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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

#621

Post by koonsolo »

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 problem with great managers is that you don't notice them. Things just work, no drama, no fires to extinguish, ... . It's also not clear why things are going that smooth, it just seems to work that way (clue: it's actually the manager that creates this environment).

I've worked in a few environments where managers were replaced. Only then can you really make the distinction between great managers and bad ones. With one you think "wow this is such a tough business, the manager is doing crazy effort to keep things going", and then another manager jumps in and "wow, this is an easy project. Manager is taking a walk through the park. All seems like a piece of cake."

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

#622

Post by loa_in_ »

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…

Would having two managers per 30 people help?

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

#624

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

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...

Let them run wild in an experiment in free range anarchy

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

#625

Post by pydry »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #552
Olreich wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a shitty job for conscientious people. I've seen the toll it has taken on some of them.

People who are lower down on the empathy scale don't have that problem and the fact that this generally makes them worse at the job doesn't reduce their pay.

I also find it far more plausible that managers are paid more because of the default fiefdom hierarchy.

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

#626

Post by trashtester »

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.

> So for people with an innate need to join in the steering of the ship, there’s only one career path.

Not really. Some managers are perfectly willing to include IC's in this if they don't want to be/are not suitable as people-managers.

There are ways to formalize this, like creating roles for tech-leads, technical project management, enterprise architects (and a lot of others, in non-tech industries).

For managers who have their strongest talents in the social/organizational domain, this can be a win-win, if their ego allows it. In some cases, nearly all the technical and strategic work can be done by the IC, while the manager can focus on ensuring funding and support for these strategies within the organization, as well resource management and HR related work.

Of course, for every IC that has the talents and interests that make them suitable for such influence, there may be 3-4 that want that power, but do not have the abilities, initiative, flexibility or willingness to put enough effort into it to make it worthwhile for the manager.

And from the other perspective. If you're such an employee, it may be that you need to look around a bit to find a team lead by this kind of manager. It may well be that only 10-20% will be into this kind of cooperation with a subordinate.

But if you do find the right manager to support in this way, and actually do contribute to his/her getting promoted more quickly, you may have a powerful ally among the higher-ups (or even in some cases be pulled along, and given some direct-report role directly under him/her).

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

#627

Post by likeabbas »

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…

I’m not saying ICs need to make double the pay of their manager. Really, just the tech leads need to make more and the manager should make on par with their middle tenured ICs because then ICs will feel like they have a solid career path outside of management

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

#628

Post by ethbr0 »

vkou wrote: post #562
ethbr0 wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle management should be like jury duty -- something assigned randomly to a team member, then served for a set period. And company processes should be engineered so that a bad/ineffectual manager can't break them, with everything that can be devolved to the team itself. And hiring should be done on the basis that a new employee will likely be a manager at some point. The best managers I've had were all reluctant,…

> Middle management should be like jury duty -- something assigned randomly to a team member, then served for a set period. Please, no. A good middle manager is a shit umbrella, a bad one is a shit funnel. Most of the ICs I've worked with would not make good managers. Not because they are bad people, but because they don't currently have the skillset to manage. I'd rather not have them spend 6 months developing their…

A bad middle manager tends to be a bad middle manager because they're empowered to do dumb things: set upcoming workload, badger people about adherence to mythical project schedule, etc.

The majority of these tasks could be devolved to the team itself, if an organization wanted to.

Without that political pressure, I'd trust even the worst IC on my team to serve in a manager role, because the consequences of them doing a poor job would be small.

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

#629

Post by chengiz »

_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…

This concept is as old as any organizations existed. Not sure why it needs a modern podcast.

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

#630

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

amethyst wrote: post #299
redtriumph wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoutout to fellow Civ player! Just curious: Is Civ something very popular at FB or something? I know Zuck himself plays Civ [0]. [0] https://www.facebook.com/civ/posts/thanks-mark-zuckerberg-fo...

I would say it's about as popular among the gamers at Meta as it is among gamers outside the company. I play it myself periodically, but I wasn't even aware that Mark was a fan of the game, and I've been here a long time.

I remember him commenting at a Friday AMA about it when Civ 6 came out, which was a long time ago.

Oddly, Civ seems to be very very popular amongst data scientists. I have no idea why.

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