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How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

• gmarx 10y ago
  "Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell. I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massively to answer most of the proposed interview questions
  • gaius 10y ago
    Indeed. Where's the company that orders it employees, shareholders, management? Doesn't exist!
    • toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Technically, Costco. (Although it's "employees, customers, management, shareholders"). EDIT: Disclaimer: have friends who work at costco, have a membership, own some stock, etc.
    • 867552 10y ago
      MathWorks
    • Retra 10y ago
      There are a number of companies that are structured so that employees are effectively shareholders.
      • dredmorbius 10y ago
        Any specifically in the software space? Operating at scale? I've looked into cooperative business organisations in the past. From my recollections, these typically fall into a few classifications: 1. Political parties. Often themselves strongly aligned with cooperative or anarchist principles. 2. Labour unions. In some cases. 3. A few creatives collaborations, but with pretty loose integration. Artists, performers, or writers organisations. 4. Food-based businesses, typically smaller tea or coffee houses, or co-op food stores. 5. Mondragon Corporation. Pretty much an only-one-in-class, of an industrial cooperative. Also almost everyone's default example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation 6. Producer co-ops. Often in agriculture, though others exist. Blue Diamond Almonds, and, previously, both Visa and MasterCard (the latter have both since reorganised as for-profit joint-stock companies). I don't know of any business organisations that perform software or consulting services on a cooperative basis, though of course, the entire Free Software movement is a non-business organisation of such work. Of course, I DDG on posting and immediately find: http://www.software.coop/info/ http://www.software.coop/info/ Though I'd argue that the fact I'd never heard of this group and their size somewhat emphasises my point.
        • khuey 10y ago
          Publix is another notable one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publix
          • dredmorbius 10y ago
            That's a supermarket. I'm looking for tech examples.
  • Spivak 10y ago
    > No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way Except, for example, the ACM Software Engineer's code of ethics where this is the explicitly stated order. [1] http://www.acm.org/about/se-code http://www.acm.org/about/se-code
    • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
      > in his right mind Which is another way to say that people who comes up with these things aren't in their right minds.
    • danielweber 10y ago
      I see "team" three times and "company" zero times. Can you point to the specific portion?
      • viewer5 10y ago
        "employer" is in there 20 times. Did you even glance at the document? CLIENT AND EMPLOYER is #2 in the list, and SELF is #8. COLLEAGUES is #7.
    • forgottenpass 10y ago
      Could you point to the part of the ACM code that stack ranks priorities? I must be missing it. It's a code to act ethically in conducting job functions, not how to set personal priorities around a career. In fact the code says it's all in service of the public, if there is any sense of priorities to derive, the employer is not on top. And besides, "The Code is not a simple ethical algorithm that generates ethical decisions."
    • lr4444lr 10y ago
      1.03. Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment. The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good. You think Facebook engineers can seriously go to work every day and abide by that?
    • 10y ago
  • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    We're not talking about life and limb stuff. Your professional responsibility should be in that order. You're being paid after all.
    • gaius 10y ago
      We're not talking about life and limb stuff. Kinda are, tho'. Stress, burnout, depression, carpel tunnel, strain on relationships, poor diet and lack of exercise, sleep deprivation - these are all things that many companies demand of their employees.
    • lr4444lr 10y ago
      Yeah, but it gets into murky waters in jobs with no clear definition of work hours.
    • Retra 10y ago
      Professional responsibility doesn't supersede social responsibility and personal responsibility. I already have to make decisions and produce value. If a company is paying me, I will choose to be more tolerant of making such decisions as part of that company's processes and with consideration to that company's needs. However, payment does not obligate me to serve those things. At least, not morally.
  • sverige 10y ago
    I respectfully disagree that nobody orders things that way. I have generally had that attitude wherever I've been working. The times I didn't have that attitude were where I discovered that I was being lied to by my boss or by those further up the chain. Lying kills my motivation to work for anyone, and when it happens, I immediately begin planning my exit in earnest. Now, it may be a rare trait. I have no idea really whether it is or not. I've certainly known many who operate in the reverse order, but it is what I was taught by my parents growing up, and has served me well during various careers. None of this means I want to work for Facebook, but they may actually be doing this there. I have read complaints by former employees that it is a little cult-like to work there, but again, those are a few out of thousands.
