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>> choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career<p>But the root cause isn't that people want to get promoted.  It's that Google promotes people for the wrong reasons.  Put very simply, the problem is that Google promotes people for "solving hard problems" 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 "well those useful problems are too easy to merit a promotion.  Anybody can solve easy problems - we're google, and we're too smart to work on those easy problems."  Grow up.<p>Y'all value the wrong things.  That's why your culture is broken.