The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
Former Googler here.  This person has correctly identified that a key reason why google sucks is that people very often...<p>&gt; choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career<p>But the root cause isn&#x27;t that people want to get promoted.  It&#x27;s that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons.  Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for &quot;solving hard problems&quot; not for solving USEFUL problems.<p>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 &quot;well those useful problems are too easy to merit a promotion.  Anybody can solve easy problems - we&#x27;re google, and we&#x27;re too smart to work on those easy problems.&quot;  Grow up.<p>Y&#x27;all value the wrong things.  That&#x27;s why your culture is broken.