  • cmsmith 10y ago
    The author should have been more specific in referring to the professional 'self', rather than the general self. My takeaway was that they don't want people who value their own professional advancement at the expense of the company/product as a whole (e.g. backstabbing co-workers, hoarding resources). I don't think that the author was suggesting that the employees are expected to value the company's interest over their own personal lives. At least I hope not.
  • taurath 10y ago
    Depends what set of priorities and how far you draw the line, in my mind. Project/work priorities? Should be company first, then team, then self. I think that goes without saying, and I think thats what they're trying to get across. Going for self glory in projects isn't good for a company. Going to team glory isn't good for a company, but its better than self glory. Financial priorities? Everyone has to take care of themselves in that sense. Every individual has to take care of the bottom of their hierarchy of needs. This might be what you're comparing here. At the same time, past a certain point self needs are fulfilled financially - holding a project hostage for a raise for example wouldn't be great. Social priorities? Self probably comes first there as well - but its not that great a scale since self improvement from working around good people is a benefit to the company as well. But if done in such a way that you stand on the bodies of your vanquished foes you've created a win/lose situation where it could be a win/win. Don't be like oracle, basically.
    • trhway 10y ago
      >Going for self glory in projects isn't good for a company. Going to team glory isn't good for a company, but its better than self glory. you and FB missed the most important - going for the glory of your boss. It is good for the both - for the company (as the company did make sure that the glory of the boss is aligned with the glory of the company) as well as for the team (as the company did make sure that glory of the boss is aligned with the glory of the team). And it is obviously also good for yourself as bosses value the ones who bring them glory.
      • taurath 10y ago
        What an amazingly hierarchical type of thinking! Glory for the boss is just that, glory for the boss. Sometimes it may be good for the company, sometimes it might build up the boss in ways that aren't aligned with the companies interests. You get ivory tower syndrome and "kingdoms" really quick with that type of thinking.
  • m82labs 10y ago
    I guess I need more detail to understand your position on this one. An employee that is working for their own personal benefit and gain only is not going to work well in most team settings and will likely not care to work on projects that move the company forward. I don't think they are saying you need to die for the company, simply that your work should be focused on the goals of the company. It's kind of what you get paid for when you go to work.
    • semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      > An employee that is working for their own personal benefit and gain only is not going to work well in most team settings Well, that wasn't what GP said (specifically your "only"). What was stated was that company > team > self is not a natural ordering. And I agree. In particular, people will generally rank team > company. This is well-known to anyone who's studied small unit leadership, and has been well-known since von Clausewitz, perhaps even since antiquity. However, having some degree of overall faith in the leadership of the company, or at least in the purpose of the company (what's typically referred to in the military literature as Esprit de Corps) is a necessary precondition for small unit cohesion. TL;DR: the relationship between self, unit and company is much too complex for a linear ranking of their priorities to be useful in anything but vacuous statements.
      • bbcbasic 10y ago
        > The relationship between self, unit and company is much too complex for a linear ranking of their priorities to be useful in anything but vacuous statements. Nicely put.
  • gmarx 10y ago
    So many of you are so ready for your Facebook interview. And I believe none of you. Unless you have ever quit a job without having another one to jump to, because you concluded that your current employer couldn't possibly ever get value out of you greater than what they are paying for you. Then I would believe you and consider you out of your mind with misplaced loyalty. Some of you claim the question is about putting your personal glory above the success of the team. If so the author states it horribly
  • BurningFrog 10y ago
    Depends on how you interpret that. One extreme: If I make more money than I need, I will not ask to be paid less. Other end: I will work on whatever is most important for the team/product/company. Not what I find most fun.
  • mikerichards 10y ago
    Not sure why you're getting modded down, because your'e exactly right. They're stupid, psychological, trick questions to get people to lie. Just walk out when you get questions like this.
