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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

#291

Post by istjohn »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #251
RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay I'll feed the troll. I'm not trying to troll. I just genuinely don't understand why someone would consider working there as a positive thing. So I would like to know! But I have no way to figure it out as I know zero people who work there, and talking to a human who works at these companies is impossible because their websites are geared towards not allowing you to talk to them. So now that I just saw someone…

It's hard to believe you're not trolling when you present "millions of teenagers with body dysmorphic disorder thanks to Instagram" as the only kind of 'impactful' work. What about people working on WhatsApp, or infra, or people working at FAIR or people building React, etc? The list goes on. Meta creates a shit ton of positive impact which is not at all related to "millions of teenagers with body dysmorphic disorder…

They said that was the first thing that came to mind. The first thing that comes to my mind is fueling a genocide in Myanmar[1], but as a parent of a girl, I couldn't care less about Meta's development of React when their own research showed that they "make body-image issues worse for one in three teenage girls." Then there was the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It's been clear for years that to work for Zuckerberg is to do anything that he thinks will make him rich, the consequences for our children, our democracy, and the rest of the world be damned.

1. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

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

#292

Post by xivzgrev »

Maybe this works with managers overseeing 1 or 2 people. But any broader than that is likely to be counter productive.

Managers don’t just have 1:1s. They set direction, clear obstacles (both upcoming and here now), ensure quality work, etc. that scales somewhat linearly with team size, plus or minus depending on the individuals.

If you remove a bunch of managers making them ICs, now the remaining managers have that much more to wrangle, and stuff will get dropped.

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

#293

Post by deltree7 »

indigochill wrote: post #227
rippercushions wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I know HN hates him, but Elon Musk has figured this out and that's why he will always deliver outstanding returns compared to others.

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

#294

Post by BhavdeepSethi »

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've seen engineers who were asked to move to EM role because they weren't strong technically to move up the ladder. They were able to move up multiple ladders in the EM track using the same technique you mentioned above (empire building).

With a bigger empire, they're allowed to take credit for high impact engg in their chain, and including the low performers simple for total headcount. It seems like a win-win situation honestly.

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

#295

Post by AndyNemmity »

I've avoided every attempt to make me management. I've changed roles, intentionally shutdown workstreams when they were done instead of creating a new silo. I just want to work on things. I would be happy about this, but I'm sure others aren't.

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

#296

Post by vrc »

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.

Yeah. To become a D1 you need to be an M2 who successfully manages (ideally) more than one other M2, who themselves might manage M2s or M1s or a combo. So you get really large chains of people at the same level in a reporting line, all managing and trying to show that they should be D1s.

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

#297

Post by andix »

mooreds wrote: post #280
rippercushions wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I remember in my first job, one of the older guys telling me that at a certain size of company, it's all about the turf battles between the upper level managers. And as a line level employee, you just want to be on the right side of the battle. Sounds pretty miserable to me; I suppose that's why I've stayed at smallcos/startups my entire career.

I think once a company hits around 2-5k office workers, the whole company can be occupied with internal processes, without delivering any value at all.

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

#298

Post by yodsanklai »

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote: post #84
fatnoah wrote: post #16

I love management and, after over 17 years in an IC capacity, find that it fulfills me in a way that writing code stopped doing. I was also a manager at Meta in a past life, and really didn't love the experience due to the nature of the company and roles of manager. I do think I'd really like being an IC there, due to the high level of autonomy and focus on doing impactful work.

[flagged]

Even if you don't think that some people find value in Meta apps, Meta engineers work on all types of project, lots of them are open source (see https://opensource.fb.com) and are impactful beyond just supporting Instagram.

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

#299

Post by amethyst »

redtriumph wrote: post #257
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…

Shoutout to fellow Civ player! Just curious: Is Civ something very popular at FB or something? I know Zuck himself plays Civ [0]. [0] https://www.facebook.com/civ/posts/thanks-mark-zuckerberg-fo...

I would say it's about as popular among the gamers at Meta as it is among gamers outside the company. I play it myself periodically, but I wasn't even aware that Mark was a fan of the game, and I've been here a long time.

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

#300

Post by scarface74 »

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…

You act as if this behavior is unique to management. Every leveling guideline I’ve seen for any big tech company (including the one I work for) requires you to demonstrate “scope” and “impact”.
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