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Google Ties Employee Bonuses To +1 Success

Posted by Unknown on from the negativity-is-impolite-mmkay dept.

jfruhlinger writes "Last week Google introduced the +1 button, its attempt to tie its search offerings more closely with users' social networks. Now, a leaked memo reveals that every Google employee will have a stake in the outcome, with bonuses tied to the success or failure of the initiative."

30 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by lxs · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wait until the banking community hears of the blasphemy! Mammon weeps!

    1. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Hazel+Bergeron · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As far as I can tell, this is tying the bonuses of everyone at Google to the efforts of the few people at Google involved in social media crap - in turn coming down to the efforts of the few managers who actually want to push the social media crap. It's the ultimate PHB power trip: you are so insistent that a repeatedly-failing idea is good, while at the same time wanting to acknowledge none of evidence or the responsibility that it isn't, so you declare that everyone else has a stake in it. Then it's everyone's fault: after all, they had financial incentive to succeed - which, as everyone knows, is the reason everyone wants to do anything - so the only reason the plan failed must be because all 24k employees just weren't trying hard enough.

      Page (Gates) is an intelligent egomaniac who happened to be in the right place at the right time, carried to success by Schmidt (Ballmer) and a few venture capitalist titans. Now add cowardly to his list of properties.

    2. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Kokuyo · · Score: 2

      Overreacting much?

      Google has a pretty large staff spread across the world. If each one of them can just make one other person aware of the new feature and of those half tell someone else, you've just kickstarted a pretty hefty viral marketing.

      Where is the problem with tying part of an employees bonus to the company's success? Isn't that what bonuses are all about? If they're not tied to the company's success, it's called a salary, you know.

    3. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If each one of them can just make one other person aware [...]

      ugh.. enough reason to keep away from googlers for a while.

    4. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Hazel+Bergeron · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If each one of them can just make one other person aware of the new feature and of those half tell someone else, you've just kickstarted...

      ...turning your friends into business opportunities, the same socially damaging outcome to hit every pyramid marketing scheme and cult member.

    5. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Kokuyo · · Score: 2

      What is your point? The product is one part of Google's overall portfolio and thus its success. It will contribute to ONE PART of the employees' bonuses.

      Where's your problem?

    6. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Bank bonuses were dependant on results. The more money you shovelled out the window or burned in a furnace, the more you got paid.

      This will ruin Google. Bonuses and other goal oriented incentives ruin organisations wholesale.

      If you dangle large quantities of money in front of people to get them to do something(or worse threaten to deny them money if they don't), then they will do whatever it takes to meet that goal. This means they will cut corners, engage in risk, change parameters, and generally cheat and game the system in every way possible to meet your target. Eventually, your company or organisation will be utterly ruined, withered from within by your ill advised management practices.

      Bonuses are an illegitimate form of compensation on every level. 99% percent of the time, a bonus culture is instituted by management to pay themselves handsomely for wrecking their company.

      If you want someone to work, pay them for the job they do, not the targets they meet. Never, ever try to reduce a job to numbers when that's not what it's all about. If you're still not getting quality labour, hire better people, and note you may have to pay to get them.

      --
      May the Maths Be with you!
    7. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Hazel+Bergeron · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most people think they get better deals from friends. Sometimes they are right, often they're the same and sometimes they're worse. In most cases, though, people feel better going to someone they know. That is not a nefarious scheme, it's human nature.

      It's understandable if a Google employee himself chooses to use Google's social networking crap because he believes that he'll get more money for doing so. But ultimately the success must depend on persuading others outside the company - and it's absolutely nefarious if your "friend" is this Google employee who is taking advantage of your trust and who stands to benefit financially when you follow his advice/example. The ethics of this sort of behaviour has been debated so much in terms of the harm of MLM and cult membership that, if you genuinely are ignorant, ... well, you know how to use Google.

      I don't know that this is what Page expects employees to do, but this sort of geek-grass-roots-marketing thing works approximately once - with an "innocent" start-up when the competition is wanting and people are yearning for an alternative, as with the original and still fairly good Google search engine proper. After that you just look like Microsoft with its, "Wow, it was Vista all along - and there was me thinking Vista was a failure!" ads.

      Car analogy effort notwithstanding, this is nothing whatever to do with choosing Peugeot because you're on good terms with a Peugeot dealer. A good business relationship which may come from a good underlying personal relationship, while often risky, is not proselytism.

    8. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Hazel+Bergeron · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bonus culture has completely ruined service provision in local and national government in England over the past decade. Unfortunately, we are severely lacking an ideology which recognises what you state.

