Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 674 posts

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

#661

Post by vkou »

lesam wrote: post #634
vkou wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Who in the rest of your organization is producing so much shit that your manager’s primary job is to be a shit umbrella? What productive purpose are those people serving if your manager’s job is effectively to work against them? Maybe the people producing the shit need to go too.

> Who in the rest of your organization is producing so much shit that your manager’s primary job is to be a shit umbrella?

His manager, the various proxies for the customers, events outside of anyone's control.

> What productive purpose are those people serving if your manager’s job is effectively to work against them?

Everyone with power in a modern corporation is looking out for their agenda, and their interests rarely align with their peers, and even less rarely with the line people. Think of directors pursuing weird-ass pet projects, think of product managers that want to devote 0% effort on stability and 100% on features, think of some other org dumping work that they ought to be doing onto you.

Also, all of these problems exist on a much smaller, less dramatic scale, on a day-to-day in every firm that does anything of note. Everyone wants their asks done today, and its the manager's job to keep all the people asking for stuff playing by the rules, and reasonably happy, and civil.

They aren't bad people, they are just being rewarded for meeting particular goals, and they are working towards them.

> Maybe the people producing the shit need to go too.

Maybe, but whether they will or not is not under the control of anyone in the trenches. The modern corporation is an authoritarian institution, and if you don't have the ear of a decision-maker, you can't exactly get someone else fired for being bad at their job. Especially when their job is telling you what to do.

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

#662

Post by gofreddygo »

fairity wrote: post #658
gofreddygo wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, my comment does read pedantic and reactive. Hides the thought behind it. The natural born part kicked me into higher gear. I will be more mindful.

I do still stand skeptical of natural talent contributing in any large part to managerial success, over acquired skills and serendipity.

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

#663

Post by NikolaNovak »

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 don't know if it's the case that

1. All people who really want to be managers are good managers

Or even

2. Best managers really want to be managers

To put it another way, a lot of people would rather be IC than managers. Not all of those people would be bad managers. In fact some of those might be the best managers.

Or to put it yet another way. Everybody wants to tinker. Managing is a pain. And the higher up, the fewer of the sane people would want it :-)

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

#664

Post by ryan_lane »

andrestc wrote: post #13
switchbak wrote: post #6

The vast majority of the managers I've worked with wouldn't be particularly good ICs, not so sure of the wisdom of this move. Maybe it's a way to slow roll a bunch of layoffs.

The technical bar for EMs at Meta is quite high.

Most of the worst managers I've worked with now work at Meta.

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

#665

Post by Salgat »

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…

Working the line at McDonald's is fundamentally harder with respect to being a grind but that doesn't seem to reflect strongly on their pay. The reality is that you don't need to pay $300k/yr for a manager who is also a talented FAANG level developer.

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

#666

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

doktorhladnjak wrote: post #589
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look man, Apple tanked Facebooks valuation, not the Metaverse. And that's presumably why he wants the Metaverse, so he's not just a sharecropper on someone else's digital platform.

> Apple tanked Facebooks valuation No, Facebook tanked their own valuation. They monetized user data without a care for how those users might eventually feel. They became entitled about having that data and the revenue streams attached. Apple took the opening Facebook left unguarded by realizing people actually do value privacy in their products, and made technical and marketing investments in it.

> Apple took the opening Facebook left unguarded by realizing people actually do value privacy in their products, and made technical and marketing investments in it.

Yeah, and that's why Apple's ad revenue has grown massively since ATT was introduced. Because Apple care about privacy /s.

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

#667

Post by istjohn »

dchftcs wrote: post #546
istjohn wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's algorithms fueled the genocide in Myanmar. How many muslim lives is FB marketplace worth? Do you talk to family members in Algeria through FB or WhatsApp? WhatsApp would have been just fine if Zuckerberg didn't buy it before US regulators rolled out of bed. I think it's hard to argue that anyone's life is improved by a company that shows such a lack of respect for its users. We could have social networks t…

>Facebook's algorithms fueled the genocide in Myanmar. How many muslim lives is FB marketplace worth? FB marketplace didn't cause those bad things. FB has done bad things due to perverse incentives, but for individuals working at the company you can't deny that at least some people can have a positive experience making positive impact to the world.

The lungs plead their innocence, “We give life!" But the blood they oxygenate feeds the mitochondria that fuel the muscles that power the claws that tear into the lamb's soft belly.

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

#668

Post by phendrenad2 »

I think this really shows how much Meta has changed. It's not the tech-first startup company it once was. It's become just another generic big company at this point. The only reason they would be asking managers to become ICs is if they fired too many ICs and didn't fire enough managers, and now the ratio is skewed. Why would they do that? Because they're a typical company and they see managers as "super-employees" who are smarter, faster, better than their underlings, and so can easily do their work.

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

#669

Post by civilized »

brookst wrote: post #587
civilized wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if companies find that they are more profitable paying managers more. Is there any reason to believe this? Other than just assuming that whatever companies do is optimal for their profits?

I mean there are, what, millions of independently run companies in the world. I suppose it’s possible there!s some totally novel idea nobody has tried but which would be hugely successful and revolutionize corporate practices. But I’m very skeptical there is an objectively more successful model just waiting for some company to stumble on it.

That's not "companies find they are more profitable". That's "nobody does it and it's probably because some tried and decided it was better not to, and maybe the way they decided it was better was by comparing profits".

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

#670

Post by SergeAx »

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…

> except for 1 person who just couldn't get along with others

I beleive managers in a situation like this think that layoffs is a kind of God's grace.

Post reply on HN