I think this is similar to why Andrej Karpathy left Tesla in good terms - he missed coding and teaching, according to a recent podcast lex fridman
Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
461–470 of 674 posts
Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
#462Chamath talked about manager bloat on a recent All-in podcast in a way that seemed to make sense. Basically there is pressure to grow your career by moving from being an IC to a manager and once a manager there are incentives to grow your number of reports. The organizational efficiency suffers when you have top tier ICs start managing teams of average people. You might get a team of 6 engineers that’s only doing 2x…
If the reward for competence is promotion, in the steady-state equilibrium everybody's incompetent at their current job: If they were competent, they would have been promoted into a different job.
It's called the Peter Principle [1] and it's pretty well-known.
I suppose Facebook's realized it's in a Peter Principle situation, and the remedy for it would, in theory, be to send some of the people back to previous jobs where they were competent.
The problem is that, in practice, it seems a lot like a demotion, especially if the original move was touted as a promotion, and the pay and prestige of your new old job is less.
It's a real puzzle how this can be done without demoralizing the affected employees into quitting -- especially the best ones, who presumably have lots of good career options elsewhere, and whose value is the entire reason for doing this in the first place.
Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO the easiest way to solve this issue would be to normalize ICs making more than their managers. That way, only the people who really want to be managers are managing.
It's an interesting thought, but I don't know how you "normalize" it if companies find that they are more profitable paying managers more.
The same way anything is normalized. One person/company does something, posts the outcomes of it, then other people follow. I don't think many companies have tested this logic out, as management style in tech is inherited from older corps.
I think this could have great benefits. If a manager's job salary is directly capped to the average of their ICs, then it's their benefit to make the best engineers and show that these engineers deserve an increase in salary - ergo the manager's salary is increased. At the same time, no one will be rushing to management just to get a salary bump.
Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
#464Chamath talked about manager bloat on a recent All-in podcast in a way that seemed to make sense. Basically there is pressure to grow your career by moving from being an IC to a manager and once a manager there are incentives to grow your number of reports. The organizational efficiency suffers when you have top tier ICs start managing teams of average people. You might get a team of 6 engineers that’s only doing 2x…
Some organizations have tried to limit manager-bloat by offering an alternative track for ICs (senior-> staff -> principle -> whatever). But the expectations at those levels have been hard to define and individual output seems to plateau or even degrade back to 'senior' level or even less when these high ranking ICs are asked to join a plethora of meetings on behalf of the team.
Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As if they were on purely my own Is this actually the expectation at the places you work?
In general, if you want your reports to accept company decisions, it is in your interest as a manager to align your stated opinions with company policy. Openly disagreeing, or just trying to take a neutral position will only reduce faith in the company and sow unrest for which you will be held accountable.
Isn’t that the entire purpose of being a manager? If I were just going to repeat the company line and not advocate for my team then I might as well be a rock.
Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO the easiest way to solve this issue would be to normalize ICs making more than their managers. That way, only the people who really want to be managers are managing.
It's an interesting thought, but I don't know how you "normalize" it if companies find that they are more profitable paying managers more.
It's fascinating as it seems like most modern problems are the result of wrong arguments being just more convincing. Like, they're. A virus well designed to exploit the most number of human logical fallacies and heuristics.
Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO the easiest way to solve this issue would be to normalize ICs making more than their managers. That way, only the people who really want to be managers are managing.
I agree. Too often people feel becoming manager is the easiest way to advance their career (which most of the time equates to making more money). In many cases becoming manager is the only way to advance their career in the current org.
I interviewed for FB once and I don’t believe this is the case there. I was told the comp levels ran parallel for ICs and Managers. They do value their ICs it seems. This was one of the main reasons I was interested in working for them. You can see it on levels.fyi
Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
#468It's too bad, because the best managers I've worked with were not good ICs, but they did multiply the effectiveness of the ICs they worked with, and so were absolutely invaluable to the company in a way that may not have shown up on paper. If those people exist in FB, as I'm sure they must, then they'd presumably get jettisoned as a result of this choice. That would be bad long term. I used to despise managers, until…
>the best managers I've worked with were not good ICs
Reminds me of baseball. Many of the best managers weren't the best when they were players. Some never even made it to the major leagues. But as a manager/coach they're incredibly well-regarded.
Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any traits to identify these people? I am a massive sufferer of imposter syndrome, I do my best to help everyone and smooth over things and set direction in a clear way with as much freedom in execution as possible. but i am always second guessing myself. I know I am almost certainly a middling manager (if not a bad one), but I would like to improve. Not because I love doing it, but because I don't trust that anyone…
The distinguishing factor I've seen is servant leadership [1]. They believe that supporting and developing their people is their main job. Execution is just a prerequisite to being able to do the rest. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership
The problem is that what makes a good manager for an IC does not make a good manager for the manager’s manager. They are fundamentally at odds unless you have servant leadership from the top down. (Which is nearly unheard of)
Re: Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
#470It's too bad, because the best managers I've worked with were not good ICs, but they did multiply the effectiveness of the ICs they worked with, and so were absolutely invaluable to the company in a way that may not have shown up on paper. If those people exist in FB, as I'm sure they must, then they'd presumably get jettisoned as a result of this choice. That would be bad long term. I used to despise managers, until…
This is an incredible post with a lot of insight. Can you please (please!) blog some stories about what you have seen? You are lucky to "work[ing] with hundreds of them as a consultant".
Do you think it can be trained into people? I do, but most companies are too lazy. Plus, it is not a one time exercise of X hours of training. It needs to be constantly monitored. In my career, I frequently see two-faced managers who say one thing when in front of the big boss, but do another when they are not around. (TL;DR: I call it: "The mouth moves, but the body doesn't.") It's always about the interpersonal clashes that drives away great ICs. The high performers get tired of the b-s from their manager and get hired away. Terrible loss for the company, but a (political) gain for the manager. (One less fly in the potato salad!)
Example: Below, someone mentioned "servant leadership". It is my first time to learn about term. It sounds brilliant. This idea seems possible to train into managers. Plus, the it is an interesting idea to strictly tie manager's comp to reports' comp. It would much better align the manager's incentives instead of today's world of "empire building".