571–580 of 674 posts
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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?
I've never worked for a truly large company, so maybe I lack perspective. But the idea that a company could incorrectly hire THOUSANDS of people over a few years boggles my small-company mind. Hiring is so exhausting, so time intensive and so boring . And it does nothing (directly) for the bottom line - instead it costs a ton of money! Given the ultra-mega-hyper-elaborate interview process at a lot of these companies…
I'm a founder of an 8 person startup and we're looking for an engineer right now. It's an exciting process for me to pitch the vision of the company to these candidates. It is also exhausting and time intensive - but not boring.
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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 lea…
The kind of people that find pleasure in bossing people around also tend to have fragile ego. If you pay them less than the people they are managing , they will not tend to do take the job. So, paying managers less may weed out people on an ego trip, in theory.
I've been blessed with generally good managers, but they've all worked way more and way harder than me for less pay and it's honestly made me feel pretty awful for them.
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That's an easy way to have zero managers and more problems than you started with. The vast majority of ICs are like children. It's not fun dealing with them. The only way one voluntarily takes on that role is for equal or greater pay.
I disagree. The vast majority of managers are nothing more than people trying to climb the bureaucratic rank and are not truly helpful in multiplying the efforts of the mid-senior ICs below them.
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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 lea…
I've known a few of these. Power and money, usually. Mainly because they were born with money, and think they deserve as much or more than their parents accumulated.
I wouldn't say they're the most toxic people I know, but they're in about the 85th percentile.
Potentially inflammatory story, but I think about it occasionally, and this is a good context. I was out having a meal with old college buddies; most of us are developers, but some have become team leaders and managers. I will call it a statistical anomaly, but the worst engineers are now in 'people management' positions. The discussion ended with a guy boasting about how his team has X people, and he's looking to gr…
I very much doubt what you’re describing is a statistical anomaly. I think just about everyone here would agree the worst devs either become managers, or move to QA/BA.
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I think both you and the GP are missing the essence of what Elon is. He is neither an amazing operator and businessman, nor is he a slave driving demon. He does have a huge ego and need for attention, I'll give you that, but fundamentally he is someone who cares more about solving big problems than he does about money or people. The push to deify or villify him is all about satisfying ones own judgement, but personal…
Not sure. He seems like a ‘slave driving demon’. Best example how he treated the folks at Twitter or his other companies… demanding ‘hardcore’ hours and exactly like you said… he doesn’t care about people… doesn’t care whether they burn out or creating a culture where bullying is accepted. I don’t think he really cares about solving big problems, it’s just a front to feed his big ego… he wants be seen as real life To…
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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…
To me, this screams a lack of trust. By explaining your reasoning in every situation you can will build trust, so that on the rare occasion that you need them to act without sharing, they will trust you enough to do so. For example, when in an execution environment where response time matters. And in practice, this is how good commanders I've worked with have operated. And this is explicitly a principle of the US Arm…
It is unusual to have a team emotionally mature enough to handle actual transparency. You only have to read HN to know people live with extreme cognitive dissonance between wanting their high salaries and hating the business practices that enable them.
My experience has always been that certain employees get marked as "adults in the room" and are given real transparency in 1:1s.
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…
Hard agree, it's incredible that there's no systematic way to train such managers. When I was younger I thought maybe that's what business schools did, but they produce a completely different kind of manager who's probably worse at managing people than they would've been had they not gone to business school in the first place.
1. Psychological security.
2. Crystal Clear targets, planning, goals, written down. To paraphrase this, a top manager will write their ICs an 8-12 week JIRA backlog. Obviously, these goals will iterate. However, the ironclad clarity is essential.
3. Positive, effective, coaching and feedback at the principle skill the IC performs. Aka, coding.
4. Lead by example. Conspicuous, hard, effort, devoting majority of time and energy to managing down and shielding.
The issue is simple. All of the above requires sweat from the manager.
Managers are lazy, and nobody is watching them manage their ICs.
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…
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…
1. Psychological security.
2. Crystal Clear targets, planning, goals, written down. To paraphrase this, a top manager will write their ICs an 8-12 week JIRA backlog. Obviously, these goals will iterate. However, the ironclad clarity is essential.
3. Positive, effective, coaching and feedback at the principle skill the IC performs. Aka, coding.
4. Lead by example. Conspicuous, hard, effort, devoting majority of time and energy to managing down and shielding.
The issue is simple. All of the above requires sweat from the manager.
Manager's are lazy, and nobody is watching them manage their IC's.