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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

#231

Post by pasquinelli »

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 have a whacky theory--based on very little--that the reason IBM turned away from APL was because fewer APL programmers did more, and that is a potentially bad thing for management, for a number of reasons, one of which your anecdote describes.

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

#232

Post by fferen »

zabzonk wrote: post #191
sbrother wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Transfer length method :)

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

#233

Post by georgemcbay »

Izkata wrote: post #161
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…

> this is the usual name I dunno if it's just me, but it seems like the term came out of nowhere just a couple years ago.

I also never saw this until pretty recently. At first I assumed people were talking about independent contractors because it was the first thing that came to mind, it possibly fit the context I saw the term used in and nobody explained the acronym they just dropped it there like I was supposed to know what it meant.

Took a bit longer to realize they meant individual contributor.

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

#234

Post by svachalek »

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?

A->B != !A->!B

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

#235

Post by zabzonk »

Moissanite wrote: post #208
hotpotamus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always like the term soldier. It's what organized crime syndicates, armies, and ant colonies all use. The worst is when someone gets called a "resource", but I can't get too exercised about IC.

As a consultant, I've become accustomed to being referred to as "the resource" by operations people. However, the day an engagement manager refers to me directly as "resource" is the day I openly start referring to them as my secretary.

i keep envisaging what some of these uber stupid job names would look like on a business card i might have to give to a client:

zab zonk

the resource

zab zonk

individual contributor

jesus wept

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

#236

Post by ZephyrBlu »

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?

I'm not a manager, but at the very least it seems like an implicit expectation associated with the role. I wouldn't be surprised if it was explicit at some companies.

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

#237

Post by qualudeheart »

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…

What a nice guy. Managers at large companies should hire as many people as possible to improve their station in life.

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

#238

Post by the_af »

ratorx wrote: post #206
the_af wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do you mean that the capacity of an EM to spend time on growing team skills is reduced? There is a limited amount of time a manager can spend on that. If it’s a small team, then they could do a good job at it whilst doing small bits on the side. Yes, that's part of what I mean (but also: dealing with red tape, bureaucracy, and removing impediments) and no, the amount of time that can be used for this is basically u…

I don’t think you treat the team manager as a senior IC. You treat them as a mid-level IC with a part-time job. If you are a manager you can’t also be considered a full-time senior IC (except in very specific cases, which should be transitionary) for the purposes of work allocation, because you can’t dedicate your full time to the job. I don’t think management is unlimited work, at least not always. There are a fixed…

Thank you for your reply.

All I can say is that in my experience I've only witnessed (and on occasions been, sadly) the dysfunctional kind of EM+IC. I've never witnessed it working well, which is what I'm basing my objections on.

The best managers I had were full-time managers (with an engineering background, which meant they understood the technical constraints); the worst managers I've had were either 100% non-technical, or EM+IC roles which just couldn't keep their paws away from coding.

My 2 cents, anyway.

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

#240

Post by mnd999 »

posharma wrote: post #217
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…

Meta expects you to have managed at least 40 ppl before considering them for a M2 role. M2s made $800k+. Why wouldn’t a manager not be motivated to grow his empire? How else do you think managers will grow to VPs? We discuss ideals here but the reality on the ground is vastly different.

Directly and at the same time? I’m relatively new to this game, but that seems like far too many.
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