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.
When the EM is an IC, what stops them from either interfering with small stuff (I had an EM -- back then we called them "managers" -- stop us for a week trying to determine whether we should use List or Vector in Scala. Nobody was happy) or taking the big interesting problems for themselves?
These SDMs won't be an IC _and_ manager. These SDMs are demoted.
Sure. Many companies do this too. Like Senior Engineer at the level of Engineering Manager and Staff at the level of Senior Engineer Manager.
They don't have direct report and they still write code.
Same payband and leveling but different job function.
But at the end of the day, the ICs still have to "report" to Management: Senior Engineer even if they have same payband and leveling still have to report to an actual Manager.
For the 2nd, I imagine that if you are a manager and an IC on the side, then you don’t have the time to spend on big projects. It’s more likely you’ll be filling in gaps or doing the uninteresting but necessary work. There’s nothing stopping you from attempting to hoard the interesting projects, but then your performance on either role or both will likely suffer. That’s not really a new failure mode - any manager can be bad.
As a manager + IC, you shouldn’t be leading projects, since that’s a useful skill for your reports to develop. I guess there may be exceptions if your team is particularly junior. Ideally, if you are not micromanaging, you only participate on a big project if required or asked, not because you want to. Your main role is the people management side and to help with planning, prioritisation and communication.
Yes, that's part of what I mean (but also: dealing with red tape, bureaucracy, and removing impediments) and no, the amount of time that can be used for this is basically unlimited: it's a full time job. "Small bits on the side" is not a good use of a senior IC, that's for the more junior members of the team.
Also, playing both roles is less than ideal, see: http://blogs.newardassociates.com/blog/2023/player-coach-fal...
> That’s not really a new failure mode - any manager can be bad.
Agreed that any manager can be bad, but I contend that this is a new failure mode driven by two conflicting goals.
I don’t think management is unlimited work, at least not always. There are a fixed set of people on the team doing a fixed number of things who can only grow at a fixed rate. I agree that it could be a full time job or more, but I think that depends on the specifics. Obviously managers shouldn’t be forced to be ICs in all situations. If management is taking up all your time, you can retract from the IC pool. However, I think it’s valuable to consider and push for organisational changes to allow yourself to enter the IC pool again (maybe handing off some responsibilities to a new team etc.).
> failure mode driven by two conflicting goals
Again, I think this strongly depends on how you allocate yourself. There is room for a pre-emptible IC, that is not always available. However, it’s situation dependent whether this is useful or not. The conflicting goals theory only applies if you try and optimise for both. Your IC performance can suffer, whilst still being a net positive, again depending on the specific situation. That’s kinda upto you as a manager to quantify though. The article is more good advice on how not to approach this dual situation. If you know how to prioritise being a manager though, the points don’t apply.
On the flip side, sometimes your management performance HAS to suffer to meet critical deadlines because the entirety of the normal IC pool has other critical deadlines. It’s also upto you to avoid these situations, and if they happen then strongly push back on your leadership to prevent them happening again.
Your primary goal as a manager is to ensure team productivity and deadlines. If you can’t recognise that you are a detriment and step back (or at the very least step back when you get feedback from others who do), then that suggests that other aspects of your management are lacking as well, so it seems like the same failure mode.
The benefit to keeping yourself in the IC pool is that you can keep your skills at least slightly fresh. Even if you are no longer a full senior IC, not having any technical skills means an inability to make technical judgements if required.
All I can say is that in my experience I've only witnessed (and on occasions been, sadly) the dysfunctional kind of EM+IC. I've never witnessed it working well, which is what I'm basing my objections on.
The best managers I had were full-time managers (with an engineering background, which meant they understood the technical constraints); the worst managers I've had were either 100% non-technical, or EM+IC roles which just couldn't keep their paws away from coding.
My 2 cents, anyway.
Well, generally the team would still have an EM, just not that EM.
> When the EM is an IC, what stops them from either interfering with small stuff
What stops any IC doing that?
If there is an EM role, I don't see the problem. I took TFA to mean "become an EM who also codes".
> What stops any IC doing that?
Nothing, but an IC has by definition time to tackle big problems. Also, other ICs are their peers. An EM+IC has no time to tackle big problems -- or if they do, then they are neglecting their management role -- and so by default will tend to focus on nitpicking or small tasks. Tasks that are best done by junior level ICs.
I don't _think_ that's what they're saying. I read it as "we have too many EMs; would some EMs like to un-EM, please?
Meta EMs do people-management only, which neatly side-steps interference on tech issues.
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.
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
And that's presumably why he wants the Metaverse, so he's not just a sharecropper on someone else's digital platform.
Imagine (10 years ago) being able to use an FB version of Siri/Alexa to "connect me to that girl Megan from my 5th grade classroom". Sure sounds compelling.
Instead FB released a half-assed "dailer app/widget" and forgot about it. Today that window of opportunity closed.
if you only look at the tech then yeah it's compelling. but in reality it's creepy and people don't want it.
Because it's really hard to make good hardware cost-effectively. The only companies that have succeeded in the phone market are practiced hardware companies, except for one software company that focused on making a adaptable OS for hardware companies to use.
Why would that have gone any better for them than it went for Amazon and Microsoft?
Microsoft and its phone story is enough to explain why.
Facebook needs a new platform that they control themselves and Phone is D.o.A because they have to compete with other companies (Apple, Google). Nobody wants to have 2 phones and nobody wants yet-another-Android phone "just for Facebook".
I agree that fbs value was/is the social graph. But you’re saying that there was a lack of voice UI? Or lack of a capable mobile experience? I don’t see how any of that could have been more than marginally helpful in reducing the friction of adding a friend on a social network.
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.
Yeah, and that's why Apple's ad revenue has grown massively since ATT was introduced. Because Apple care about privacy /s.
If he were making SVPs become ICs, I'd credit this move to him. Otherwise, it's just the big-business org doing big-business things.
The point is that the company doesn't need the managers.