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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

#491

Post by __turbobrew__ »

likeabbas wrote: post #427
karaterobot wrote: post #386

It'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…

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.

Ken Thompson made more than his manager at Bell Labs.

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

#493

Post by astrange »

yamtaddle wrote: post #98
henriquez wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that basically constructive termination?

Yep. Used pretty often. Attempting to fight things like that without a union backing you is scary and risky enough (plus lots of people just have no clue what the law says—which, who can blame them when it hardly matters?) that it usually works just fine. Probably a little more dangerous with employees as well-paid as at FAANG, but then again, if they ever want to work at that level anywhere else, they're not gonna w…

Are managers allowed to be in unions?

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

#494

Post by cutenewt »

karaterobot wrote: post #386

It'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…

Can you elaborate on these "two really good ones?"

What did they do that made them so special?

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

#495

Post by facet1ous »

likeabbas wrote: post #427
karaterobot wrote: post #386

It'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…

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.

Yes, absolutely this. Once you hit senior ranks in engineering at a big tech firm, it's actually very difficult to move upwards. Very few people are ever made principal engineers or senior staff or even staff level for that matter. The jump in technical ability for those levels is quite large as well and can take many years to get a single promotion since openings are pretty slim as well (some orgs will only get 1-2 staff engineers).

If you switch to becoming a manager, your salary increases a lot and you have many more opportunities for promotion. So a lot of engineers hit senior and say "screw that, I can just be a manager" which is a much easier path to high salary.

It's very common and we need to incentivize people to stay as ICs.

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

#496

Post by flashgordon »

solarmist wrote: post #430
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…

Why did you have to "relay decisions I didn't believe in as if they were on purely my own"? Why could you not say "I disagree with X, Y, and Z, but I am going to follow through with it because 1, 2, and 3"?

Depending on the company saying I don't believe X gets relayed back up your chain with eventual unpleasant consequences (hey so and so doesn't agree with this management decision so they must be a misfit and can't be trusted to put the company first)

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

#497

Post by 1over137 »

karaterobot wrote: post #386

It'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…

What does "IC" mean in this context?

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

#498

Post by flashgordon »

juve1996 wrote: post #478
saberience wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine this from a military perspective. The general/field marshal etc makes the call that you're going over the top and as a smart Major or whatever you know this means most of your men are going to die. Are you going to say to your men: "Hello gents, we have our new orders, we're going to go over the top tomorrow at 8am and try and take the village one mile down the road, however, I think this is a horrible idea a…

Yes but instead of doing something necessary in service to your country/protecting your home/etc, you're building some bullshit Adtech app. Much easier to see through that bullshit and be cynical.

You'd be surprised how many faangers believe BS thing X (say Ads) is a necessary life blood of civilization (seen your li feed recently)?

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

#499

Post by groby_b »

karaterobot wrote: post #386

It'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…

Being a manager is hard and comes with a boatload of emotional responsibilities[1]. It takes a long term to learn, and our process of training managers is fundamentally broken.

It's not that there's a "set number of great managers", but we fail to train people, and many who could've been simply wash out because they were thrown into the deep end without any support. ("Hey, you're a good IC, you must be a manager")

And before somebody suggests it, no, MBAs are not the answer[2]. And I don't think we're fixing that if we don't manage to move away from a world where the ends justify the means. As a manager, your fundamental job is to care. Not to goose numbers, but to care enough about people that they feel safe enough to take risks and grow. In an environment that lives and dies by "what did you do for the metrics/the quarterly numbers", developing that care without losing the job or becoming a deep cynic is really, really hard.

If you have a good manager, hang on to them. If you're reporting to one, think hard about following them if they leave, because they are rare, and you might not get the experience again. And if you have the opportunity to become a manager, think carefully if the environment will allow you to care enough.

[1] https://fortune.com/2023/02/06/managers-impact-worker-mental...

[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2962506

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

#500

Post by conductr »

Aeolun wrote: post #460
conductr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing you can do in these roles is protect your team. It's your primary job to ensure they can build and with minimal wasted efforts. If you view it as building for the company, your team is a victim to all the dysfunctions of the organization and nobody wants to be on that team. The mouthpiece part is tricky, I always try to give the official message with a dose of my personal candid opinion on it even if i…

> they're aware of the risks that are at top of your minds. Not that I expect them to do anything with it…

Agree. Their decision is made. The way I manage I tell upper management what risks their decisions have, then don’t let them blame my team for when those eventualities occur. My teams don’t work overtime to meet a deadline when some decisions was made that screwed up the schedule. Those kinds of things. That’s protecting your team.
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