FAANG promo committees are killing Kubernetes: A Short Thread
While it is still a stretch, the title should be "Google's promo committee is killing Kubernetes", since no other FAANG-equivalent is using or contributing to Kubernetes in a meaningful way.The core point:> It's too indirect, fixing a bug in kube-apiserver might retain a GCP customer or avoid a costly Apple services outage, but can you put a dollar value on that? How much is CI stability worth? Or community happiness?While correct, the same is true for most projects at these companies. Very little work that a single engineer does can be assigned a provable revenue number. How does someone working on an internal build tool get promoted? Or a new training model? A large-scale refactor of a legacy codebase? (All of these are examples of very senior promos at my own FAANG company).Kubernetes is no different. An engineer has to show how the work they did first and foremost aligns with their team's goals. If it doesn't, then well they shouldn't have been working on it in the first place. While working on open-source projects might be tolerated, even on company time, it makes sense that it won't put you on a path to promotion unless there is direct benefit to the company from it.