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How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

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Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#111

Post by natarius4k »

officepolitics wrote: post #78

> 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. They are put in those positions because of their strong people skills. They aren’t there to tell teams what to do. That almost brings a tear to my eye. This is such a huge contrast to what my current experience is at BigCorp. And that's just a few miles a…

No, manager can't prevent you from switching to any other team or even start a team on your own. The idea behind this is that it ensures that talent naturally gravitates towards teams with most impact. Managers have no say!

Reviews are written by your peers (that usually includes your manager).

Reviews need to quote actual success metrics to prove the impact you had...just writting "bob is dope" won't take you far :)

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#112

Post by argonaut »

embiggen wrote: post #81
gregdoesit wrote: post #33

I have a bunch of friends at Facebook - and from what I hear, this article is not very far off from what is happening. And it's all about many of the seniors leading with example. 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 develo…

With many close friends who work at $FB, I promise you politics are alive and well :)

Yes, but this doesn't add much because any human situation involving more than 2 people involves interpersonal dynamics, AKA politics. It's a question of how much.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#113

Post by FaOS2qDWbFeRK2h »

embiggen wrote: post #81
gregdoesit wrote: post #33

I have a bunch of friends at Facebook - and from what I hear, this article is not very far off from what is happening. And it's all about many of the seniors leading with example. 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 develo…

With many close friends who work at $FB, I promise you politics are alive and well :)

Is "$FB" the new "Micro$oft"?

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#114

Post by jomamaxx »

specialist wrote: post #102
dreamsofdragons wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team" I favor democratic decision making processes. Use voting systems appropriate for the task. Roman eval for new hires, go/no go. Approval voting for triage, new features. JADs for "visions". Creative writing exercise for post-mortems. Etc. "Democratic" does not mean winner-takes-all, which is suboptimal. "Democratic" does not mean consensus.

"Use voting systems appropriate for the task. "

I rather don't agree with this one.

'Voting' should almost never, ever be used.

For so many reasons.

Rarely should everyone have an 'equal say'. You are not 'equal citizens' in this. Second - is that it leads to politics - 'I helped you last time, you help me this time' etc. Unless you get into crazy things like 'hidden ballots'.

There is no substitute for leadership.

Often, a mediocre decision, executed upon well, will lead to better outcomes than 'great decisions' wherein their is fudging, lack of insight etc..

In situations that require broad input, a decent moderator should be able to assess the 'consensus' and go with that.

In many design situations, architects and designers should basically set the direction, absent issues brought up by team members.

Things like 'should we all use the same IDE' or 'what IDE's can we use' - obviously require a lot of input from team members and maximum flexibility.

But things like API design ... that needs to be really well curated and it's best left to the experts - with strong feedback from team members.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#115

Post by specialist »

jomamaxx wrote: post #114
specialist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team" I favor democratic decision making processes. Use voting systems appropriate for the task. Roman eval for new hires, go/no go. Approval voting for triage, new features. JADs for "visions". Creative writing exercise for post-mortems. Etc. "Democratic" does not mean winner-takes-all, which is suboptimal. "Democratic" does not mean consensus.

"Use voting systems appropriate for the task. " I rather don't agree with this one. 'Voting' should almost never, ever be used. For so many reasons. Rarely should everyone have an 'equal say'. You are not 'equal citizens' in this. Second - is that it leads to politics - 'I helped you last time, you help me this time' etc. Unless you get into crazy things like 'hidden ballots'. There is no substitute for leadership. O…

The word you're looking for is neoreactionary.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#116

Post by proksoup »

specialist wrote: post #104
proksoup wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found consensus decision making to be frustrating in the environments I've encountered it. A lot of flip flopping and lack of follow through. Who made that decision? We did. Can we give up on that and try something else? Of course. I kinda like to have at least a shepherd for the day to day decisions, if not a commander. In practice in my current environment it's been the occasional PM that takes some ownership…

While it can work, "consensus" usually means ad hoc, no accountability, no followthru. This essay was illuminating: Tyranny of Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...

Yes, "Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group."

The same essay was linked to me a previous time I made a similar public complaint :)

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#117

Post by serge2k »

dreamsofdragons wrote: post #24
wskinner wrote: post #8

"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.

> Sure management will still do approvals for time off

Not a peer.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#118

Post by tn13 »

wskinner wrote: post #8

"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.

This is true. I think organizations need to create more space for developers to grow as leaders which I don't see happening.

In silicon valley contacts are as valuable as money and a person with manager in his title will build contacts faster and achieve more than a developer who actually might have made more impact for his employer.

People with manager in title can work from home more often, travel on company paid trips more often and in general have a better social life than developers. At the end of the day managers can make a developers life bad if he/she wants too. That is what matters.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#119

Post by korrach »

Spivak wrote: post #6
gmarx wrote: post #2

"Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell. I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massive…

> No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way Except, for example, the ACM Software Engineer's code of ethics where this is the explicitly stated order. [1] http://www.acm.org/about/se-code

>8. SELF - Software engineers shall participate in lifelong learning regarding the practice of their profession and shall promote an ethical approach to the practice of the profession.

Software engineers shall eat learning comrades.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#120

Post by kmonsen »

alexgartrell wrote: post #59
wskinner wrote: post #8

"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.

I think you're absolutely right, in general, but I've been at Facebook for 5 years now, and the one thing I'll say about it is that once you establish a track record of 1) doing good work and 2) making good long-term decisions, that trumps any considerations around level. The culture is definitely such that the very senior folks (Director++) will value trust over level, so it's very much "influence over authority." P…

"value trust over level"

Isn't this the definition of politics? Trust is a personal feeling based on other opinion and your own experience while level should be based on documented achievements in the company.

Same with influence over authority. Influence is just another word for politics.

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