    9. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Cwix · · Score: 2

      One small part of google's portfolio determines 25% of an employees bonus. I know if I was on a team with something successful like gmail or the search engine, or android that I would be pretty pissed that a quarter of my bonus doesn't rely on my personal achievements. Which I think is the point of bonuses.. that is to award employees, beyond usual compensation, for a job well done.

      --
      You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
    10. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Jstlook · · Score: 2

      Oh come on! If you're on good terms with a Peugeot dealer, chances are you'll be driving a Peugeot, even if the GM dealer is closer. Most people think they get better deals from friends. Sometimes they are right, often they're the same and sometimes they're worse. In most cases, though, people feel better going to someone they know. That is not a nefarious scheme, it's human nature. And besides, Google doesn't want their employees to sell this. There is nothing to sell here. It's a move to get the function more widespread acknowledgement and thus a bigger userbase (to which they custom-tailor ads). Frankly, I have a very hard time seeing how this is supposed to be Evil (TM).

      My interpretation that the goal of this bonus program is to make damn sure this feature comes across to the public as a 'Good Thing'. It seems like they hope to chip away every blemish that makes it unappealing. That means they *do* want their employees to sell this, because they want to be able to sell this feature to their advertisers. This is the only thing Google actually *does* sell if I'm not mistaken -- advertising. (sure they might make some money in other departments, but the bottom line is if they didn't advertise, they wouldn't be a household name). There's three things I see are inherently evil about Google pushing this feature like they are:

      1) They're directly tying the success (i.e. bonuses) of every individual to the success of one product regardless of whether the product is good or bad.

      It's actions like this that make employees realize they're part of a profit-driven enterprise, and not an idea-driven enterprise (of which I used to attribute Google). Most profit-driven enterprises couldn't care whether they sell a goodproduct, as long as it sells. (See Microsoft)

      2) They've made a business model around producing 'non-biased' results, and now they're inducing an intentional bias on the results.

      Admittedly, they're improving the quality of their results (until the script kiddies and dubious SEOites latch onto a process to induce their bias into the mix, at which point Google's bogging themselves down in micromanaging the results).

      3) They're hoping (and probably rightfully so) that the public doesn't mind Google retaining the information necessary to identify each +1.
      Personally, I have come to realize that I don't generally like or appreciate businesses taking advantage of my personal information; still, Google is intelligent enough to realize that selling advertising is more profitable than selling this info to someone else. In short, Google's not evil, cause they're smart enough to profit just by playing the game. Everyone else *is* evil because they saw a hack and are exploiting it, and aren't smart enough to figure out how to actually benefit from it.

      --
      ---jstlook ---For that is the way of Elves, for they say both yes AND no, and mean every word of it. --- J.R.R.T.
    11. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Hazel+Bergeron · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Which is arguably still irrational because an organisation's mission rarely aligns with the short term profit goals of employees/management. Optimum behaviour would be to strip the company and sell off its assets, or as close as possible to that as constraints will allow.

      (Hence, again, many recent examples of corporate and public sector plundering.)

    12. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by delinear · · Score: 2

      I'm not even convinced that this is real - from TFA:

      "So much so that, according to Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson, Page last Friday distributed a memo to all employees informing them that 25 percent of their annual bonus in 2011 will depend on the success of Google's social media efforts."

      Given that last Friday was April 1st, it seems an odd time to release an announcement that 25% of your bonus will be tied to some trendy new search feature if it's not a joke. Having said that, FB is arguably Google's biggest threat right now so it wouldn't be that unreasonable for them to predict that the social aspects of search are going to be increasingly important in the near future.

    13. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by tophermeyer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But bonuses are never guaranteed. The reason that bonuses exist in the first place is to offer incentive for employees to get behind whatever initiative the company has in a given quarter and is not part of their base salary.

      Google could just as easily take away bonuses from the other teams altogether.

    14. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The summary posted here at Slashdot invites us to infer more than the memo in TFA says. It seems to imply that Google employees won't get any annual bonus unless the "+1 Button" feature is a success. What the memo says is is that 1/4 of the bonus will be tied to Google's success in its social media efforts *as a whole*.

      You get paid for doing your job. Bonuses are something different. I have doubts about the effectiveness of bonuses, particularly for engineers, but if they do have a function it is to get you thinking, not just about the task at hand, but how it might be tweaked to contribute to the overall success of the company. In a company like Google where engineers have considerable scope for creativity, a bonus policy like this might have some positive effect.

