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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

#521

Post by diebeforei485 »

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.

Top engineers should be in the room.

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

#522

Post by chiefalchemist »

spike021 wrote: post #468
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…

>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.

Managers don't have to have the hands on skills. What's more important is their understanding of the players, and making players better than they would be otherwise.

Those well-regarded managers are often so because they create a whole greater than the parts. Average managers break even. Bad managers decrease value.

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

#523

Post by diebeforei485 »

ugh123 wrote: post #464
_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…

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.

It's also common at some of these companies to get "demoted" from a higher track. That basically never happens to managers.

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

#525

Post by itsdrewmiller »

spike021 wrote: post #468
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…

>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.

Isn't the research on baseball managers that they are in fact nearly useless?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-managers-are-heade...

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

#526

Post by itsdrewmiller »

yowzadave wrote: post #264
0xB31B1B wrote: post #113

I think this is a great move. My understanding is that some reporting chains in facebook have 12 links between IC and Zuckerberg, which is crazy inefficient. Enormous organizations are able to run effectively with 5-6 links from IC to CEO. Managers managing managers managing turtles all the way down is a horrible form of "administrative bloat". You see bloat like this in enormous organizations like colleges, governme…

If you want a flatter org structure, it seems like it would be easier to achieve this if manager/IC roles were distinct. If a manager is also writing code, then they won't have the time to manage as many other employees, and the total number of managers/layers would need to increase.

They might be pushing hybrid manager/coders to move back to full IC / tech lead type roles, while keeping the dedicated managers with bigger spans of control. That would have the effect they want, anyway.

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

#527

Post by ska »

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.

I think you are partially right, in that it should be normalized that some IC's may be delivering more value than their managers, and compensation should reflect that.

The broad version, that managers just don't contribute as much as the IC's they manage, doesn't hold much water in general - but may in a dysfunctional organization.

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

#528

Post by lumost »

facet1ous wrote: post #495
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.

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…

I really don't understand this pattern at companies. It seems entirely feasible to simply let IC's take on more responsibility. It's easier to shuffle responsibility amongst ICs compared to managers without rocking the boat - why would orgs incentivize a "fixed" management structure?

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

#529

Post by adriand »

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.

But do you want managers who are people who want to be managers? It seems to me that many people who want to be managers are motivated by wanting to boss people around, i.e. they want power, not necessarily money. And some don’t want to do “the work” whatever that work might be.

I really think we need more “reluctant leaders”: people who are good at leadership but don’t want to lead, and yet can be relied upon to lead because of their sense of duty, especially their duty to the team. People who say, shit, I really don’t want to do this but damnit if I don’t step up, this will be a failure.

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

#530

Post by donkey-hotei »

loeg wrote: post #509
knert wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The levels are parallel but it’s easier to get promoted to level 6+ on the management track.

There is M1 and there is M2, and then there's Director. There's no level 6+ on the management track. I'll disagree with this statement by saying that I think the step function in skills between managing people and managing people who manage people is huge. There are larger gaps between M1 -> M2 -> D than IC6 -> IC7 -> IC8...

but, I think the answer depends. If you are a really strong individual contributor, I presume getting an IC promotion is easier. If you are just decent, getting an IC7+ promotion seems incredibly challenging because IC7 requires an very high level of competence. If you are just decent as a manager, you can get luckier.

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