what percent of google engineers get to staff senior
Reprint: R1312D High-performing noesis workers often question whether managers actually contribute much, especially in a technical surround. Until recently, that was the case at Google, a visitor filled with self-starters who viewed management equally more destructive than beneficial and equally a lark from "real piece of work." But when Google'south people analytics team examined the value of managers, applying the aforementioned rigorous research methods the company uses in its operations, it proved the skeptics wrong. Mining data from employee surveys, performance reviews, and double-blind interviews, the team verified that managers indeed had a positive touch. Information technology besides pinpointed exactly how, identifying the eight key behaviors of great Google managers. In this article, Harvard Business School professor Garvin describes how Google has incorporated the detailed findings from the research into highly specific, concrete guidelines; classes; and feedback reports that aid managers hone their essential skills. Because these tools were built from the ground up, using the staff's own input, they've been embraced by Google employees. Managers say that they've constitute their preparation to be invaluable, and managers' ratings from straight reports have steadily risen across the company.
Artwork: Chad Hagen, Graphic Composition No. ane, 2009, digital
Since the early days of Google, people throughout the company accept questioned the value of managers. That skepticism stems from a highly technocratic culture. Every bit ane software engineer, Eric Flatt, puts information technology, "Nosotros are a visitor built by engineers for engineers." And most engineers, not just those at Google, desire to spend their time designing and debugging, not communicating with bosses or supervising other workers' progress. In their hearts they've long believed that management is more destructive than beneficial, a distraction from "real work" and tangible, goal-directed tasks.
A few years into the company's life, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin actually wondered whether Google needed any managers at all. In 2002 they experimented with a completely apartment organisation, eliminating engineering managers in an effort to break downwards barriers to rapid idea evolution and to replicate the collegial surroundings they'd enjoyed in graduate school. That experiment lasted only a few months: They relented when too many people went directly to Page with questions almost expense reports, interpersonal conflicts, and other nitty-gritty bug. And as the company grew, the founders soon realized that managers contributed in many other, of import means—for case, by communicating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects, facilitating collaboration, supporting career development, and ensuring that processes and systems aligned with company goals.
Google now has some layers but non every bit many as you might wait in an organization with more than than 37,000 employees: but 5,000 managers, 1,000 directors, and 100 vice presidents. It's not uncommon to find engineering managers with 30 straight reports. Flatt says that's by blueprint, to prevent micromanaging. "There is merely so much you can meddle when you have 30 people on your squad, so y'all accept to focus on creating the best environment for engineers to make things happen," he notes. Google gives its rank and file room to make decisions and innovate. Along with that freedom comes a greater respect for technical expertise, skillful problem solving, and good ideas than for titles and formal authority. Given the overall indifference to pecking guild, anyone making a case for change at the company needs to provide compelling logic and rich supporting data. Seldom practise employees accept top-down directives without question.
Google downplays hierarchy and emphasizes the ability of the individual in its recruitment efforts, as well, to achieve the right cultural fit. Using a rigorous, data-driven hiring process, the company goes to great lengths to attract young, ambitious self-starters and original thinkers. Information technology screens candidates' résumés for markers that indicate potential to excel at that place—specially general cognitive ability. People who make that first cut are and then carefully assessed for initiative, flexibility, collaborative spirit, prove of being well-rounded, and other factors that make a candidate "Googley."
Then here's the challenge Google faced: If your highly skilled, handpicked hires don't value management, how can you lot run the place effectively? How do y'all turn doubters into believers, persuading them to spend time managing others? As it turns out, by applying the aforementioned analytical rigor and tools that you used to hire them in the first place—and that they set such store by in their own work. You utilize data to test your assumptions near management's merits and then make your example.
Analyzing the Soft Stuff
To empathise how Google set out to testify managers' worth, let's get dorsum to 2006, when Page and Brin brought in Laszlo Bock to head up the human resources office—appropriately called people operations, or people ops. From the start, people ops managed performance reviews, which included almanac 360-degree assessments. Information technology likewise helped conduct and interpret the Googlegeist employee survey on career development goals, perks, benefits, and visitor culture. A year later, with that foundation in place, Bock hired Prasad Setty from Capital letter Ane to lead a people analytics grouping. He challenged Setty to approach HR with the aforementioned empirical discipline Google applied to its business operations.
