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Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

bloomberg.com

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

#511

Post by kamaal »

csense wrote: post #462
_9omd wrote: post #446

Chamath 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…

It is called 'Up or Out' culture. It is practiced everywhere, even in the military. You don't see 50+ year soldiers, do you? Except may be in 'Top Gun' sort of movies, which just only proves the point.

You are supposed to retire or give way to top performers to take the top places.

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

#512

Post by antipaul »

khazhoux wrote: post #487
ncann wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Management track is usually the only way to be in the room where decisions get made. Sure, the top engineers will be consulted and kept in the loop, but 99% of the strategy discussions and planning happens without them. So for people with an innate need to join in the steering of the ship, there’s only one career path.

Is it possible to do both?

I hear senior VPs like Craig Federighi, Jeff Dean, and others, still write code (maybe 1 day a week but still), but also call the big shots

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

#513

Post by solarmist »

flashgordon wrote: post #496
solarmist wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Absolutely, but also a massive red flag if you can’t respectfully disagree with your bosses.

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

#514

Post by benatkin »

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…

FAIR is not fair. Of course that acronym is intentional. It's Orwellian.

There are other js frameworks.

"Meta" does not do any good that comes close to outweighing all the bad they do.

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

#515

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

Managing is like any skill, if you want to develop it you have to work at it. For it to come naturally, is luck. That is, some collection of personal / personality traits, in the right place, at the right time. The problem is, few (are allowed / encouraged) to develop their manager-ness.

That aside, managers are a function of leadership. Got a bad manager? That means some leader is not doing their job.

Yes, there are few great managers, just as their are few great leaders.

My theory is, we could have more great leaders (or at least on average better), but we collectively use that word / title (i.e., leader) so loosely that in too many cases people get the luxury of wearing the crown without out actually doing the work.

If it doesn't walk like a duck...and it doesn't talk like a duck...yet it's still a duck?? That is creating a false sense of accomplishment.

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

#518

Post by benatkin »

yodsanklai wrote: post #298
RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

We know about that page. I use it to find what libraries & frameworks (including ones where they lie and call it a library like React) to avoid.

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

#519

Post by [deleted] »

superjan wrote: post #126
nerdponx wrote: post #94

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

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

#520

Post by chiefalchemist »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #491
likeabbas wrote: post #427

Earlier 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.

Ken Thompson made more than his manager at Bell Labs.

Bell Labs is a special case (afaik). My father worked for Western Electric (and I actually did a couple summer internships there). In any case, BL / WE had a special rank and pay structure. They understood they had talent that was more valuable not as management.

I don't remember the details but do remember there being certain "heavy weights" that didn't have anyone under them.

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