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Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

bloomberg.com

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Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

#151

Post by the_af »

zabzonk wrote: post #134
hiddencost wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is much the opposite: the managers who want to write a lot of code usually are so focused on their contributions they fail their other responsibilities. The ones who are trying to set product direction are usually harmful, too. The managers I've had the best experience with are the ones who focus on helping their ICs navigate the larger organization, dealing with human issues, and helping the ICs unders…

what's an IC? a piece of corporate-speak i haven't come across before.

Others have answered what the words "IC" mean, but let me add that this is the usual name for the technical career track, i.e. the not-management track, meant for people who do not want to manage teams of people.

Strictly speaking, the roles of Engineer Manager and IC are incompatible; you cannot want to manage people and at the same time want to stay out of it. So in this particular context, "EM+IC" is a misnomer for "EMs who also need to be able handle tech/coding tasks themselves".

Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

#152

Post by conductr »

flashgordon wrote: post #67

I had cautiously gotten into management because I wanted to learn the skills of delegatin and really building through others and growing/coaching others. I thoroughly enjoyed this. But over time what I had realized was the role had been changing (not sure if it was just for pandering) towards being a mouth piece for leadership and hr - having to relay decisions I didn't believe in (perf seasons, promo rationales, lay…

The best thing you can do in these roles is protect your team. It's your primary job to ensure they can build and with minimal wasted efforts. If you view it as building for the company, your team is a victim to all the dysfunctions of the organization and nobody wants to be on that team. The mouthpiece part is tricky, I always try to give the official message with a dose of my personal candid opinion on it even if it's in opposition. You just can't lay it on too thick and try to find a way to spin it to a positive as to not be demotivating for the team, "it might be challenging, but at least we'll learn X and they're aware of the risks that are at top of your minds."

Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

#153

Post by PragmaticPulp »

throwaway4837 wrote: post #111

Zuck has it right. All the worst managers/directors/VPs in engineering I've seen are people who don't contribute anything to the codebase. They actively discourage managers who want to write code from writing code. They instead encourage them to focus fully on process and sprint management. Lots of backwards ideologies in tech perpetuated by B-players who got a little too comfortable with "people management". I would…

I have worked with some fantastic "people managers" in my career who don't write code. But they usually faded into the background most of the time, except for when they needed to communicate something or I needed their help with something.

The bad managers were always working hard to schedule more meetings, force extra process into every step of our work, make decisions about how we did our work, and to change our priorities to work on their pet projects.

The bad managers occupied 10X more of my time than the good managers. It only took one or two bad managers to completely derail productivity of an entire group.

Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

#154

Post by the_af »

rsynnott wrote: post #148
the_af wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the EM becomes an IC, how does this help the team grow their own skills and not get distracted by problems the EM should be moving out of their way? When the EM is an IC, what stops them from either interfering with small stuff (I had an EM -- back then we called them "managers" -- stop us for a week trying to determine whether we should use List or Vector in Scala. Nobody was happy) or taking the big interestin…

> When the EM becomes an IC, how does this help the team grow their own skills and not get distracted by problems the EM should be moving out of their way? Well, generally the team would still have an EM, just not that EM. > When the EM is an IC, what stops them from either interfering with small stuff What stops any IC doing that?

> Well, generally the team would still have an EM, just not that EM

If there is an EM role, I don't see the problem. I took TFA to mean "become an EM who also codes".

> What stops any IC doing that?

Nothing, but an IC has by definition time to tackle big problems. Also, other ICs are their peers. An EM+IC has no time to tackle big problems -- or if they do, then they are neglecting their management role -- and so by default will tend to focus on nitpicking or small tasks. Tasks that are best done by junior level ICs.

Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

#156

Post by zabzonk »

eftychis wrote: post #139
zabzonk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's an IC? a piece of corporate-speak i haven't come across before.

Individual Contributor. Don't ask me why in heavens that term makes any sense outside one that is myopic or only works with extremely fresh out of school junior engineers and unskilled workers. Edit: P.S. Not sure why a couple of people decided to downvote this opinion. Also to other commenters: it sounds to me less as a be a team player title (like the soldier one suggested) and more like an isolated resource that m…

when did this appear? i literally have never seen it before i read this post, and it makes no sense at all to me.

Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

#157

Post by birdyrooster »

zabzonk wrote: post #134
hiddencost wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is much the opposite: the managers who want to write a lot of code usually are so focused on their contributions they fail their other responsibilities. The ones who are trying to set product direction are usually harmful, too. The managers I've had the best experience with are the ones who focus on helping their ICs navigate the larger organization, dealing with human issues, and helping the ICs unders…

what's an IC? a piece of corporate-speak i haven't come across before.

Individual contributor

Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

#158

Post by hello_moto »

the_af wrote: post #88
whatshisface wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their manager should be keeping an eye on them. That's why you have "middle management."

I thought we wanted to get rid of layers of management?

This is effectively demoting and laying off middle management.

These SDMs won't be an IC _and_ manager. These SDMs are demoted.

Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

#159

Post by saberience »

nerdponx wrote: post #94
flashgordon wrote: post #67

I had cautiously gotten into management because I wanted to learn the skills of delegatin and really building through others and growing/coaching others. I thoroughly enjoyed this. But over time what I had realized was the role had been changing (not sure if it was just for pandering) towards being a mouth piece for leadership and hr - having to relay decisions I didn't believe in (perf seasons, promo rationales, lay…

> As if they were on purely my own Is this actually the expectation at the places you work?

Imagine this from a military perspective. The general/field marshal etc makes the call that you're going over the top and as a smart Major or whatever you know this means most of your men are going to die. Are you going to say to your men:

"Hello gents, we have our new orders, we're going to go over the top tomorrow at 8am and try and take the village one mile down the road, however, I think this is a horrible idea and you're all probably going to die."

Even if you really believe this is the case, it's a bad idea to tell your men as it means the plan (which is going to happen anyway) is even LESS likely to succeed. That is, if you can make your men believe the plan is genius and they're going to destroy the enemy easily, it may give them more confidence and leave more of them alive at the end of it.

Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

#160

Post by ugh123 »

This is good.

We're finally pulling back on the "HRBP-sponsored" people-management hype train thats rolled through much of SV startups and FAANG over the last 5-10 years:

"Focus on your people, give them the support and mentorship they need to grow. Also 1-on-1s every week." - and all that bullshit.

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