Setty took him at his give-and-take, recruiting several PhDs with serious research chops. This new team was committed to leading organizational alter. "I didn't want our grouping to exist simply a reporting house," Setty recalls. "Organizations can go bogged down in all that data. Instead, I wanted u.s.a. to exist hypothesis-driven and help solve visitor problems and questions with data."
People analytics and so pulled together a small team to tackle issues relating to employee well-beingness and productivity. In early 2009 information technology presented its initial set of research questions to Setty. One question stood out, considering it had come again and once again since the company's founding: Practise managers thing?
To notice the answer, Google launched Project Oxygen, a multiyear research initiative. It has since grown into a comprehensive program that measures key direction behaviors and cultivates them through communication and training. By November 2012, employees had widely adopted the program—and the company had shown statistically meaning improvements in multiple areas of managerial effectiveness and performance.
Google is i of several companies that are applying analytics in new means. Until recently, organizations used data-driven decision making mainly in product development, marketing, and pricing. Only these days, Google, Procter & Gamble, Harrah'southward, and others accept that same approach in addressing homo resources needs. (Encounter "Competing on Talent Analytics," by Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne Harris, and Jeremy Shapiro, HBR October 2010.)
Unfortunately, scholars oasis't done enough to help these organizations understand and improve mean solar day-to-twenty-four hour period management practice. Compared with leadership, managing remains understudied and undertaught—largely because it's so difficult to describe, precisely and concretely, what managers actually do. We often say that they become things done through other people, yet we don't unremarkably spell out how in any item. Project Oxygen, in contrast, was designed to offering granular, hands-on guidance. Information technology didn't only place desirable direction traits in the abstruse; it pinpointed specific, measurable behaviors that brought those traits to life.
"Engineers hate being micromanaged on the technical side but love being closely managed on the career side."
That's why Google employees let go of their skepticism and got with the program. Project Oxygen mirrored their decision-making criteria, respected their need for rigorous analysis, and made information technology a priority to measure impact. Data-driven cultures, Google discovered, respond well to data-driven alter.
Making the Case
Projection Oxygen colead Neal Patel recalls, "We knew the team had to exist conscientious. Google has high standards of proof, even for what, at other places, might be considered obvious truths. Uncomplicated correlations weren't going to be enough. So we actually ended up trying to prove the contrary instance—that managers don't matter. Luckily, we failed."
To begin, Patel and his team reviewed exit-interview data to see if employees cited management issues as a reason for leaving Google. Though they establish some connections betwixt turnover rates and low satisfaction with managers, those didn't apply to the company more broadly, given the low turnover rates overall. Nor did the findings prove that managers caused compunction.
As a next step, Patel examined Googlegeist ratings and semiannual reviews, comparing managers on both satisfaction and performance. For both dimensions, he looked at the highest and everyman scorers (the top and lesser quartiles).
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"At showtime," he says, "the numbers were not encouraging. Even the low-scoring managers were doing pretty well. How could we observe prove that better management mattered when all managers seemed so similar?" The solution came from applying sophisticated multivariate statistical techniques, which showed that even "the smallest incremental increases in manager quality were quite powerful."
For instance, in 2008, the high-scoring managers saw less turnover on their teams than the others did—and retention was related more strongly to director quality than to seniority, operation, tenure, or promotions. The information also showed a tight connexion between managers' quality and workers' happiness: Employees with loftier-scoring bosses consistently reported greater satisfaction in multiple areas, including innovation, work-life remainder, and career development.
In lite of this research, the Projection Oxygen team concluded that managers indeed mattered. But to act on that finding, Google kickoff had to effigy out what its best managers did. So the researchers followed up with double-bullheaded qualitative interviews, asking the high- and low-scoring managers questions such every bit "How often do you have career development discussions with your direct reports?" and "What do you do to develop a vision for your team?" Managers from Google'due south 3 major functions (engineering, global business organisation, and general and administrative) participated; they came from all levels and geographies. The team also studied thousands of qualitative comments from Googlegeist surveys, performance reviews, and submissions for the company's Great Manager Award. (Each yr, Google selects near twenty managers for this distinction, on the basis of employees' nominations.) Information technology took several months to lawmaking and process all this information.
