How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics • Hacker News Board

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#161

Post by tshaddox » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:28 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 --…

> I was forever stuck in a limbo of being just a "developer" while being paid as much as an executive but being excluded from every executive meeting and not even being involved in hiring for the team that would maintain the software I wrote on which the entire company depended.

In other words, my dream job.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#162

Post by pkaye » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:32 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…

One thing that helps is to get to personally know the people up the management chain better. Respect comes easier when they know you as a person instead of just a name on a document.

I learned this the easy way at a company when our manager left and it took a long time to find a replacement so all the directors and VPs would come directly to us for questions, advice, etc.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#163

Post by gradstudent » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:36 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.

But do they get a seat at the table when the company sets its strategic direction? Likewise, do they get a say when the company decides how the budget is allocated and to whom?

In my experience if the answers to these questions are no then the company is still being run by PHBs with PHB priorities and PHB viewpoints in which technical people are largely interchangeable cogs.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#164

Post by elgoog1212 » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:39 PM UTC

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I have first hand experience with both FB and Google. When it comes to office politics, Google is currently turning into shit pretty rapidly, comparatively speaking. It's still miles better than most other companies, but the deterioration is now beyond the point of no return. There are _tons_ of layers of management, and 90% of the time, you'd be hard pressed to see what they actually do besides playing power games and fucking up the products as a result (as if Google needed any help with that). Managers here are mostly ex-engineers, and most of them suck at managing. The reason why they are managers in the first place is that it's virtually impossible for an engineer to attain a level beyond T6 (and massive increase in comp that comes with that), whereas the requirement to do so if you're a manager is that you have a pulse, and you're able to take credit for your reports' work. You won't believe what kind of people get L7 and above at Google once they switch to management. At Google you don't have to be good at managing to actually manage. TL;DR: as an engineer your career at Google will end at T6 if you're lucky, and at T5 if you're not; this is where things _begin_ for managers. So Google values managers more.

FB is actually more mindful of the quality of their management talent. They put a bonfire under their feet in the form of charging managers with direct responsibility to hire for their teams, and _encouraging_ team members to leave for other teams every now and then to overcome human inertia. If you suck or if your project sucks, you will have trouble hiring and retaining talent, so pretty quickly you won't be a manager anymore.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#165

Post by ethanbond » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

personjerry wrote: post #123

kmonsen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The parent's comment uses the word "influence" more in the sense of "Merit Influence" than "Political Influence", I think

Then that means there are people whose work merits higher levels/pay/promotions/fancier desks who aren't getting them, but instead get to be advisors to people with fancy desks?

Still toxic.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#166

Post by alttab » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:47 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #159

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…

Yup. It's likely the "fellow" or "principal" position. The technical impact crosses teams and organizations, and can reach outside of VPs as well. Especially if you are writing software "the entire company depends on."

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#167

Post by ethanbond » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:48 PM UTC

qq66 wrote: post #39

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.

Product decisions can never be solely by consensus. At some point, barring massive groupthink, there will be a disagreement on some product decision (what color should this icon be?) but the icon will ultimately be assigned a color. There is some process by which that decision is made.

Yeah I'm not sure why people think consensus is a good strategy. The consensus established by a group should be about who you trust to make a decision, not the content of the decision itself.

i.e. when it comes down to the icon, your group should agree to trust the designer, and then trust the designer. The benefits are numerous: 1) People get to make the decisions within their realm of expertise, 2) No aimless debate, products are built faster, 3) If there was a bad decision, there is one person who made the decision, but the whole team should share accountability since they all agreed to trust the person who made that decision.

The process by which that decision is made is the process by which you select a person to make that decision. Ideally, that happens at the hiring level, so once, for example, a designer is assigned to your team, you already know that s/he is good enough to pick the right color. You don't have to engage in office politics to discover whether or not you can trust him/her, and you don't have to engage in office politics to allocate praise/blame in the event of particularly good/bad decisions.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#168

Post by elgoog1212 » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

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.

It is much more of a parallel track there, in the sense that it's a completely different job from that of a software engineer. Notice that they don't say anything about the length of each of the tracks. If it's money and power you care about, by all means, become a manager. Just don't expect that your job will be easy, or that you'll be able to do a ton of coding.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#169

Post by nilkn » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #161

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 was forever stuck in a limbo of being just a "developer" while being paid as much as an executive but being excluded from every executive meeting and not even being involved in hiring for the team that would maintain the software I wrote on which the entire company depended. In other words, my dream job.

Obviously no matter how you slice it I was in a good position. I don't deny that and never meant to.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#170

Post by alttab » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 8:17 PM UTC

pm wrote: post #95

Mithaldu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time i was at a place where trust went above everything, literally all the code was the worst horrible shit, because they sold tyres and that being a solid business had run into zero trouble, ever, and thought that the developer who'd been with them for over a decade was the best, since "he has never made a wrong decision" (i.e. the company hadn't gone bankrupt yet), despite his code managing to create, just…

The place I'm currently about to leave had a similar situation in times past, due to the fact they weren't a software organisation. Facebook is a software organisation, so the same situation would rarely apply. However, I think you should trust but verify. If you're unable to accomplish the verify part (for whatever reason), you'll have problems.

Yeah, a lot of people make the mistake on what type of company it is.

For instance, a lot of non-software companies may pay more and provide a director or executive level title to a developer and give them a team just to get them in the door.

What these people don't immediately realize is they are giving up being a "tier-1" employee at the organization. First and foremost if you are at say, a tire company, software is most likely a cost center and not central to the strategy. This means they wont attract good developers, and have to do things like above to get them in the door.

If you want to work with really passionate and talented software developers, you'll want to be at a primarily software organization, or one that sees the logistics of software central to the business strategy.