      As for "social media" being crap, this attitude is *precisely* why managers contemplate steps like this. Just because you have good, even unassailable reasons to believe social media is crap doesn't mean it's an unimportant business. It doesn't matter what *you* think or how justified you are when your customers think differently. Google has to consider Facebook as a key competitor. Facebook has moved into product niches that are important to Google. There's advertising, for one. Everyone one uses Google search, but nobody spends the kind of time many people do on Facebook. Facebook is well positioned to move into other areas such as email and cloud services.

      What is really a mystery is why Google chose to pull the plug on Wave. It was poorly marketed, that is true, but it was an unique take on social media: actually using it for *doing* things. The one thing Facebook is *not* positioned to do is launch services that people can readily see require *trust*.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    15. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by bberens · · Score: 2

      Does anyone really work for a company where they have a lot of influence on their bonuses? I've NEVER worked at a company whose bonus structure was based primarily on something I had control over. At best my bonus has been tied to the effectiveness of sales staff. At worst it's making budgets that I, as non-manager, have zero control over.

      --
      Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
    16. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by SecurityGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not overreacting at all. This is a poor implementation of a good idea. It's well known that to be effective bonuses have to be valluable to the employee (I won't work harder for a bottle of bubble bath), credible (if I accomplish something extraordinary for you, you'll actually follow through and give me the reward) and attainable (this thing you want me to do is actually something I -can- do).

      They get 3/3 for everyone working on the project. 2/3 for everyone not.

      I've been in that position myself, where there was a bonus if we reached certain metrics, like customer satisfaction. Problem? A large fraction of the company was research (me) and never, and I do mean never, dealt with customers. Giving me a bonus because the customer facing side did a good job is a waste of money.

    17. Re:Wait what? Bonuses depending on results? by Kamiza+Ikioi · · Score: 2

      Name a successful and active billionaire who isn't an egomaniac. There are certain levels in the game of life where you don't keep succeeding without extra ordinary efforts. I cannot think of a single successful Silicon Valley startup where they didn't expect 12 hour days at a minimum.

      But if you find the lazyboy reclining, unmotivated, cheetos eating, and brilliantly successful CEO/Corp, you let us know so we can unlock the best kept secret of all ages. Jobs? No. Gates? No. Richard Branson? No. Page? No. Kevin Rose? No. Larry Elison? No. Buffet? No.

      As they say, don't hate the player, hate the game.

      --
      I8-D
  2. Re:Rating search results by Svippy · · Score: 2

    Sounds like someone doesn't want Google employees to get their bonuses. And by 'someone', I mean everyone.

    --
    Clicked pie.
  3. Welcome to business. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is how my company, and I imagine many others, do bonuses. They're not givens.

    Every year HQ releases the metric/equation for our bonus. Sometimes it's company wide. Sometimes it's division wide.

    For example: (Round numbers, not real)
    No one gets a bonus unless we hit a $0.50 dividend.
    After that. For every $0.01 above $.50, we get that much as a 'multiplier'.

    So as a salary grade 10. I get 10% of my annual salary as my bonus. Multiplied by the multiplier. I earn $50,000 year. We hit $1.20 dividend. That means I get 50k*.10*1.20 = $6000 bonus.

    It's not like the +1 button is their entire metric, but I'm sure it plays a role. Unless +1 hits 10% of market usage AND some other things happen, then the bonuses are given.

  4. I wouldn't want to be working there now by Mouldy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "...every Google employee..." -- Really?

    If the projects I was working on at Google had absolutely nothing at all to do with +1, I'd be pretty pissed if my bonus was riding on whether or not somebody else's project did well.

    1. Re:I wouldn't want to be working there now by pmontra · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Some (most?) of the people working there know they are not working on this +1 thing. Maybe they can make it somewhat relevant to their job, maybe not. I don't want to make guesses about Google's case but that very thing happened to me in a company I was working for years ago. The bonuses were linked to 3 or 4 goals that made sense for the long term success of the company but that were under the control of very different subsets of the employees. One of them could be somewhat linked to what I was doing but there was no chance I could help at achieving the other ones. It was demotivational and it didn't benefit our appreciation of the management and of the company. Furthermore, if one of those goals looks difficult to achieve employees get the impression that is a way for the company to save money at the end of the year. That's also very demotivational.

      By the way, everybody understands what a Like is but with +1... I'm adding 1 unit of what? They could have reused the thumbs up and down of youtube or copied the rating system of Slashdot. I'm looking forward to a -5 Spamindexing, on a scale from -5 to -1.

