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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

#551

Post by alex_sf »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #531
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.

Not going to happen, fundamentally just due to supply and demand. I have been a senior/principal engineer, as well as a director/senior director. The fact is that being a manager or director is just fundamentally a much harder job than being an IC. It's not that it's inherently more difficult, it's just that the day-to-day is much more of a grind than being an IC. For people wondering why engineering interviews can b…

You made it much harder on yourself. You should have just fired that one person. But, management.

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

#552

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Olreich wrote: post #544
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not going to happen, fundamentally just due to supply and demand. I have been a senior/principal engineer, as well as a director/senior director. The fact is that being a manager or director is just fundamentally a much harder job than being an IC. It's not that it's inherently more difficult, it's just that the day-to-day is much more of a grind than being an IC. For people wondering why engineering interviews can b…

I find it far more plausible that managers are paid more because of the default fiefdom hierarchy that you find in most corporate systems than because of anything inherent to the day-to-day job. CEO doesn’t think people lower on the totem pole should be paid more than them, so they hire people at lower income levels. Same for the VPs and the Directors and the layers of middle management until you get down to the ICs.

I mean, just look at comments around this topic whenever it comes up. People want ICs to get paid more because they don't want to work as managers. Heck, I most definitely agree with them - again, I was a manager, and I won't do it again either. That means I have accepted that I'll make less money, but I'm fine with that. Someone else can have that shitty job.

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

#553

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

alex_sf wrote: post #551
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not going to happen, fundamentally just due to supply and demand. I have been a senior/principal engineer, as well as a director/senior director. The fact is that being a manager or director is just fundamentally a much harder job than being an IC. It's not that it's inherently more difficult, it's just that the day-to-day is much more of a grind than being an IC. For people wondering why engineering interviews can b…

You made it much harder on yourself. You should have just fired that one person. But, management.

Definitely said from someone that has never been a manager. FWIW, it's never that easy to fire someone, and it gets even more difficult when you need to worry about protected class issues.

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

#554

Post by laweijfmvo »

s1mon wrote: post #177

This is interesting. During my last job search I talked to colleagues who had positions at Oculus and Tesla. Both of them talked about things being set up for either management or IC, but not both. I prefer to do some of both. Just management would lead to my IC skills getting rusty, which would mean that some of the management that I do would become more and more disconnected from current practices. Just being a hig…

Meta has something called a Tech Lead/Manager that is basically this.

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

#555

Post by khazhoux »

antipaul wrote: post #512
khazhoux wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know about Jeff, but Craig runs an org with tens of thousands of engineers. If he were writing code, it'd be a waste of time.

(and Craig doesn't waste his time)

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

#556

Post by khazhoux »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #521
khazhoux wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, they really should.

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

#557

Post by bithead »

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 wonder who makes more in a hospital - the doctor or surgeon, or their managers?

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

#558

Post by jonathankoren »

loeg wrote: post #537
donkey-hotei wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There is M1 and there is M2, and then there's Director. There's no level 6+ on the management track. M1 corresponds to the same pay band as IC6 and M2 corresponds to IC7. D1 corresponds to IC8. (By level 6, I am referring to IC6 / M1.)

I think you’re off by one. M1 is not an IC6.

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

#559

Post by 121789 »

s1mon wrote: post #177

This is interesting. During my last job search I talked to colleagues who had positions at Oculus and Tesla. Both of them talked about things being set up for either management or IC, but not both. I prefer to do some of both. Just management would lead to my IC skills getting rusty, which would mean that some of the management that I do would become more and more disconnected from current practices. Just being a hig…

Your preference is actually well reflected in the higher level IC roles at Meta/Google. You can get there by direct eng work with significant impact, but it’s more likely you are a person the company can trust with managing delivery of high complexity, high value projects while bringing other teams along the way.

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

#560

Post by anthomtb »

bennysonething wrote: post #3

I want my career path as a developer to never be anything but individual contributor. I like teaching newer Devs but I don't want to manage them. Maybe I'm being naive?

How far along on that career path are you? You may find that teaching newer developers is not all that different from formally managing them.

As for a technical track, read the stories on staffeng.com. And read between the lines when you’re viewing them. There are plenty of folks with technical track titles who spend most of their working hours in meetings of questionable value. And you will definitely find folks with management track titles that spend more time doing hands on work than their peers with technical track titles.

The ugly option you can try is good old-fashioned sandbagging. Knock out every technical assignment in record time, or quality, or whatever seems to be your leads KPI. Then tank any assignment which seems remotely conducive to management. Bonus points for explicitly indicating a desire to move into management. Your own leadership will think you are so miscalibrated as to believe they are doing everyone a favor by keeping you off the management track.

Edit: I realize you did not explicitly ask how to stay off the management track. Consider the last paragraph as just some idle, slightly sociopathic musing.

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