  • hrktb 10y ago
    I think what you are pointing out is that those priorities shouldn't be misaligned in the first place. Asking someone to do professional suicide to help the company shouldn't be a thing. I mean, if you are are part of a team and identify something that goes against you and the team but in favor of the conpany, your team's goal should be revised and realigned, and you should get credit for that. In the end pointing out the problem and eventually offering a solution shouldn't go against your own professional interests (your "self" shouldn't get the short end of the stick for a correct behavior)
• vidoc 10y ago
  Another hagiographic facebook article with the classic royal-we style we all love :)
  • iamleppert 10y ago
    Don't you know? They're doing gods work over there. Connecting the world and serving ads?
• wskinner 10y ago
  "At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. " This is nice in theory. But when your "peers" with Manager in their title have access to more information and more decision-making power, it is not in fact a parallel track. Just saying people are equal doesn't make it so, and it doesn't change the underlying organizational structures.
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
    If the managers say management is a lateral move then it must be so.
    • neat159 10y ago
      hmm
  • shostack 10y ago
    Is that in fact the case?
  • dreamsofdragons 10y ago
    If you set up the culture right, this isn't as big of a problem as you might think. On our team, it doesn't matter if you're the manager or not, the decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team. Sure management will still do approvals for time off and deal with the skinned knees and runny noses. But for day to day operations, it's peers working for a common cause.
    • chrisseaton 10y ago
      Do you really work for a genuine co-operative where all decisions are made by consensus of the workers? I'd be surprised and interested to learn more if that's the case.
      • devonkim 10y ago
        There's a Brazillian company (Semco) that's like this supposedly, but I have to wonder how they're doing today with so much of the company involved with energy.
• 1024core 10y ago
  > Take the incentive out of “climbing the ladder.” In other words, pay everyone the same? Of course the author didn't mean that; and pay and power are the primary drivers of upward mobility. If I get paid as much as Zuck's SVPs, sure, I won't feel the urge to climb the ladder; but until that happens, I will.
  • ctrlalt_g 10y ago
    "Climbing the ladder" has the connotation of stepping on other people in order to get ahead. Thinking about the analogy, if there are a bunch of people trying to climb the same ladder as you are, you have to pull people off or climb over them. It's possible to create an incentive structure that discourages cannibalizing your coworkers.
    • eropple 10y ago
      What do you envision that looking like? It feels inherently rivalrous, at least to some degree.
      • ctrlalt_g 10y ago
        I'm not sure, but when I was in the military, my SSgt told me not to burn bridges because I might end up in a situation where my life depends on that person helping me out. I thought that was an interesting incentive to cooperate. So maybe a reputation system can work, but I'm not good enough with people to know. To be clear, I'm fine with rivalry and competition. I just think there's a sane and reasonable way to do it.
    • trbvm2 10y ago
      "you have to pull people off or climb over them" Or make a wider ladder?
      • freyir 10y ago
        > Or make a wider ladder? What do you do next with your glut of senior managers? Or on the compensation side, there may not be resources to pay everyone as much as they'd like.
• Swizec 10y ago
  There's always a hierarchy. We're pack animals, establishing social hierarchy is at the core of our being. Office politics are more rampant in places without externally defined hierarchies because people have to figure out the hierarchy on their own.
• devy 10y ago
  "Take the incentive out of “climbing the ladder.” Some of the organization structure setup is not unique to Facebook. My former boss was a long time Microsoft employee, from what I heard from her anecdotally, Microsoft has long been setup with dual tracks for technical employees. The management track and the engineer track. One moves from engineer track to management track is a true lateral move in that salary don't necessarily get raised even though responsibilities will vary and may expand. Also, the rank on engineer track may also be converted to a lower rank in management track. On top of that, long tenured Distinguished Engineers might also get a much higher compensation than a mid-level manager. Once the incentives are leveled up, personal interests and motivation really becomes the driver for employees to do their most appropriate job. Obviously these were all anecdotal stories I heard. Microsoft now may also be different from the Microsoft then. I welcome someone who has first hand experience with similar organizational structure setup to clarify and elaborate on this.
  • Retra 10y ago
    IBM is set up the same way, to a degree. They have "IBM fellows" who are essentially executive-level engineers. I don't think it extends all the way down though.
    • devy 10y ago
      Yeah, IBM might have been one of the earliest tech giants to setup dual track organizational structure although I don't know for sure.
