Deedy on X: "I heard the greatest story of promotion incentive hacking at FAANG today.

A very well known Engg VP knew that:<br>a) you can only really be promoted in ~2 yrs. the few cycles after a promotion are pointless<br>b) you are promoted on your impact, complexity, scope, leadership and" / X<br>Post

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Deedy on X: "I heard the greatest story of promotion incentive hacking at FAANG today.

A very well known Engg VP knew that:<br>a) you can only really be promoted in ~2 yrs. the few cycles after a promotion are pointless<br>b) you are promoted on your impact, complexity, scope, leadership and"

Deedy

@deedydas

I heard the greatest story of promotion incentive hacking at FAANG today.

A very well known Engg VP knew that:<br>a) you can only really be promoted in ~2 yrs. the few cycles after a promotion are pointless<br>b) you are promoted on your impact, complexity, scope, leadership and independence

In order to make sure his entire team gets promoted in due time, he would just ensure the ~25% of his team 2yrs into their level and "up for promo" this cycle take credit for the work of the entire team, with their consent, gets promoted, and repeat round robin.

Over the years, everyone on his team would get promoted always on time leading to others wanting to join his team. His headcount would keep increasing, and he'd get promoted too! Yet effectively the team was producing about ~50% of their entire capacity because after a promo, no one really had to do any work. Almost everyone on their team clears $1M+/yr.

Beautiful and disgusting example of gaming broken incentive structures at large institutions.<br>span:not(:empty)~span:not(:empty)]:before:content-['·'] [&>span:not(:empty)~span:not(:empty)]:before:px-1 [&>span:not(:empty)~span:not(:empty)]:before:shrink-0">4:59 AM · Aug 8, 2026574.2KViews

136<br>156<br>5.8K<br>2K

span:not(:empty)~span:not(:empty)]:before:content-['·'] [&>span:not(:empty)~span:not(:empty)]:before:px-1 [&>span:not(:empty)~span:not(:empty)]:before:shrink-0 min-w-0 overflow-hidden">Deedy

@deedydas

Aug 8

If it's not abundantly obvious, what makes it disgusting is because it games a system clearly not designed to be treated this way and makes it unfair to others within the same company who just do consistent good work that may not lead to a crescendo during a promo cycle.

It's Show more

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span:not(:empty)~span:not(:empty)]:before:content-['·'] [&>span:not(:empty)~span:not(:empty)]:before:px-1 [&>span:not(:empty)~span:not(:empty)]:before:shrink-0 min-w-0 overflow-hidden">Chris Paxton

@chris_j_paxton

Aug 8

I actually believe building a big team with enough internal trust to pull this off is genuinely a pretty big accomplishment haha

115<br>4.5K

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Deedy@deedydasFollow<br>Partner at @MenloVentures. Investor: Anthropic, OpenRouter, Modal, Wispr, Pangram, Inception, Goodfire, PrimeIntellect

prior: Glean, Google Search. Cornell CS.

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