Google is shaking up its compensation to incentivize higher performance (www.businessinsider.com)
from Reverendender@sh.itjust.works to technology@lemmy.world on 01 May 02:41
https://sh.itjust.works/post/37058540

They’re cutting most people’s comp and dressing it up like they’re doing them a favor. The message is basically: “good news, we’re now rewarding top performers even more… by taking from everyone else.” It’s not about recognizing excellence; it’s about squeezing more out of people with less. And naturally, it all rides on their annual review system, which is subjective at best and arbitrary at worst. So now, their raise depends even more on whether their manager feels like fighting for them in a broken system. This sets people up to compete instead of work together. And the timing is pleb-crushingly tone-deaf. After myriad industry layoffs and burnout, they roll this out like it’s some kind of gift. It’s not. It’s just another way to try to do “more” with less, while pretending they’re “investing in talent.”

#technology

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just_another_person@lemmy.world on 01 May 02:53 next collapse

Lololzzz

WhatSay@slrpnk.net on 01 May 04:35 next collapse

Sounds like anyone intelligent and talented will find work in a less exploiting environment.

Reverendender@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 11:54 next collapse

I sure hope so. Google doesn’t deserve their efforts.

namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev on 01 May 13:41 collapse

And the ones that stay behind will be the kinds of teammates nobody wants to work with.

Google is already falling behind in pretty much every area where they have competition and getting sued in all the areas where they have driven the competition out. It will really be great to see their business shrink given what they have become in the 2010s.

On the other hand, it’s also really sad to see what they’ve become too. They used to be a really admirable company around the early 2000s. So many people were cheering for them as a company run by engineers, doing things differently and running all over the incumbent assholes everybody hated like Microsoft. There was a time when it felt like Google was a company for real people fighting back against the machine. But then they became the machine themselves.

The good Google is dead. I’d love to see them get completely buried.

PattyMcB@lemmy.world on 01 May 04:38 next collapse

Time to unionize

fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com on 01 May 05:44 collapse

IWW is for all trades, even tech.

altphoto@lemmy.today on 01 May 05:18 next collapse

Maybe they should try the Elon way and fire everyone.

tfowinder@lemmy.ml on 01 May 06:21 next collapse

This is a downgrade worded like a upgrade.

hades@lemm.ee on 01 May 06:47 next collapse

For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.

criss_cross@lemmy.world on 01 May 14:13 next collapse

Amazon is doing the same thing.

It’s phrased as giving top tier employees ability to penetrate bands.

In practice you have to be rated Top Tier (which is assigned on a curve and only 5-10 percent of employees will hit) 3 years in a row. So if you have an off year or a new manager then you’re screwed. I’d wager that’s less than 1% of the company that’ll hit that.

For everyone else it was a 10% pay cut. Woo?

jungle@lemmy.world on 02 May 11:15 collapse

the ability to penetrate bands

That’s traditionally called “promotion”. So they’re not promoting employees anymore?

criss_cross@lemmy.world on 02 May 19:33 collapse

For engineers at least it’s always been a pain.

L4 (the starting point) -> L5 is expected within a few years. After that it’s a fucking crapshoot. You can be stuck in L5 the rest of your career.

jungle@lemmy.world on 02 May 20:40 collapse

I should know, I’ve been a software engineer for over 20 years and an engineering manager for over 10. I’ve promoted many engineers.

I don’t know what L4 and L5 map to in your company, but usually the gap between levels widens the higher the level. It’s much easier to go from entry-level (recent graduate) to mid-level, than from senior to staff. The skills required to make that jump are much harder to acquire, there’s less opportunities to put them in practice and a lot more dependencies on external factors you don’t have control over.

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 15:30 collapse

google is a master of doing that

Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 06:25 next collapse

Google’s talent pool must be a joke these days. Every single product I can think of that they make is just awful in 2025.

Reverendender@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 11:56 next collapse

If there were an alternative to Street View, i would be completely Google free

futatorius@lemm.ee on 01 May 13:18 collapse

Google now is like IBM in the 1980s: it has a great future behind it.

mannycalavera@feddit.uk on 01 May 06:36 next collapse

Google has entered the IBM era.

No wonder a lot of their top engineers have been leaving recently.

hades@lemm.ee on 01 May 06:43 next collapse

pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/

Reverendender@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 12:11 next collapse
resipsaloquitur@lemm.ee on 01 May 15:10 collapse

Great read.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world on 01 May 12:17 next collapse

My employer did basically this and it’s really only used for nickel and diming employees. At best you get 100% of what you would’ve been due, but you probably end up getting 95% of it. So while you might miss out on a couple hundred dollars the company saved millions by doing this across the board.

resipsaloquitur@lemm.ee on 01 May 14:56 next collapse

Dance, monkeys, or we will give your job to AI!

(We will give your job to AI regardless, then hire you back at a lower rate when it goes to shit).

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 02 May 17:46 next collapse

Google is abusing most of their workforce through major pay cuts.

Fixed that title for you, Business Insider.

SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world on 02 May 21:27 collapse

Crabs in a bucket

They’re expected to kill each other for a chance at more than scraps.

The only way to win is to _ the ones responsible for putting the crabs in the bucket in the first place