31–40 of 187 posts
"At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. " This is nice in theory. But when your "peers" with Manager in their title have access to more information and more decision-making power, it is not in fact a parallel track. Just saying people are equal doesn't make it so, and it doesn't change the underlying organizational structures.
Take Philip Su, who was the site lead for Facebook London. In most organizations, that would translate to "manager of everything happening at Facebook". After 3 years he decided to take another lateral move - to move back to software development (no lead, just a software engineer) https://www.facebook.com/the.philip.su/timeline/story?ut=32&...
When you work at a company where managers demonstrate that it is a lateral move - moving from management to individual contribution - well, then this stuff starts to work.
Another thing that this article does not touch on, is the transparency that people at Facebook share what's going on with them professionally. My buddy said a senior person shared on Facebook @work how he had gotten a bad performance review, and how this made him feel... for all other employees to see, and comment on. My buddy was saying that "when I joined, I thought that people were just drinking kool aid about how our culture is different. But now that I'm in - I seriously have not expected it to be this different to anywhere I've worked before"
I do think that Facebook is doing something incredible with keeping a very startup like and transparent culture going at this large scale. No other company of this size even comes close.
The system would supersede and replace managers. Your rating would be hidden as well.
Poor web design.
anyway...
> Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order.
This just sounds so obnoxious to me.
> At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. Managers are there to support people and to remove barriers to getting things done. Managers focus on building a great team, creating a vision for how that team will execute its goals, and helping the people on that team develop in their careers
All of those things sound like they add up to much more influence and responsibility than you get as an IC.
> “Then who is in charge?” Lest anyone think it’s a Lord of the Flies scenario, our managers still moderate, facilitate, and tie-break.
So the manager is in charge. But you know, feel free to suggest stuff plebs.
> We provide different opportunities for growth by empowering employees to work on new projects or in new groups when interested. This keeps ICs engaged by allowing them to broaden their areas of expertise and expand or focus their scope by moving to projects at different levels of development
So does this mean you don't make me jump through hoops to switch to another team? Large part of why I quit my last job was because I find the idea that I have to do an interview, to get the same job I'm already doing, ridiculous.
The idea of the hackamonth sounds like it could help with this acutally. You are already employed by the company, just go talk to the manager and ask to switch for a month. At the end talk again and decide if it is a good fit.
Way better than getting stuck on a lousy team, with a poor manager, who is able to trap you with bad reviews and threats.
Confusing management with leadership is one of the main reasons for politics and empire building. Once managers think they're in charge of figuring out the vision, instead of that being the whole team's responsibility, you're lost in top-down management land.
"At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. " This is nice in theory. But when your "peers" with Manager in their title have access to more information and more decision-making power, it is not in fact a parallel track. Just saying people are equal doesn't make it so, and it doesn't change the underlying organizational structures.
If you set up the culture right, this isn't as big of a problem as you might think. On our team, it doesn't matter if you're the manager or not, the decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team. Sure management will still do approvals for time off and deal with the skinned knees and runny noses. But for day to day operations, it's peers working for a common cause.
"At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. " This is nice in theory. But when your "peers" with Manager in their title have access to more information and more decision-making power, it is not in fact a parallel track. Just saying people are equal doesn't make it so, and it doesn't change the underlying organizational structures.
If you set up the culture right, this isn't as big of a problem as you might think. On our team, it doesn't matter if you're the manager or not, the decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team. Sure management will still do approvals for time off and deal with the skinned knees and runny noses. But for day to day operations, it's peers working for a common cause.
"At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. " This is nice in theory. But when your "peers" with Manager in their title have access to more information and more decision-making power, it is not in fact a parallel track. Just saying people are equal doesn't make it so, and it doesn't change the underlying organizational structures.
If you set up the culture right, this isn't as big of a problem as you might think. On our team, it doesn't matter if you're the manager or not, the decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team. Sure management will still do approvals for time off and deal with the skinned knees and runny noses. But for day to day operations, it's peers working for a common cause.
"Take the incentive out of “climbing the ladder.” Some of the organization structure setup is not unique to Facebook. My former boss was a long time Microsoft employee, from what I heard from her anecdotally, Microsoft has long been setup with dual tracks for technical employees. The management track and the engineer track. One moves from engineer track to management track is a true lateral move in that salary don't…