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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

#651

Post by cptcobalt »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #642
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…

In any organization somewhere between 1% and 10% of people will suck up 80% of leadership's time if you let them. Worse, they make the organization toxic for everybody else. I've come to believe the most important job of a manager is to quickly identify these people and either fire them or neutralize them (i.e. put them in a closet and assign them a meaningless task). This requires a culture shift in most organizatio…

I've witnessed this across a few people and across a few companies—both in terms of wasting time for the company, or pushing the company to be better.

There's definitely folks that take all they can get, scream about unnecessary things, and are just general drama, but overall are basically an underperforming IC. (I've even seen one become "best friends" with a director which caused all sorts of chaos and disorganization in the org below them, with the director blissfully unaware because the toxic person was giving side-channel status update to the director outside of the org hierarchy.)

Neutralizing them by giving them unimportant tasks often enables them to be louder elsewhere.

There's also people who are loud because they're trying to make the company better. They'll make you uncomfortable as a manager, and they'll make you have uncomfortable conversations with your leadership. They're...probably the ones to listen to.

True leadership is knowing who to keep close—even if uncomfortable—and who to rapidly manage out.

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

#652

Post by fnordpiglet »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #585
lmm wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to clean toilets or man a register either, but people who do those things don't get paid more than me. There's something else going on with how managers get paid.

You don't, and not many people do, but the fact is that there are lots, and lots, and lots of people without the skill sets necessary to move to higher paying jobs, so it's still based on supply and demand. Of course, good managers should generate a lot more value than a janitor or a cashier, so there should be more available to pay them. Even if hardly anyone wanted those janitor or cashier jobs, there would still b…

I’d say there are many people without the skills to be a top tier engineer. In fact I picked my IC to manager conversions based on their inability to progress as an IC but their empathetic and organizational abilities let them be a credible engineering manager. They weren’t great engineers but they were good enough to know what good work looks like. However the absolute best IC engineers that commanded the most money could easily have been a successful manager but enjoyed IC work more, and were much more valuable making engineering decisions than holding 1:1s and meeting with auditors. They were effectively matrix managers in many respects. That’s a much more rare skill, and you can’t mentor someone into being a top engineer. They’re born, and are born at the same rate as they always have been, and are there for much more rare as the industry and demand has grown.

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

#653

Post by turdprincess »

r00fus wrote: post #62
turdprincess wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principal engineer role usually comes with expected impact on a big organization or even the whole company. Having that kind of impact is impossible as an “IC” in the traditional sense. Unless you are in some very cutting edge area, or get very lucky, your principal role will involve a big dose of the same leadership and management tasks that a manager or director would have.

So what is your vision of IC "in the traditional sense"? Most senior engineers at organizations require a significant amount of coordination and people-skills. If you're not managing a team, you're definitely managing the relationship with your manager and coworkers/project teammates.

My vision for a "traditional" IC is someone who sits in front of a computer and writes computer programs. This kind of role ends at senior, or if you are lucky, staff. A principal engineer is much more likely to be in a meeting heavy environment, coordinating with many teams and driving alignment towards some vision. While this is not strictly managerial work, at least to me, it seems to fall much closer to "senior manager" than "software engineer".

Thats totally fine for folks who thrive in this kind of role. However, it does take away the ability to grow your career if you want to keep developing software. So for example, if you program for 20 years, and keep improving during this time, you would expect to be rewarded with some career progression for the progress you've made in years 10 - 20.

But as it stands, these days, if you run into someone who has been programming for 20 years, you can assume their career has mostly stagnated, and might even count them off as a low performer because they failed to grow. So it's almost a self fulfilling prophecy - staying a "true" IC has no growth, and therefore there is an incentive to just sit back and stop growing.

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

#654

Post by hinkley »

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.

This is the problem I’ve been wrestling with. I’m never going to get the control I desire, unless I give up on benefiting from that control. I can’t advocate properly for myself as an IC, and even as a lead or staff engineer I’m still likely to be coaching someone who goes to the meeting instead of going myself and having much gravitas.

Only at very small companies do I get to cross these streams.

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

#655

Post by brookst »

cyanydeez wrote: post #466
brookst wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting thought, but I don't know how you "normalize" it if companies find that they are more profitable paying managers more.

It's fascinating as it seems like most modern problems are the result of wrong arguments being just more convincing. Like, they're. A virus well designed to exploit the most number of human logical fallacies and heuristics.

Not sure if you're intentionally demonstrating by example, but you definitely nailed it. People are suckers for "there's this one simple explanation that explains hugely complex problems."

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

#656

Post by leokennis »

koonsolo wrote: post #621
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. Wi…

100 times this. If you have an incredible manager, most likely you as an engineer feel little pressure and a lot of freedom. That is because that manager has his back full of arrows he intercepted before they had a chance to hit you.

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

#657

Post by gofreddygo »

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…

> natural-born managers

There is no such thing as a natural born manager. Like there isn't a natural born electrician, politician or nurse.

There are combinations of skills that make one person far far better than everybody else, for that job. Some adapt existing skills, some learn new ones. But no one is natural born great at anything useful.

Those skills are acquired, either with willed direction from internal intuition or very rarely forced via external environment. But still acquired, not handed down, not born with it.

Can anyone acquire skills and be great? No! No one knows the winning combination of skills. It takes a great factor of luck.

Evidence of this is found in abundance. Ask someone great "How can I make my son be as great as you" and see how tangential an answer pops out. You'd think its because they want to keep it a secret. Its because they don't know.

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

#658

Post by fairity »

gofreddygo wrote: post #657
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…

> natural-born managers There is no such thing as a natural born manager. Like there isn't a natural born electrician, politician or nurse. There are combinations of skills that make one person far far better than everybody else, for that job. Some adapt existing skills, some learn new ones. But no one is natural born great at anything useful. Those skills are acquired, either with willed direction from internal intu…

You're taking OP's claim too literally. Obviously babies don't pop out of the womb ready to competently manage a team of 30 engineers.

The claim is that people are born with different aptitudes for management that allow them to progress faster along the management skill curve per unit of effort.

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

#659

Post by r00fus »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #642
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…

In any organization somewhere between 1% and 10% of people will suck up 80% of leadership's time if you let them. Worse, they make the organization toxic for everybody else. I've come to believe the most important job of a manager is to quickly identify these people and either fire them or neutralize them (i.e. put them in a closet and assign them a meaningless task). This requires a culture shift in most organizatio…

There is an additional dimension here - some people start off great and then become toxic due to external conditions (home problems, health issues, organizational strife). Sometimes those problems are resolvable (or mitigable). Sometimes your "problem child" becomes a stalwart after their situation is resolved.

A good manager can root cause these issues and then determine if the resolution is workable in a reasonable timeframe. A great manager keeps this in mind while coordinating all activities and requires their direct reports to assist them in doing this.

Finally, great leaders are sometimes not great managers. Another note - even managers can shift from good/great/bad over time.

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

#660

Post by mmsimanga »

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…

You lament the decision by FB yet you say out of the hundreds of managers you worked with only two were good. You are saying most managers aren't good and it sounds like FB agrees with you and hence decision. I also think this might be a good decision because I do think managers need to be able to set up programming environment and at least be able to navigate the code. Kinder of like how some retail companies make head office staff spend some time at a real store so that they are aware of operating environment at the coal face.
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