Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai at a press conference at the Prime Minister’s Palace in Warsaw, Poland, March 29, 2022.
Mateusz Wlodarczyk | null photo | Getty Images
Under the new performance appraisal system starting next year, more Google employees are expected to be at risk of poor performance reviews and fewer will reach high ratings, according to an internal communication obtained by CNBC. increase.
recently Google At an all-hands meeting and another presentation last week, management detailed the new performance review process. Under the new system, Google estimates that his 6% of full-time employees fall into the low-ranking category with high risk of remediation, up from 2% previously. At the same time, it becomes difficult to achieve high scores. Google predicts that 22% of employees will be rated in one of his two highest categories, compared to 27% previously.
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As an example, to create a new highest-rated category, Transformational Impact, employees must have “achieved the near impossible” and contributed “more than we thought possible.” I have.
Earlier this year, Google announced a new process for performance reviews known as Google Reviews and Development (GRAD).
But recently CNBC report Employees complain about procedural and technical issues with GRAD near the end of the year deadline and worry they won’t be evaluated accurately. Anxiety is exacerbated by a wave of layoffs in the tech industry. Google has so far avoided the massive job cuts that have hit other tech companies. metaemployees are I became uneasy if they can be next.
At a December all-hands meeting on the topic, employees voiced their frustration to executives. Executives have long touted transparency, but did not provide direct answers to questions about personnel. Some employees think the new performance appraisal system could be a way for the company to cut headcount.
Headcount numbers remain a concern for employees through the second half of 2022. CEO Sundar Pichai found myself defensive In September, he was forced to explain the company’s changed position after years of rapid growth. did not rule out gender.
And in November, a number of employees at an all-hands meeting asked for clarity on management’s plans for headcount, when Google increased its workforce by 24% year-over-year in Q3 2022. I even asked if management mismanaged their personnel.
As of the third quarter, the company employs 186,779 full-time employees. It also employs a similar amount of contractors.
According to recent documents about GRAD, the company is looking at bonuses, salaries and equity, and hopes to “increase per capita spending on overall compensation.” The company also said it still plans to pay within the top 5% to 10% of market rates.
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
‘Much pain and anger’
At the company’s most recent all-hands meeting on Dec. 8, many of the highest-rated questions described stress related to year-end performance reviews, according to conference audio obtained by CNBC. The questions also suggest that some employees do not trust company leadership to be transparent about how people are treated.
Among the questions Pichai read aloud, one employee asked, “Why did Google push support check-in assignments to frontline managers a few days before the deadline?” “I’ve been through a lot with Google over his 5 years and this is the worst.”
“Many of the last-minute support check-ins were forced through parts of the cloud to meet quotas, and seem to have caused a lot of pain and anger,” another employee asked. With only two weeks to fix, how does this helpful feedback help you? How can we prevent this from happening in the future?”
“The support check-in process is confusing and a source of stress and anxiety for Googlers, especially given the current economic climate and rumors about layoffs.”
Earlier this month, CNBC report Employees began to receive “support check-ins” related to poor performance reviews in the final days leading up to the year-end deadline. They also said executives changed some of the processes on the last day.
Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, eventually said, “I know it’s been hard,” while briefly acknowledging GRAD’s problems at a recent all-hands meeting.
“It’s not ideal for support check-ins to happen very late in the review cycle. We know we need time to absorb feedback and act on it. Right.”
Several employees asked executives if there was a quota for placing employees in low-performing categories in order to cut headcount in 2023.
One question asked management whether Google was becoming a “stack ranking company like Amazon,” referring to the process of using quotas to place employees into specific performance buckets. increase.
“Uncertainty about the GRAD process puts a lot of pressure on lower-level managers to communicate and sometimes enforce ‘contradictory items’ on performance reviews.
In another article, “Layoffs across the industry were a topic affecting Googlers, causing stress, anxiety and burnout.” There has been no official communication regarding this, further raising concerns regarding the matter. When will the company address this topic?”
However, management mostly avoided answering questions directly. CEO Sundar Pichai kept saying, “I don’t know what the future holds.”
“What we’ve been working hard to do is prioritize what we can do so that we’re better prepared to weather the storm, no matter what’s ahead,” Pichai said. I really don’t know, so unfortunately I can’t make any positive promises, but everything we’ve planned as a company for the last 6-7 months, we’ve been working hard to try and do things the way we do. I’m doing the best I can, so that’s all I can say.”
