Hardware Podcasts

Engineering Incentives... and Misincentives

Oxide and Friends · 4 Oct 2022 · 1h 05m · Episode 29

What this episode covers

Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal, and guests from Oxide Computer Company discuss how engineering incentives at companies like Google and Sun Microsystems often promote launching new products while neglecting maintenance and long-term stability. They analyze specific misincentives, such as patent rewards that encouraged frivolous filings and bug-count metrics that distorted priorities, arguing that these structures lead to unintended negative outcomes like 'cobra breeding.' The group proposes solutions including explicit promotion criteria for maintenance work, public versus private praise strategies, and aligning compensation with intrinsic satisfaction rather than extrinsic metrics to foster healthier engineering cultures.

Most relevant to

large enterprises

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Oxide Computer Company, Google, Sun Microsystems, Joyent, Delphix, NetApp, Ericsson
Products
Stadia
Also
v-nodes, Ypsilanti, National University of Singapore

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