Yeah, I agree with you that you can't build a system where people get promoted to Senior Software Engineer just for fixing bugs and writing documentation. I do think it should be worth something.
It doesn't take a senior engineer to fix a bug, but I believe that it is a senior-level skill to be able to identify subtle bugs and pick which ones to fix.
The current situation creates perverse incentives because nobody wants to fix bugs, and everyone suffers for it. The team executes slowly because everyone has to wade through dead code, undocumented code, buggy other components. Time you invest in fixing things would probably be a net savings for your team/Google, but are probably not a net savings for you personally.
I adopt the Joel Spolsky measure of a developer as someone who is "smart and gets things done." I think a good reward system should incentivize picking the right tasks and making high-value contributions to the team, regardless of whether a lower-level employee could have theoretically done the work if it was specified and assigned to them.
Certainly it counts for something. And I fully support it leading to great reviews for OP. But being good at your job isn't the same as being able to do the next job up the promotion ladder. OP was likely on if the most impactful engineers at his level, but he failed to demonstrate he could perform the job of a Senior Engineer, which has a much greater scope than bug fixes and documentation.
Everyone calls it out as playing politics, but really it's just metric driven career development. If you can't/don't measure it, how do you know it improved? How do you know there was a gap in company value to start with?
It doesn't take a senior engineer to fix a bug, but I believe that it is a senior-level skill to be able to identify subtle bugs and pick which ones to fix.
The current situation creates perverse incentives because nobody wants to fix bugs, and everyone suffers for it. The team executes slowly because everyone has to wade through dead code, undocumented code, buggy other components. Time you invest in fixing things would probably be a net savings for your team/Google, but are probably not a net savings for you personally.
I adopt the Joel Spolsky measure of a developer as someone who is "smart and gets things done." I think a good reward system should incentivize picking the right tasks and making high-value contributions to the team, regardless of whether a lower-level employee could have theoretically done the work if it was specified and assigned to them.