Later on much review, Oxygen identified viii behaviors shared by high-scoring managers. (Meet the sidebar "What Google's Best Managers Practise" for the complete list.) Even though the behaviors weren't terribly surprising, Patel's colead, Michelle Donovan, says, "we hoped that the list would resonate because it was based on Google data. The attributes were nearly us, by us, and for us."
The primal behaviors primarily depict leaders of small and medium-sized groups and teams and are especially relevant to showtime- and second-level managers. They involve developing and motivating directly reports, as well equally communicating strategy and eliminating roadblocks—all vital activities that people tend to overlook in the press of their day-to-day responsibilities.
Putting the Findings into Practice
The list of behaviors has served 3 important functions at Google: giving employees a shared vocabulary for discussing management, offering them straightforward guidelines for improving it, and encapsulating the full range of direction responsibilities. Though the list is elementary and straightforward, information technology'southward enriched by examples and descriptions of best practices—in survey participants' ain words. These details make the overarching principles, such as "empowers the team and does not micromanage," more concrete and show managers different means of enacting them. (See the showroom "How Google Defines One Key Behavior.")
Drawing on companywide survey responses, Google breaks down each essential management behavior into specific activities and best practices.
All-time practice: Assign stretch assignments to empower the team to tackle big bug
"My director was able to encounter my potential and gave me opportunities that allowed me to shine and abound. For instance, early on in my role, she asked me to pull together a cross-functional team to develop a goal-setting process. I was new to the role, and then she figured it would be a great style for me to go to know the team and also to create accountability and transparency. Once information technology was developed, she sent me to one of our Europe offices—on my own!—to deliver the training to people managers there."
Source:The Google Internal Presentation "Investigating Why Managers Affair and What Our Best Ones Do," Jan 2010
The descriptions of the eight behaviors too allow considerable tailoring. They're inclusive guidelines, non rigid formulas. That said, it was clear early that managers would need help adopting the new standards, so people ops built assessments and a preparation programme around the Oxygen findings.
To improve the odds of acceptance, the group customized the survey instrument, creating an upward feedback survey (UFS) for employees in administrative and global business functions and a tech managers survey (TMS) for the engineers. Both assessments asked employees to evaluate their managers (using a five-point scale) on a core set of activities—such equally giving actionable feedback regularly and communicating team goals clearly—all of which related directly to the key management behaviors.
The first surveys went out in June 2010—deliberately out of sync with functioning reviews, which took place in April and September. (Google had initially considered linking the scores with performance reviews but decided that would increase resistance to the Oxygen plan because employees would view it every bit a elevation-downward imposition of standards.) People ops emphasized confidentiality and issued frequent reminders that the surveys were strictly for self-improvement. "Project Oxygen was always meant to be a developmental tool, non a performance metric," says Mary Kate Stimmler, an analyst in the department. "We realized that anonymous surveys are not e'er fair, and there is oftentimes a context behind depression scores."
Though the surveys weren't mandatory, the vast majority of employees completed them. Soon afterward, managers received reports with numerical scores and individual comments—feedback they were urged to share with their teams. (See the showroom "One Managing director's Feedback" for a representative sample.) The reports explicitly tied individuals' scores to the eight behaviors, included links to more information about best practices, and suggested actions each manager could take to better. Someone with, say, unfavorable scores in coaching might get a recommendation to have a class on how to deliver personalized, balanced feedback.
People ops designed the training to be hands-on and immediately useful. In "vision" classes, for instance, participants practiced writing vision statements for their departments or teams and bringing the ideas to life with compelling stories. In 2011, Google added Start Right, a two-hour workshop for new managers, and Director Flagship courses on pop topics such every bit managing change, which were offered in three two-day modules over vi months. "We have a team of instructors," says people-evolution director Kathrin O'Sullivan, "and nosotros are piloting online Google Hangout classes so managers from around the globe can participate."
