
I was responsible for about 50 people in a department. In 2019 we had not just a flat budget, but a decrease. I had people who were killing it. So I had very few options. For some I went to bat, and I created extensive documents for justification, met with multiple levels of leadership up to the Senior Director (and in one case, CIO), and made my case. I got approval to move on... 2.
As unfair as it appears, money doesn't just appear because people do the job very well. "Kissing backsides" is a description used by folks who want to abstract away the problem of admitting that it's a very complicated set of pressures. Not saying it doesn't happen, but it's not as common as you think.
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That could be true, but it's also irrelevant. The management layers most people here interact with don't live in that world - for them the budget isn't an arbitrary goal, it's a real, tangible limitation.
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That could be true, but it's also irrelevant.
That kind of thinking is why workers get abused. Congratulations, you're helping perpetuate abuse of workers. Acceptance of abuse is not tolerance, it's enablement.
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Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing. Describing reality in neutral terms is definitely stumping for "the man".
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There's no such thing as neutral, everything affects everyone either directly or indirectly. By choosing to attempt to be neutral on an issue which is provably not neutral you are helping to uphold the status quo, which is shit.
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So what's your proposal? Everybody tools down because budgets are real? Refuse to participate? I don't understand your objection other than as a philosophical beef with the buess world at large.
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How about just not making excuses for the abusing class? That's literally all I'm asking for.
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We all
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Alright - we're out of nesting, so I'll just say that I said nothing about the "abusing class" - in your example, the top of the company and their second homes. I was speaking of the people who receive the budgets and have to execute on them.
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Having sat in the seat where I was given no budget changes in the yearly cycle, I see both sides of it. That's a sad reality. 'You're great, but there's no budget" is often a simple truth,
No, it just means you are the low performer of the team.
If you had not made clear to management that the top performer in the team like GP *need* to be given a raise, else the company will risk the loss productivity from that top guy leaving or simply stop performing, it was your fault.
If you had made that clear and management still said no, and you didn't fight tooth and nail to push the point, it was your fault.
If you had done all that and management still said no, you put that on-record in the next year'
Sounds about right. (Score:5, Interesting)
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This Will Decrease Overall Performance (Score:3)
You are letting your true nature show. 6 people compared to 94 others in the company? But they may be better than many others outside the company. Your chances on improving your workforce are not improved by forced turnover based on this artificial metric. A metric that says fire 6% of the workers every year is counterproductive in the truest "you are not a human you are a meat Popsicle resource and are nothing other than a machine to us," kind demotivational manner. Watch employee churn increase and bring
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You are letting your true nature show. 6 people compared to 94 others in the company? But they may be better than many others outside the company. Your chances on improving your workforce are not improved by forced turnover based on this artificial metric.
You're assuming those 6 people aren't managers.
Really? (Score:1)
Were I the decision-maker in my current organization, I would have NO problem identifying 6% to cut. You'd have to stop me at 6% just to keep me from swinging the scythe. I think most organizations is similar - it's not a question of selecting 6% from a group composed of totally awesome contributors - it's about downselecting from a larger group of non-pivotal, indistinguishable seat fillers.
I call it the 10/40/50 rule. 10% keep your organization on the positive edge. 40% keep the organization moving forwar
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The 20% rule:
The top 20% provide 80% of the value, while the bottom 20% cause 80% of the problems.
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You are letting your true nature show. 6 people compared to 94 others in the company? But they may be better than many others outside the company. Your chances on improving your workforce are not improved by forced turnover based on this artificial metric.
Very correct. If you spend effort to hire only the best of the best, there's a pretty good chance that your underperforming workers are still doing better than 90% of the people you would replace them with, so forced turnover tends to result in an overall reduction in performance.
Also, it is demoralizing. If you end up with managers having to cut good workers to meet a quota, the entire rest of the team starts to worry if they are next, and their performance begins to decline. Over time, that sort of beh
Google (Score:1)
And managers? (Score:3)
How many low-performing managers are going to be fired?
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How many low-performing managers are going to be fired?
managers also report to someone, i suspect 6% will be fired.
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In my experience, more than 6% of managers will be fired. Senior managers are usually aware if their pyramids are top-heavy...
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How many low-performing managers are going to be fired?
Probably all of them. Generals are the first to be sacked when an army loses.
This isn't just a meaningless metric thing. Google has had Stupid Money from the beginning. They've been swimming in it all their existence. So much that they could do stupid things and not suffer. But economic reality has arrived for the whole tech sector, and reality is one cold, nasty bitch of a taskmaster. And she scorns Nappy Chairs and free Red Bull. The signs have been clear; the Stupid Money days are gone, and either prove
Stack Ranking (Score:2)
Has long been generally considered a bad thing, given that why do companies still do it?
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When the economy is good, it's seen as an unfair evaluation of people's value and uniqueness, but when push comes to shove, the companies need it to rank people and have a good excuse for firing some of them.
Performance management (Score:2)
Re:"Don't be evil" (Score:1)
They ended that in 2018. [gizmodo.com]
The best coders don' produce massive lines of code (Score:1)
I guess... (Score:2)
...they are just googling all day long.
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...they are just googling all day long.
When they could be sending out resumes to whoever will read them.
I hear Twitter might be hiring after The Great Leon has started to purge it of...
Bad management (Score:1)
Here's a little-known business secret (Score:4, Interesting)
Pssst! Hey! Hey you! Wanna know a secret? You can't increase productivity by laying off workers. The best you can do is get a temporary boost from the remaining people who don't want to be in the next wave. Then they'll start to burn out and demoralization will eat up any short-term gains you made.
So don't do it. Unless, of course, you're a sociopath who only cares about short-term gains and plans to bail with a nice "improved productivity" bonus before the shit hits the fan. In that case, let the layoffs commence!
You're not wrong and there's the other factor too (Score:2, Interesting)
...ever head of the Quiet quitting movement?
When covid-19 pandemic struck us all, then a lot of people started working from home, studies found that they were not less effective from home, but had more free time due to less transitioning from home to work, this gave people enough room to think about their life, not having a micromanager breathing down your neck, and could go find greener grass elsewhere.
Humans aren't lazy by default, they are lust driven, and by lust I simply refer to the things they want a
Layoffs by another name (Score:1)
They should literally (Score:2)
Amazingly... (Score:2)
Amazingly, Google discovers that half of its employees are performing below average. Half!
Change Pichai (Score:2)
Why not change Pichai? Heads I Win; Tails You Lose
https://www.petition2congress.... [petition2congress.com]