    • kawera 10y ago
      3M is another company with similar dual track system for engineers/scientists.
      • astrange 10y ago
        All large tech companies (Apple, MS, LinkedIn, Oracle, Google at least) have the same official ranks for engineers that go Senior, Staff, Distinguished, Fellow. But that doesn't mean anyone ever gets promoted up there. I think there's at most three Fellows in any of those companies at a time.
• p4wnc6 10y ago
  Have only heard negative things about FB office politics from the folks I know who work there.
  • mVChr 10y ago
    FB is big enough I'm sure different teams vary pretty widely. Even at the ~300 person company I was at previously the difference between project team culture and manager interference was pretty huge.
    • p4wnc6 10y ago
      I agree. And these same folks also like their jobs at FB despite the politics ... they see it as one of the cons but are still happy with all of the pros. I only commented because it's frustrating to see any company painted as if it's the one magical place in the universe that has solved office politics. Facebook is not that company.
• gregdoesit 10y ago
  I have a bunch of friends at Facebook - and from what I hear, this article is not very far off from what is happening. And it's all about many of the seniors leading with example. Take Philip Su, who was the site lead for Facebook London. In most organizations, that would translate to "manager of everything happening at Facebook". After 3 years he decided to take another lateral move - to move back to software development (no lead, just a software engineer) https://www.facebook.com/the.philip.su/timeline/story?ut=32&wstart=-2051193600&wend=2147483647&hash=10153933142446458&pagefilter=3&ustart=1 https://www.facebook.com/the.philip.su/timeline/story?ut=32&... When you work at a company where managers demonstrate that it is a lateral move - moving from management to individual contribution - well, then this stuff starts to work. Another thing that this article does not touch on, is the transparency that people at Facebook share what's going on with them professionally. My buddy said a senior person shared on Facebook @work how he had gotten a bad performance review, and how this made him feel... for all other employees to see, and comment on. My buddy was saying that "when I joined, I thought that people were just drinking kool aid about how our culture is different. But now that I'm in - I seriously have not expected it to be this different to anywhere I've worked before" I do think that Facebook is doing something incredible with keeping a very startup like and transparent culture going at this large scale. No other company of this size even comes close.
  • embiggen 10y ago
    With many close friends who work at $FB, I promise you politics are alive and well :)
    • argonaut 10y ago
      Yes, but this doesn't add much because any human situation involving more than 2 people involves interpersonal dynamics, AKA politics. It's a question of how much.
    • FaOS2qDWbFeRK2h 10y ago
      Is "$FB" the new "Micro$oft"?
• yarou 10y ago
  I wonder how useful an ELO system would be for evaluating performance. If one were in place, I don't think we'd really need managers at all. The system would supersede and replace managers. Your rating would be hidden as well.
  • Retra 10y ago
    Managers don't only evaluate performance.
    • yarou 10y ago
      You're right, they also steal credit for work they didn't perform. Management is another parasitic job that needs to be removed and automated away.
      • matthewmacleod 10y ago
        Here's another perspective – "management" is a job that can be poorly executed by some, but is important as a method for effectively disseminating and collecting knowledge and goals from different parts of a larger community. The reason my current manager is there is to communicate the business's priorities to me, and effectively deal with any grievances I have. This is astonishingly effective, in that I no longer have to spend time researching the reasons why I am performing certain tasks – I have a manager who can prioritise, but who is willing to take my views on board if I have them. Everybody wins, and I don't really want her replaced with an automated system.
        • yarou 10y ago
          Everybody wins insofar as you don't challenge the status quo. If you do, they will isolate you (i.e. not promote you) and/or terminate you. This stifles innovation and creativity. There are no places left anymore like Bell Labs - where pure research was carried out and management got out of your way. I find it hilarious that the vast majority of people on here will agree to automating away everything, except management (we really need them!). What I also find hilarious is the amount of downvotes I'm getting. If anything, that proves my point. Monkeys in business suits are a cancer and plague upon Silicon Valley, and the sooner we get rid of them, the sooner we can focus on solving real problems. What I see in most SV companies is massive bloatware - managers upon managers upon managers that don't really do anything. They create no value. Yet the incentive structure is skewed in their favor. This inefficiency will be addressed eventually, either exogenously (tech bubble bursting) or endogenously (engineers finally get sick of this corrupt and infected system).
