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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

#191

Post by zabzonk »

sbrother wrote: post #170
the_af wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

TLM is the term I've heard for that more often.

what does TLM mean? i wish that all you folks out there would understand that nobody outside your bubble knows what these daft abbreviations stands for, much less mean.

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

#192

Post by cletus »

This is long overdue.

Years ago playing Civ 4 I distinctly remember hearing Leonard Nimoy's voice say "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy". That's what management in these companies is like. It became a meme that every 6 months you'd get an email saying "your manager's manager's manager's manager now reports to a new manager". You'd never seen, heard of or let alone met any of these people.

A large company like this should ahve a structure that's really no deper than:

1. CEO

2. SVP

3. VP

4. Director and really high level ICs

5. Manager and high-level ICs

6. ICs

Any deeper than that is organizational bloat. The above will allow ~5000 ICs per SVP without any layer having two many branches (eg a manager should really have no more than 10-15 reports).

This is better than layoffs because mid-level management is more responsible for bad company strategy than any IC is. Even though this is a step in the right direction, Zuck still faces two way bigger problems:

1. There is no vision for the company's key assets (ie FB, IG, WA). All of these seem to be relatively stagnant (if not in outright decline) and facing pressure from new platforms, most notably Tiktok as well as the behemoth that Youtube remains; and

2. There is absolutely no product market fit for the metaverse, certainly none that justifies sinking tens of billions of dollars into it.

Disclaimer: ex-Facebooker.

Disclaimer:

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

#193

Post by rodgerd »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #131
nerdponx wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Is this actually the expectation at the places you work? Can you imagine a manager saying, "I don't agree with these decisions, but you need to do A, B, C." This might be being frank and open with your reports, but at the same time you reduce their motivation. And if top management learns about this, they won't be happy. So yes, there is such unspoken pressure to at least not to distance oneself from the things you…

> Can you imagine a manager saying, "I don't agree with these decisions, but you need to do A, B, C."

Some of my best managers, on well-regarded teams, have done exactly that. Those managers are doing me a favour by flagging that it's a waste of my time, emotional energy, and political capital to argue with decisions that neither they nor I can affect, and that it will be better if we just get on with it.

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

#195

Post by hello_moto »

rsynnott wrote: post #173
hello_moto wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is effectively demoting and laying off middle management. These SDMs won't be an IC _and_ manager. These SDMs are demoted.

Eh, not necessarily demoted; many companies, and I'd assume Facebook, would have IC levels parallel to their EM levels. They might be looking at... sidemotion?

> would have IC levels parallel to their EM levels. They might be looking at... sidemotion

Sure. Many companies do this too. Like Senior Engineer at the level of Engineering Manager and Staff at the level of Senior Engineer Manager.

They don't have direct report and they still write code.

Same payband and leveling but different job function.

But at the end of the day, the ICs still have to "report" to Management: Senior Engineer even if they have same payband and leveling still have to report to an actual Manager.

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

#196

Post by DSMan195276 »

Alupis wrote: post #95
henriquez wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that basically constructive termination?

No, because these positions are genuinely being offered as an alternative to being laid off. If you choose not to take the new position, then you have terminated yourself.

Well the details are important here - are they being laid off, or is Meta suggesting they quit and then forcing them into a new role? The beginning of the article just says they're "asking" them to leave the company, not firing them, and I can't read the rest so it's a bit unclear what they're doing.

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

#197

Post by baggy_trough »

cletus wrote: post #192

This is long overdue. Years ago playing Civ 4 I distinctly remember hearing Leonard Nimoy's voice say "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy". That's what management in these companies is like. It became a meme that every 6 months you'd get an email saying "your manager's manager's manager's manager now reports to a new manager". You'd never seen, heard of or let alone met any of…

FB is attempting to burn the ships by renaming to Meta and focusing heavily on that. Unfortunately, metaverse is a loser.

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

#198

Post by anyfoo »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #153
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 pr…

> 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.

Yep, that's familiar. Good "people managers" have always been the ones that removed obstacles, and didn't become one themselves.

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

#199

Post by zabzonk »

coliveira wrote: post #189
zabzonk wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is FAANG speak. They created this role for people who are not (directly) involved in management.

so i guess that managers are not individuals and don't contribute? might be true. but i've been a manager and an individual and contributed code. well, who knows?

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

#200

Post by jdeibele »

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.

I'm guessing Individual Contributor. Someone who is not management but also not support (administrator, sales, HR, etc.)
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