How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics • Hacker News Board

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#181

Post by amaks » Sun, Jul 03, 2016, 3:44 AM UTC

natarius4k wrote: post #111

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 :)

What about situations when your performance review score is low? Sure, manager may not prevent you from moving the team, but company policy may do.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#182

Post by elgoog1212 » Sun, Jul 03, 2016, 6:42 AM UTC

zump wrote: post #180

brianx wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that Google is turning into shit. It seems to me it's always been like that. I've been at Google for 4 years and noticed very quickly that turning software engineers into managers could not possibly work. I've switched teams recently and am happier for the time being, but my previous manager sucked ass. My new project is actually quite interesting. There's very little politics involved too, which is a pl…

> The worst part about Google for me is the level of incivility. This is what, the 4th time a senior exec has to call people out and tell them to behave on memegen? And it's only getting worse. What does this mean?

Memegen is actually the best part about Google. It's an internal meme site where people poke fun at the various failings (perceived or real) of Google, each other, and upper management. You can even poke fun at the founders and the CEO, and people often do. Though of course neither the founders nor the CEO actually read it.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#183

Post by astrange » Sun, Jul 03, 2016, 10:36 AM UTC

kawera wrote: post #93

Retra wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM is set up the same way, to a degree. They have "IBM fellows" who are essentially executive-level engineers. I don't think it extends all the way down though.

3M is another company with similar dual track system for engineers/scientists.

All large tech companies (Apple, MS, LinkedIn, Oracle, Google at least) have the same official ranks for engineers that go Senior, Staff, Distinguished, Fellow. But that doesn't mean anyone ever gets promoted up there. I think there's at most three Fellows in any of those companies at a time.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#184

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 1:59 AM 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 --…

[deleted]

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#185

Post by tlogan » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 7:56 AM UTC

alttab wrote: post #173

tlogan wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to make the same point. Many large software companies have very similar structure. Since I had personal experience working in these companies here what I found as problem: - Management has decision making power. - Management has ability to control $$ (bonus allocation, etc.) - Management has access to more information than employees on "individual contributor" track It is important to note that system work u…

I feel good managers often delegate the decision making power to the group or team leads. This creates scale for the manager, and allows room for the development teams to develop leaders and judgement. Companies that are set up well also give minimal control over bonus allocation or salaries. These things should be controlled by HR and recruiting, along with salary and compensation policies based on role and level. M…

Two comments.

Relaying on HR for anything related to company development and future (i.e., bonuses) is very very dangerous. I was there and you have to see shenanigans and company politics in that case.

So the problem is:

1. you can give power to HRs to allocate bonuses

2. you can give power to EVPs and VPs to allocate bonuses

It is much better to give this power to EVPs and VPs.

> And by design, management will have access to more information than

> individual contributors, but that's the purpose of the role.

And that cause of the problem :( ICs will have less information and thus when things come to making decisions, people on management track will make better decisions (since they are have more information) and thus subsequent promotion. I was also there...

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#186

Post by tedks » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 7:12 PM UTC

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...

While I've always thought that essay made good points, it's somewhat dangerous to overinterpret the thoughts of a Stalinist on groups without structure. Her solution is (obviously) to just have hierarchical structure, but this leaves you with the same problems as structureless, there's now just a channel by which people who play the game well can pretend to be accountable. Stalin himself proves that hierarchical groups aren't more accountable, even if they nominally have mechanisms to be so.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#187

Post by alttab » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #185

alttab wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel good managers often delegate the decision making power to the group or team leads. This creates scale for the manager, and allows room for the development teams to develop leaders and judgement. Companies that are set up well also give minimal control over bonus allocation or salaries. These things should be controlled by HR and recruiting, along with salary and compensation policies based on role and level. M…

Two comments. Relaying on HR for anything related to company development and future (i.e., bonuses) is very very dangerous. I was there and you have to see shenanigans and company politics in that case. So the problem is: 1. you can give power to HRs to allocate bonuses 2. you can give power to EVPs and VPs to allocate bonuses It is much better to give this power to EVPs and VPs. > And by design, management will have…

I wasn't considering performance based bonuses. Either way, the company hopefully has a bonus policy that is at least enforced by HR when it comes to cutting checks.

Either way - I think you may have misinterpreted my remarks about HR.