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Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

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

#221

Post by gryn »

bityard wrote: post #110
RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Somebody at Meta worked really hard to make sure that when I'm using Facebook on my phone to read someone's post or comment thread, it punishes me for taking a call or answering a text message by reloading my feed with a set of completely different posts when I re-enter the app, and then making it impossible to find the previous post or thread again. No other app has gone to such extraordinary lengths to make sure yo…

have you met the desktop version of tiktok ? they went out of their way to make it not possible to click multiple suggested videos in new tabs and all others kind of anti desktop measures.

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

#222

Post by mr_gibbins »

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…

I've recently held a senior management position then left and obtained a technical position at a different organisation.

Not kidding, I nearly cried with happiness moving away from SM and into a tech position again. I was GIVEN work to do. I had NO responsibilities for others. Moreover, I was DISCOURAGED from attending unnecessary meetings. I arranged no meetings! Not one!

Went from 7 direct reports to zero. No more approving holiday requests. No more performance reviews. No more management town-halls. No more arguing strategy with anyone. It was brilliant. 'Please write a procedure that does X. Return it by Thursday.' 'Please optimise this statement that hangs during the overnight run'. Yes, absolutely, more of that please.

More money too, oddly.

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

#223

Post by TuringNYC »

ThalesX wrote: post #178

Potentially inflammatory story, but I think about it occasionally, and this is a good context. I was out having a meal with old college buddies; most of us are developers, but some have become team leaders and managers. I will call it a statistical anomaly, but the worst engineers are now in 'people management' positions. The discussion ended with a guy boasting about how his team has X people, and he's looking to gr…

The person you're speaking about is obviously not a good steward for the company. That said, what about "Dont hate the player, hate the game" -- that seems to apply here.

I've been at companies which offer good IC tracks upward alongside management tracks upwards.

On the other hand, the company which you describe above are those which do not offer an acceptable IC track upward.

Metrics become about headcount rather than value/revenue delivered. The worst companies are those which will literally have headcount requirements for promotion, because such bright-line requirements drive the behaviour you're writing about.

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

#224

Post by ZephyrBlu »

the_af wrote: post #151
zabzonk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

To clarify, EM stands for Engineering Manager not Engineer Manager. EMs are generally expected to be technical, but not be engineers writing code on top of being a manager.

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

#225

Post by capitalsigma »

zabzonk wrote: post #199
coliveira wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The point is that ICs are judged based on their individual contributions, i.e. their own code, design docs, etc, whereas managers are judged based on their team's contributions

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

zabzonk wrote: post #199
coliveira wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by indigochill »

rippercushions wrote: post #219
ThalesX wrote: post #178

Potentially inflammatory story, but I think about it occasionally, and this is a good context. I was out having a meal with old college buddies; most of us are developers, but some have become team leaders and managers. I will call it a statistical anomaly, but the worst engineers are now in 'people management' positions. The discussion ended with a guy boasting about how his team has X people, and he's looking to gr…

Building empires is quite standard in management. I work at $BIGCO as a manager and have been told that, in practice, if I want to get a promotion to the next level, I'll need to grow my team large enough to have other managers reporting to me first. So my primary target is to convince the powers that be to give me headcount, and what my team actually does is strictly secondary. Now I'm a mere peon, but this replicat…

But if you were CEO and you wanted to, how would you engineer the incentives such that actually productive managers succeeded? Or is there something about corporate structure that makes it impossible?

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

#228

Post by posharma »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #220
ThalesX wrote: post #178

Potentially inflammatory story, but I think about it occasionally, and this is a good context. I was out having a meal with old college buddies; most of us are developers, but some have become team leaders and managers. I will call it a statistical anomaly, but the worst engineers are now in 'people management' positions. The discussion ended with a guy boasting about how his team has X people, and he's looking to gr…

I experienced the exact same thing, and have watched the mediocre engineers that went straight for management move up the chain. IC engineering just doesnt have that good of career advancement. The cynical career advice is to just move into management as soon as possible.

Exactly. IC career is not as sexy as HN makes it to be. People pursuing IC careers are doing it for personal reasons, definitely not for growth. Compared to management it takes an order of magnitude more time, influence and energy to get promoted in the IC ladder beyond staff.

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

#229

Post by brundolf »

ThalesX wrote: post #178

Potentially inflammatory story, but I think about it occasionally, and this is a good context. I was out having a meal with old college buddies; most of us are developers, but some have become team leaders and managers. I will call it a statistical anomaly, but the worst engineers are now in 'people management' positions. The discussion ended with a guy boasting about how his team has X people, and he's looking to gr…

To counter-anecdote: I've basically never had a bad manager. Several have been exceptional, shielding me from the whims of higher-ups while making sure I don't burn out by encouraging me to take more time off, etc

It probably helps that I've only ever worked at small-ish companies, and it might also help that my managers have pretty much all been technical (either while managing or at some previous time)

I would guess, based on limited data, that like most other regressive culture problems this heavily depends on company size

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

#230

Post by sytelus »

For this work, there should be equal rewards for ICs and managers. That is, ICs should get equal probability to get to level X in the company as managers. This actually used to be the case in old big tech, in early days. ICs can get to all the way to Director and Distinguished level with equal probability of their managers. But during last couple of decades everything changed. Big tech career ladder now states that merely making impact is not good enough but one needs to "scale" the impact. This is sheepish way of saying that one must be manager in order to claim "scaling". Consequently, there no higher level promos in big tech if you are mere IC. Unless this is solved, everything else is just talk and wishful thinking.
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