How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics • Hacker News Board

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#151

Post by nilkn » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #150

nilkn wrote: post #148

I can't speak about FB personally, but I learned the hard way my first few years out of college that at most companies managers are simply given more respect, power, and money than engineers in general. It takes an extraordinarily talented high-impact developer who revolutionizes the company's technology in order to match a run-of-the-mill Director or VP who just shows up to work and "manages" teams of developers --…

I really don't understand this view. They're different jobs. If you want to have the power an exec has become an exec. More than likely you cannot do both effectively at the same time. Yes, there are shitty managers but there are also a lot of them doing stuff an engineer doesn't have the skills to do. In all industries people think they could do a better job than their boss - usually it's not true and if it is learn…

I didn't say they were the same job. I said they were accorded different levels of respect and prestige, which is what this post is about. I didn't want to be a pure executive or manager.

At that company, it was, frankly, impossible for a developer to get the same perks as a manager. I'm sure there are companies out there that handle this a lot better and don't make management the only path to promotion. These have just been the minority in my personal experience.

---

I also agree with you for what it's worth that management is a skill in and of itself that most developers wouldn't be good at. The point I was making in my previous post was a little more nuanced. Think of it like this. At a large company, there might be 100 VPs who are pure managers, and there might be 5 very distinguished engineers who are at the same VP level. This creates the impression that developers can rise up just as high in the company, when in reality it's more of an illusion. The technical skill level necessary to reach VP level as a developer is astronomically high. The management skill level necessary to reach VP level as a pure manager is certainly not low by any means, but it's comparatively much lower than it is for VP engineers.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#152

Post by blackoil » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 3:46 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #148

I can't speak about FB personally, but I learned the hard way my first few years out of college that at most companies managers are simply given more respect, power, and money than engineers in general. It takes an extraordinarily talented high-impact developer who revolutionizes the company's technology in order to match a run-of-the-mill Director or VP who just shows up to work and "manages" teams of developers --…

our company (few 1000 devs) has a parallel hierarchy of ICs going all the way up to VP reporting directly to CEO. They are one of the most respected and influential people in company. While each team has complete freedom in terms of tech stack and other decisions, they drive company wide things like migration to cloud, inhouse big data platforms.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#153

Post by vimota » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

blackoil wrote: post #152

nilkn wrote: post #148

I can't speak about FB personally, but I learned the hard way my first few years out of college that at most companies managers are simply given more respect, power, and money than engineers in general. It takes an extraordinarily talented high-impact developer who revolutionizes the company's technology in order to match a run-of-the-mill Director or VP who just shows up to work and "manages" teams of developers --…

our company (few 1000 devs) has a parallel hierarchy of ICs going all the way up to VP reporting directly to CEO. They are one of the most respected and influential people in company. While each team has complete freedom in terms of tech stack and other decisions, they drive company wide things like migration to cloud, inhouse big data platforms.

Would love to know the company!

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#154

Post by k-mcgrady » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #151

k-mcgrady wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand this view. They're different jobs. If you want to have the power an exec has become an exec. More than likely you cannot do both effectively at the same time. Yes, there are shitty managers but there are also a lot of them doing stuff an engineer doesn't have the skills to do. In all industries people think they could do a better job than their boss - usually it's not true and if it is learn…

I didn't say they were the same job. I said they were accorded different levels of respect and prestige, which is what this post is about. I didn't want to be a pure executive or manager. At that company, it was, frankly, impossible for a developer to get the same perks as a manager. I'm sure there are companies out there that handle this a lot better and don't make management the only path to promotion. These have j…

Thanks for the clarifications.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#155

Post by WalterSear » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #47

tibbe wrote: post #36

> "Managers focus on ..., creating a vision for how that team will execute its goals" 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.

In more traditional structures, managers are often in charge of figuring out that vision because they argue the buck stops with them, so they need the authority to make decisions to arrive at the outcome that meets their goals. Unfortunately, what often happens is managers think they are more knowledgeable than the ICs on the team. This in turn leads to ICs not being invested in the outcomes as much as if it were the…

Funny, I had one of those meetings at work just yesterday.

"Given X, Y and Z goals, how would you solve for this knowing A) these are the constraints and B) that me and the other cofounder have already decided what we want to do, and really just want your buy in."

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#156

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:07 PM UTC

vimota wrote: post #153

blackoil wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

our company (few 1000 devs) has a parallel hierarchy of ICs going all the way up to VP reporting directly to CEO. They are one of the most respected and influential people in company. While each team has complete freedom in terms of tech stack and other decisions, they drive company wide things like migration to cloud, inhouse big data platforms.

Would love to know the company!

[deleted]

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#157

Post by MrZipf » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

Kudos to FB. It's a hard problem as you scale. I have a few friends who suggest the article matches their experiences there.

Being a 40-something engineer, you hear the same things over and again. I used to work at MSFT and my first manager there used to espouse company, team, self every day as the HBR article does. He'd regular re-evaluate his priorities based on what is the most beneficial task I can work on for the company today. Makes me wonder if it appears in management books or people just get wired that way.

It definitely a reasonable way to proceed most of the time. Firsthand, I have no doubt that most of the unpleasantness I've witnessed in tech companies is due to team or self over everything.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#158

Post by logingone » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #148

I can't speak about FB personally, but I learned the hard way my first few years out of college that at most companies managers are simply given more respect, power, and money than engineers in general. It takes an extraordinarily talented high-impact developer who revolutionizes the company's technology in order to match a run-of-the-mill Director or VP who just shows up to work and "manages" teams of developers --…

Agreed. Where I find this especially bizarre is in technical companies, or even the tech department of a company. There's a layer of devs, then a glass ceiling, then above that countless layers of management.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#159

Post by SkyMarshal » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:09 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #148

I can't speak about FB personally, but I learned the hard way my first few years out of college that at most companies managers are simply given more respect, power, and money than engineers in general. It takes an extraordinarily talented high-impact developer who revolutionizes the company's technology in order to match a run-of-the-mill Director or VP who just shows up to work and "manages" teams of developers --…

Some companies have gotten wise to this problem and created dual career tracks for engineers, management track and technical guru track, to ensure that great tech talent that want to stay in tech has a way to advance in title, pay, and responsibility without having to go into management.

If that's you, then make sure to add that to your list of jobsearch criteria and don't join a company that doesn't have it. Lack of it is almost a guarantee management is unenlightened about tech talent.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#160

Post by SkyMarshal » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

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…

>There is no substitute for leadership.

Second this, true in my experience as well.