Managers have expressed few concerns about signing upwardly for the courses and going public with the changes they need to brand. Eric Clayberg, for one, has establish his training invaluable. A seasoned software-engineering science manager and serial entrepreneur, Clayberg had led teams for 18 years earlier Google bought his latest outset-up. But he feels he learned more about management in six months of Oxygen surveys and people ops courses than in the previous 2 decades. "For instance," he says, "I was worried about the flat organizational structure at Google; I knew information technology would be hard to aid people on my team become promoted. I learned in the classes virtually how to provide career development beyond promotions. I at present spend a 3rd to half my fourth dimension looking for ways to help my team members abound." And to his surprise, his reports take welcomed his advice. "Engineers detest beingness micromanaged on the technical side," he observes, "but they love being closely managed on the career side."
To complement the training, the evolution team sets upward console discussions featuring high-scoring managers from each function. That style, employees get advice from colleagues they respect, not just from 60 minutes. People ops too sends new managers automated due east-post reminders with tips on how to succeed at Google, links to relevant Oxygen findings, and information well-nigh courses they haven't taken.
And Google rewards the behaviors it'due south working so hard to promote. The visitor has revamped its selection criteria for the Great Manager Laurels to reverberate the viii Oxygen behaviors. Employees refer to the behaviors and cite specific examples when submitting nominations. Clayberg has received the laurels, and he believes it was largely considering of the skills he caused through his Oxygen training. The prize includes a weeklong trip to a destination such as Hawaii, where winners get to spend time with senior executives. Recipients go places in the company, too. "In the concluding round of promotions to vice president," Laszlo Bock says, "10% of the directors promoted were winners of the Great Manager Award."
Measuring Results
The people ops squad has analyzed Oxygen's touch on past examining aggregate survey data and qualitative input from individuals. From 2010 through 2012, UFS and TMS median favorability scores rose from 83% to 88%. The lowest-scoring managers improved the virtually, particularly in the areas of coaching and career development. The improvements were consistent across functions, survey categories, management levels, spans of control, and geographic regions.
In an environment of top achievers, people have low scores seriously. Consider vice president Sebastien Marotte, who came to Google in 2011 from a senior sales role at Oracle. During his first six months at Google, Marotte focused on coming together his sales numbers (and did and so successfully) while managing a global squad of 150 people. Then he received his first UFS scores, which came as a stupor. "I asked myself, 'Am I correct for this visitor? Should I go back to Oracle?' There seemed to be a disconnect," he says, "because my manager had rated me favorably in my first performance review, yet my UFS scores were terrible." Then, with help from a people ops colleague, Marotte took a step back and idea about what changes he could make. He recalls, "We went through all the comments and came upwards with a programme. I fixed how I communicated with my squad and provided more visibility on our long-term strategy. Inside ii survey cycles, I raised my favorability ratings from 46% to 86%. It's been tough but very rewarding. I came here equally a senior sales guy, just now I experience like a general manager."
Overall, other managers took the feedback every bit constructively as Marotte did—and were especially grateful for its specificity. Here's what Stephanie Davis, manager of big-company sales and another winner of the Swell Director Award, says she learned from her get-go feedback written report: "I was surprised that 1 person on my team didn't remember I had regularly scheduled i-on-1 meetings. I saw this person every day, but the survey helped me realize that just seeing this person was different from having regularly scheduled individual meetings. My team also wanted me to spend more time sharing my vision. Personally, I accept always been inspired by Eric [Schmidt], Larry, and Sergey; I thought my team was as well getting a sense of the visitor's vision from them. But this survey gave my squad the opportunity to explain that they wanted me to interpret the higher-level vision for them. Then I started listening to the company'due south earnings telephone call with a different ear. I didn't just come back to my team with what was said; I besides shared what it meant for them."
Chris Loux, caput of global enterprise renewals, remembers feeling frustrated with his depression UFS scores. "I had received a performance review indicating that I was exceeding expectations," he says, "notwithstanding one of my direct reports said on the UFS that he would not recommend me equally a manager. That struck me, considering people don't quit companies—they quit managers." At the same time, Loux struggled with the question of only how much to push button the lower performers on his team. "It's hard to requite negative feedback to a type-A person who has never received bad feedback in his or her life," he explains. "If someone gets 95% favorable on the UFS, I wonder if that managing director is fugitive problems past non having tough conversations with reports on how they can get improve."
