Middle management bloat is real. At one point there were 16 layers of management between me and the ceo when I was at a staff engineer. However the other extreme (like in places like Twitter, since the author mentioned it), you have 20 people reporting to a single manager. That is not a great place to work in. The managers are just stretched thin and the ICs are left to deal with the chaos. This becomes really hard for newer or junior engineers.
Meta Layoffs
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Re: Meta Layoffs
#22I just have to point out the irony that a company which believes so much in virtual work that they renamed themselves after the "metaverse" is now thinking to require employees to return to the office.
there is irony, but it also doesnt have to be a binary all office/no office situation. even 10% of time spent meeting people in "the metaverse" would be a huge shift (i say this as a metaverse skeptic)
Re: Meta Layoffs
#23I was a PM at Meta from 2016-2022. I work at a startup now and have to write detailed specs and deal with lots of small details —- something I was discouraged from doing as I rose in rank at Meta and scarcely did after the first year. Looking back, I don’t even remember what it was that I did if not that —- lots of strategy docs, aligning other teams, but no specs. I am having to unlearn a lot of bad attitudes and ha…
Are you excited to be writing lots of detailed specs? Especially in a startup, that seems terrible to me. When I've done startups, one of the best things for me about them was close collaboration with the product/design side of the house. Detailed specs would have slowed that down significantly for us.
I've noticed that people can conflate "detailed spec" with "terribly meticulous process". Close collaboration with design/product doesn't mean that writing things down isn't useful, and can come in handy specifically:
1. When capturing complex logic areas, especially if related to any areas that are related to money or legal considerations
2. When onboarding new people on any side who need to learn about or get context on a product (product, design, eng)
3. When you revisit a V2 3 months later and forgotten what decisions you made or why you made them
Lots of detailed specs to me sounds like a fast velocity of products and totally compatible with startups. That said, you also added the word "lots" that OP didn't use. It could just mean two or three!
Re: Meta Layoffs
#24The management part rings so true. 15 years ago every manager I had would be closely involved in system architecture, reviewing specs, setting engineering standards for the team, approving code and lots more. Today all of this is delegated down to ICs and even team leads and L1 managers do...meetings and other important stuff.
Sooner rather than later a large chunk of line managers and middle managers industry-wide are going to face a "what would you say you do here?" moment, and it already seems to have started at Meta.
Re: Meta Layoffs
#25Everything is rolling along smoothly, and then, bam: > High caliber, experienced employees probably get just as much done at home at the office, or maybe more… “Probably” is the key word, here. It signals to me that the author is tired of writing at this point and throws in something with little conviction or defense. I care about this point, and am inclined in the opposite direction: I think less work is done in off…
I am also vastly more productive at home than I am at an office. Especially the San Francisco lunchroom chic that plagues the city.
Re: Meta Layoffs
#26A lesson from Valve, which supposedly has no org chart: a company with no hierarchy has politics instead. I'm certain other companies that have tried that model have the same problem.
well, i think you mean there are always politics
Re: Meta Layoffs
#27TFA sez: But as we see, companies like Meta have been making an effort to quantify the effect of remote work on productivity, and concluded not only that there is some, but that it’s significant enough to warrant encouraging an unpopular return. [End TFA.]
But they have failed to do this. When they actually provide such data (a rarity), it’s cherry-picked to justify getting asses back in seats for egocentric reasons. They just want to feel the busyness of the business when they walk in the door. It makes the executives feel like they’re in charge of something.
No, the future is simple: eventually, you will be glad to hire competent people no matter where they want to work. COVID and the generally suppressed immune systems that it’s leaving behind will continue to thin the employee pool. The fascists will shut down H1-B and close the borders. You’ll hire us WFH, or hybrid, or full time in-office, by employee choice, and you’ll like it. Because otherwise you won’t have anyone to hire at all.
Re: Meta Layoffs
#28This piece goes from talking about meta layoffs to an indictment of remote work surprisingly quick.
I love remote work, because I grew up in a small city with no companies operating in my industry and when covid hit I was able to go full remote, move back home, and be around my friends and family while contributing to my company and to my local economy.
The biggest thing that has helped my dev team thrive and be able to onboard new members is mob programming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_programming). We have our own take on exactly how we do it, but the gist is that all our software engineers are in a video conference with each other as much as possible and focus on a single task.
We're starting to add new members in timezones that are 5+ hours offset from the rest of the team and that integration is proving to be hard. If anyone has advice on building TZ-distributed teams I would love to hear advice!
Re: Meta Layoffs
#29His poignant take on weekly remote work is being wrestled to the ground stick me the most:
> To me, although I’d certainly concede that WFH pares down meeting culture and certainly has benefits in logistics, it’s always been fairly obvious that in-person collaboration is more effective, produces a much stronger culture, and I suspect is important especially to larger orgs because it helps to even out performance. High caliber, experienced employees probably get just as much done at home at the office, or maybe more, but junior employees with less direction struggle more, and WFH provides the ultimate cover for less motivated people (which in a larger company will always be a percentage of the total) that might otherwise be held more accountable in-person.
It's not just about the heavy hitters, it's about the team as a whole. In person work, though a logistical headache and social annoyance, drives team cohesion.
Re: Meta Layoffs
#30I just have to point out the irony that a company which believes so much in virtual work that they renamed themselves after the "metaverse" is now thinking to require employees to return to the office.
The other deep irony is that many tech companies ruined the office by forcing open office designs. It was no secret that employees found them difficult places to be productive. And now they wonder why nobody wants to go there.