If I’m a Google engineer, what motivation do I have to make decisions that keep a device running for a decade?
Even more pertinent, when it gets time to go through the promo process and when I need to prove “impact” and make sure what I’m doing is aligned with the department wide OKRs, why would I want to be on a project supporting old legacy tech that I can’t spin to show how it helped the company’s revenue?
I’ve never worked for Google. But incentives based on the promo culture is endemic to all of BigTech.
And even worse, every company is focused on “AI” these days. If you aren’t part of an initiative that can be said to be AI adjacent, if you care about your career and comp, you shouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole.
https://www.warp.dev/blog/problems-with-promotion-oriented-c...
I would expect a thermostat to last 15+ years across multiple home owners - it should be an improvement over a mechanical one, after all. If that's not adding to Google's bottom line, they shouldn't have "disrupted" that market in the first place.
https://killedbygoogle.com/
> If I’m a Google engineer, what motivation do I have to make decisions that keep a device running for a decade?
Empathy and being a good human being in relation to society. Making devices that look good at first and cause pain later, when it's too late to do anything about it... is bad.
> I need to prove “impact” and make sure what I’m doing is aligned with the department wide OKRs
Fair, and that's a reason to _not_ put in the effort to make longer lasting devices.
> But incentives based on the promo culture is endemic to all of BigTech
And we should be calling them out for it. It's bad in the same way that forced ranking systems are bad; they promote the wrong things.
Say the employee did want to work on the product in spite of it not being in their best interest. How are they going to get the buy in and the team to make the change and the support to get it pushed to devices in the field?
And no one works for a privacy invading ad tech company because they want to make the world a better place. It’s purely about making a shit ton of money.
> And we should be calling them out for it. It's bad in the same way that forced ranking systems are bad; they promote the wrong things.
Despite the newest LP about being the best employer, Amazon has been the shittiest of the BigTech employer as long as I can remember. Their reputation hasn’t changed anything about their profitability or stock price.
Before you ask if I knew that, why did I work there. I was 46 at the time, it was my 8th job out of 10 and it was purely remote and a “field by design role” that was remote until a year after I left. It was purely a money and resume play.