Loux isn't the only Google executive to speculate well-nigh the connexion between employees' operation reviews and their managers' feedback scores. That question came up multiple times during Oxygen's rollout. To address it, the people analytics grouping vicious back on a time-tested technique—going back to the information and conducting a formal analysis to decide whether a manager who gave someone a negative performance review would then receive a depression feedback rating from that employee. Afterward looking at two quarters' worth of survey data from 2011, the group found that changes in employee performance ratings (both upward and downwards) accounted for less than i% of variability in respective director ratings across all functions at Google.
"Managing to the test" doesn't appear to be a big risk, either. Considering the eight behaviors are rooted in activeness, information technology's hard for managers to fake them in pursuit of higher ratings. In the surveys, employees don't assess their managers' motivations, values, or beliefs; rather, they evaluate the extent to which their managers demonstrate each behavior. Either the manager has acted in the ways recommended—consistently and credibly—or she has not. There is very piffling room for blowhard or dissembling.
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"We are not trying to change the nature of people who piece of work at Google," says Bock. "That would be presumptuous and unsafe. Instead, we are saying, 'Hither are a few things that will pb you to be perceived as a improve manager.' Our managers may not completely believe in the suggestions, but after they act on them and get better UFS and TMS scores, they may eventually internalize the beliefs."
Project Oxygen does take its limits. A delivery to managerial excellence can be hard to maintain over the long haul. One threat to sustainability is "evaluation overload." The UFS and the TMS depend on employees' goodwill. Googlers voluntarily respond on a semiannual basis, simply they're asked to complete many other surveys besides. What if they decide that they're tired of filling out surveys? Volition response rates bottom out? Sustainability also depends on the continued effectiveness of managers who excel at the eight behaviors, as well as those behaviors' relevance to senior executive positions. A disproportionate number of recently promoted vice presidents had won the Great Manager Award, a reflection of how well they'd followed Oxygen'south guidelines. But what if other behaviors—those associated with leadership skills—matter more in senior positions?
Further, while survey scores estimate employees' satisfaction and perceptions of the piece of work surround, it's unclear exactly what touch on those intangibles have on such bottom-line measures equally sales, productivity, and profitability. (Even for Google's high-powered statisticians, those causal relationships are difficult to institute.) And if the eight behaviors do really benefit organizational performance, they still might not give Google a lasting edge. Companies with like competitive profiles—loftier-tech firms, for example, that are equally data-driven—can mimic Google's approach, since the eight behaviors aren't proprietary.
Because the 8 behaviors are rooted in action, information technology's difficult for managers to simulated them.
Still, Project Oxygen has accomplished what information technology set out to practise: Information technology not only convinced its skeptical audience of Googlers that managers mattered just as well identified, described, and institutionalized their about essential behaviors. Oxygen practical the concept of data-driven continuous improvement directly—and successfully—to the soft skills of management. Widespread adoption has had a significant touch on how employees perceive life at Google—particularly on how they charge per unit the degree of collaboration, the transparency of performance evaluations, and their groups' commitment to innovation and adventure taking. At a company like Google, where the staff consists almost entirely of "A" players, managers have a complex, demanding office to play. They must go across overseeing the twenty-four hour period-to-day work and support their employees' personal needs, development, and career planning. That ways providing smart, steady feedback to guide people to greater levels of achievement—but intervening judiciously and with a light impact, since high-performing knowledge workers identify a premium on autonomy. Information technology'due south a delicate balancing act to keep employees happy and motivated through enthusiastic cheerleading while helping them grow through stretch assignments and carefully modulated feedback. When the procedure works well, information technology tin can yield extraordinary results.
That'due south why Prasad Setty wants to go on building on Oxygen's findings about effective direction practice. "We volition have to kickoff thinking about what else drives people to go from good to great," he says. His team has begun analyzing managers' assessment scores by personality blazon, looking for patterns. "With Project Oxygen, we didn't take these endogenous variables available to us," he adds. "Now nosotros can start to tease them out, using more of an ethnographic arroyo. It'south actually nigh observations—staying with people and studying their interactions. Nosotros're not going to have the capacity to follow tons of people, but what nosotros'll lose in terms of numbers, nosotros'll gain in a deeper understanding of what managers and their teams experience."
That, in a nutshell, is the principle at the heart of Google's approach: deploying disciplined data drove and rigorous analysis—the tools of science—to uncover deeper insights into the art and arts and crafts of management.
A version of this article appeared in the December 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review.
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Source: https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-management
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