    2. Re:I wouldn't want to be working there now by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Small scale thinking. Bonuses should depend on a how well a company does. If you exceed expectations you get a bonus. If anything this is an indication of the direction that Google wishes to head. It is clear they are not content with being a search king or a mobile king. The CEO has just defined success as breaking into social networks, and the employees will be rewarded if the company is successful.

      It's the same everywhere. Where I work our bonuses currently ride on no lost time injuries. We have a big problem with safety on site currently. But WTF do I have to do with lost time injuries? I work in an office in front of a computer! But yet when I'm walking around I tend to take notice of things, manhole covers not closed properly, fence railings in disrepair. Now that I have a stake in injuries I report things that are wrong. The system works, sometimes.

  5. Re:Rating search results by mcvos · · Score: 2

    I'm more interested in a -1 rating. It sucks when my search results are filled with useless crap, copies of the same question without an answer, malware sites, etc. I'd love to rate those down.

  6. Re:So long as its a group thing by mcvos · · Score: 2

    Yes, because management decided so.

  7. It's like betting for a craps dealer by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

    I like playing craps, whenever I'm in a jurisdiction that allows gambling. It's a very social game, and you don't need to bet a lot of money to have several hours of fun at almost fair odds (and get free drinks, the real secret to being a low, low, low roller). One thing I frequently saw was players betting a large amount, and then throwing in a dollar or two "for the dealer to play along". I never really thought much of it until I read some forum while in search of the elusive $2 pass line bet + 10x odds instead of the crappy $10 pass line bet + 4/5/6 odds offered by most Strip casinos. The craps dealers on the forum hated when players would make them "play along". Why? Because the player had already decided to spend the money to tip the dealers, and now the player is gambling with their money. This Google thing strikes me as the same thing - some high roller thinks it's a great idea and a lot of fun without ever actually asking the beneficiary if it's what they want. Scratch that, without even thinking to ask the beneficiary if it's what they want.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  8. just stick to being Google by hardtofindanick · · Score: 2

    Many social experiments Google ran have failed -buzz and wave comes to mind first- and yet they still keep pushing. People don't go to Google for interacting. Google means business, Facebook and Twitter do not.

    This also reminds me of Microsoft's efforts to force themselves into others' more lucrative turfs and looking pathetic in the process. Google should just stick to being Google instead of immitating others.

    They are also doing the bonus adjustments wrong. It should be the other way around: If successful extra +25%, otherwise, regular bonus. After all success means (apparently for them) entrance to another market.

    1. Re:just stick to being Google by An+Anonymous+Coward · · Score: 2

      Many social experiments Google ran have failed -buzz and wave comes to mind first- and yet they still keep pushing. People don't go to Google for interacting. Google means business, Facebook and Twitter do not.

      This also reminds me of Microsoft's efforts to force themselves into others' more lucrative turfs and looking pathetic in the process.

      You mean like when Microsoft pushed into consoles? I'll grant you the original Xbox wasn't that strong, but you'll be hard pressed to find a gamer that doesn't have an Xbox 360. Maybe Microsoft isn't as pathetic as you think.

      Google should just stick to being Google instead of immitating others.

      If Google just sticks to what they're doing, they'll just stagnate and ultimately fall behind. Trying to enter other markets is how these companies grow themselves. Sure there's going to be failures, but you can't have success if you're not even trying.

      They are also doing the bonus adjustments wrong. It should be the other way around: If successful extra +25%, otherwise, regular bonus. After all success means (apparently for them) entrance to another market.

      Ok, what exactly does the word "bonus" mean to you? If it was just a given that you were going to get a bonus, why not just include it in the regular salary? While I'll grant you that a bonus should be tied directly into the success of the product you're working on, I don't know what Google's internal structure is like. It's possible that everyone actually does have some stake in the success of the +1 feature.

  9. Dont Like or -1 button? by polyp2000 · · Score: 2

    Where are the "Dont Like" or "-1" buttons ?

    I totally understand why such a thing is not prevalent. Surely - in terms of data mining peoples tastes and interests a "Dont Like" button would be very useful too.

    Suppose some company catches on that I am interested in computers - I dont neccessarily want them sending me info about Windows or OSX so i might want to be able to know that I "Dont Like" those topics.

    Also , a friend of mine on FB the other day posted an item about a crime that had been committed in his neighbourhood and people were "Liking" it. That doesnt work in my mind. Someone gets stabbed and people "Like" it ? whats the world coming too ?

    Nick

    --
    Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
  10. Didn't this video say that $$ is not a motivation? by rolfwind · · Score: 2

    At least, once financial well-being is established?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

    Instead, it's supposed to be independence, recognition, and other such things?