Whiners in the interview process seems like a good one. I'm conscious about complaining about a tech stack, or even a build system. It doesn't matter if you don't like it.
How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
41–50 of 187 posts
Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
#42I wonder how useful an ELO system would be for evaluating performance. If one were in place, I don't think we'd really need managers at all. The system would supersede and replace managers. Your rating would be hidden as well.
Managers don't only evaluate performance.
Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
#43"At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. " This is nice in theory. But when your "peers" with Manager in their title have access to more information and more decision-making power, it is not in fact a parallel track. Just saying people are equal doesn't make it so, and it doesn't change the underlying organizational structures.
If you set up the culture right, this isn't as big of a problem as you might think. On our team, it doesn't matter if you're the manager or not, the decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team. Sure management will still do approvals for time off and deal with the skinned knees and runny noses. But for day to day operations, it's peers working for a common cause.
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 that fills that role, but in many groups I see the floundering without leadership.
Internally I think they think they're making progress because everyone on the team is always happy with their decisions, I may just be the old curmudgeon that's frustrated with what I see as wasted effort.
Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you set up the culture right, this isn't as big of a problem as you might think. On our team, it doesn't matter if you're the manager or not, the decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team. Sure management will still do approvals for time off and deal with the skinned knees and runny noses. But for day to day operations, it's peers working for a common cause.
The question is who decides the annual bonus and raise?
More importantly, who decides who's manager next quarter/year? I've never seen non-managers exercise much leverage on this front. Being able to determine who works with whom is a very powerful position.
Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
#45"At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. " This is nice in theory. But when your "peers" with Manager in their title have access to more information and more decision-making power, it is not in fact a parallel track. Just saying people are equal doesn't make it so, and it doesn't change the underlying organizational structures.
This is very true. Hierarchy is hierarchy. Any organization can pretend they don't have such blasphemous thing, but if that was really true then there would be no "management" to begin with. What's wrong with accepting a leader as leader? You can't have it both ways - either you lead or be led. There's no equal footing there.
It's not about making everyone equal at all times. What's important is how do you choose a leader and when.
Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
#46> Take the incentive out of “climbing the ladder.” In other words, pay everyone the same? Of course the author didn't mean that; and pay and power are the primary drivers of upward mobility. If I get paid as much as Zuck's SVPs, sure, I won't feel the urge to climb the ladder; but until that happens, I will.
"Climbing the ladder" has the connotation of stepping on other people in order to get ahead. Thinking about the analogy, if there are a bunch of people trying to climb the same ladder as you are, you have to pull people off or climb over them.
It's possible to create an incentive structure that discourages cannibalizing your coworkers.
Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
#47> "Managers focus on ..., creating a vision for how that team will execute its goals" Confusing management with leadership is one of the main reasons for politics and empire building. Once managers think they're in charge of figuring out the vision, instead of that being the whole team's responsibility, you're lost in top-down management land.
In more traditional structures, managers are often in charge of figuring out that vision because they argue the buck stops with them, so they need the authority to make decisions to arrive at the outcome that meets their goals.
Unfortunately, what often happens is managers think they are more knowledgeable than the ICs on the team. This in turn leads to ICs not being invested in the outcomes as much as if it were their ideas, and can lead to resentment because they do not feel their input is valued.
A good leader is not "The Decider." A good leader is the one who asks their team "given X, Y and Z goals, how would you solve for this knowing these are the constraints?"
Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
#48"Take the incentive out of “climbing the ladder.” Some of the organization structure setup is not unique to Facebook. My former boss was a long time Microsoft employee, from what I heard from her anecdotally, Microsoft has long been setup with dual tracks for technical employees. The management track and the engineer track. One moves from engineer track to management track is a true lateral move in that salary don't…
Worked in Microsoft and i agree with what you said. We never had pressure of , if we don't get to management track with in certain year we may never make that means you might lose on monetary benefit.
Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
#49I wonder how useful an ELO system would be for evaluating performance. If one were in place, I don't think we'd really need managers at all. The system would supersede and replace managers. Your rating would be hidden as well.
Managers don't only evaluate performance.
You're right, they also steal credit for work they didn't perform. Management is another parasitic job that needs to be removed and automated away.
Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
#50"Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell. I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massive…
Indeed. Where's the company that orders it employees, shareholders, management? Doesn't exist!
There are a number of companies that are structured so that employees are effectively shareholders.