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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

#601

Post by uxcolumbo »

dasil003 wrote: post #577
uxcolumbo wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No argument with what you said, but I give him credit for Tesla and SpaceX. Those are more ambitious than the vast majority of SV companies funded over the past couple decades.

Yes true, that’s what I meant by he inspired others.. to join him to solve humanity’s problems.

At the beginning his ambitions were probably more aligned to this vision, but he probably got more jaded over the years, realised it’s effin hard and his narcissism got the better of him.

It’s a shame the way he treated the Tesla founders. Also I never saw him credit his various teams, it’s always about him.

Tesla and SpaceX are successful despite his involvement, because ppl care about creating more sustainable solutions for humanity… it’s a great mission.

/rant over ;)

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

#602

Post by zahrc »

sbarre wrote: post #119

I've said it before on here: being a lower-level manager in a large company is worse than an entry-level job. No one cares about your job experience (all those painful internal tools you now have to use to manage and report on your team) so you're just expected to grit through all the broken processes and inefficiencies (kiss your evenings and Sunday afternoons goodbye), and you are mostly powerless, particularly in…

Hey that sounds just like my job!

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

#603

Post by andrei_says_ »

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…

Could you elaborate a bit on the qualities and approaches of the two 10x managers?

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

#604

Post by Nevermark »

yamtaddle wrote: post #112
benj111 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are individual contributors in English? I took it to mean they were becoming contractors?

Anyone non-tech I know would just call it "labor", as opposed to management. The people who mostly do the things that make the stuff, rather than mostly telling others to do the things to make the stuff. Again, people'd just say "labor" in other contexts. Or maybe "workers". I'm not sure where "IC" came from but I've never seen it outside of tech, and that, mostly online.

I think “labor” is associated with repetitive or at least well characterized jobs

In tech, any two given workers are much less likely to be doing the same thing. So they are clearly not just laboring but contributing at some creative and self-management level as well

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

#605

Post by AlwaysBCoding »

standardUser wrote: post #375

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…

because the hiring process is on autopilot and the leadership of the company has already exited / checked out so they're not incentivized to care or be in the weeds enough to preemptively put a stop to it.

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

#606

Post by solarmist »

flashgordon wrote: post #598
solarmist wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Absolutely. There is no disrespect anywhere here. I don't need to agree to do my job well. Just that I don't feel safe enough to be vocal about sharing my thoughts -)

Totally understandable. It’s the person in power’s job to do that not yours. I would probably do the same.

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

#607

Post by sidibe »

khazhoux wrote: post #555
antipaul wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Jeff Dean also eventually managed a huge org (Sanjay Ghemawat managed to avoid this)

It's not a waste of time if it makes them more effective at making decisions, gives them ideas, or keeps them abreast of what is actually going on.

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

#608

Post by khazhoux »

sidibe wrote: post #607
khazhoux wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Jeff Dean also eventually managed a huge org (Sanjay Ghemawat managed to avoid this) It's not a waste of time if it makes them more effective at making decisions, gives them ideas, or keeps them abreast of what is actually going on.

Ideas, staying sharp, keeping up with swift and pytorch etc… sure, absolutely useful to code on weekends or a bit here and there.

What I meant what that there’s literal zero way someone can be an SVP and still perform any actual IC work.

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

#609

Post by nvarsj »

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…

Oh I completely agree with you. Good managers have an amazing multiplying effect on their team. People underestimate how important it is for a team to gel to be productive - although it's been said since the Peopleware days.

On the other hand, I've had maybe 2 great managers my entire career. The majority were either bean counters or empire builders. The latter is particularly toxic - they don't manage down at all beyond the minimum required. They focus almost exclusively on external optics and climbing the ladder.

So given that, I can see an appeal to trim down on managers. Of course, choosing the right managers to let go or convert is incredibly challenging.

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

#610

Post by shawabawa3 »

xtracto wrote: post #284
cletus wrote: post #192

This is long overdue. Years ago playing Civ 4 I distinctly remember hearing Leonard Nimoy's voice say "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy". That's what management in these companies is like. It became a meme that every 6 months you'd get an email saying "your manager's manager's manager's manager now reports to a new manager". You'd never seen, heard of or let alone met any of…

By that structure, the maximum number of people that such a company should have is 7×7×7×7×7 = 16807 Given the best practices of number of direct reports [1]. How would you deal with the rest 30,000+ Full time employees that Facebook has? [1] https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/how-many-direct-reports-s...

Increase number of reports at the top levels

10101077 = 49000

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