• serge2k 10y ago
  I generally like HBR articles, but it's very annoying to end up deleting HTML nodes because of their stupid menu bars and x articles left notice. Poor web design. anyway... > Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order. This just sounds so obnoxious to me. > At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. Managers are there to support people and to remove barriers to getting things done. Managers focus on building a great team, creating a vision for how that team will execute its goals, and helping the people on that team develop in their careers All of those things sound like they add up to much more influence and responsibility than you get as an IC. > “Then who is in charge?” Lest anyone think it’s a Lord of the Flies scenario, our managers still moderate, facilitate, and tie-break. So the manager is in charge. But you know, feel free to suggest stuff plebs. > We provide different opportunities for growth by empowering employees to work on new projects or in new groups when interested. This keeps ICs engaged by allowing them to broaden their areas of expertise and expand or focus their scope by moving to projects at different levels of development So does this mean you don't make me jump through hoops to switch to another team? Large part of why I quit my last job was because I find the idea that I have to do an interview, to get the same job I'm already doing, ridiculous. The idea of the hackamonth sounds like it could help with this acutally. You are already employed by the company, just go talk to the manager and ask to switch for a month. At the end talk again and decide if it is a good fit. Way better than getting stuck on a lousy team, with a poor manager, who is able to trap you with bad reviews and threats.
  • r00fus 10y ago
    > I generally like HBR articles, but it's very annoying to end up deleting HTML nodes because of their stupid menu bars and x articles left notice. Safari reader or Readability is your friend.
• tibbe 10y ago
  > "Managers focus on ..., creating a vision for how that team will execute its goals" Confusing management with leadership is one of the main reasons for politics and empire building. Once managers think they're in charge of figuring out the vision, instead of that being the whole team's responsibility, you're lost in top-down management land.
  • shostack 10y ago
    In more traditional structures, managers are often in charge of figuring out that vision because they argue the buck stops with them, so they need the authority to make decisions to arrive at the outcome that meets their goals. Unfortunately, what often happens is managers think they are more knowledgeable than the ICs on the team. This in turn leads to ICs not being invested in the outcomes as much as if it were their ideas, and can lead to resentment because they do not feel their input is valued. A good leader is not "The Decider." A good leader is the one who asks their team "given X, Y and Z goals, how would you solve for this knowing these are the constraints?"
    • WalterSear 10y ago
      Funny, I had one of those meetings at work just yesterday. "Given X, Y and Z goals, how would you solve for this knowing A) these are the constraints and B) that me and the other cofounder have already decided what we want to do, and really just want your buy in."
  • alexgartrell 10y ago
    One thing we do is have ICs interview leadership/management candidates. This is a piece of signal we're always looking for.
• ryanlm 10y ago
  Whiners in the interview process seems like a good one. I'm conscious about complaining about a tech stack, or even a build system. It doesn't matter if you don't like it.
• muse900 10y ago
  You can't take politics out of people... no matter how hard you try.
  • raarts 10y ago
    Also there are just too many mediocre people to go around. I'm not optimistic, I suspect this will end with the very best people leaving the company.
• bbcbasic 10y ago
  Overall I see a lot of merit in their approach although for me it would be a culture shock. The problem with those interview questions however is they are more a test of "gift of the gab" or preparation and memorization than anything else.
• tikhonj 10y ago
  It's interesting to compare what Facebook does with how Galois organizes itself. They just published a blog post about how many traditional management functions are handled on a rotating basis—instead of having people who always manage, they have individual researchers and engineers step up to lead efforts on specific projects. This general approach even extends to firm-wide management (via a "Jedi council") and finding new clients. https://galois.com/blog/2016/06/undirector-of-engineering/ https://galois.com/blog/2016/06/undirector-of-engineering/ Galois is a private research lab/consulting firm that specializes in high-assurance computing relying heavily in programming language techniques and Haskell. I mostly know about them because they publish a whole ton of cool tools for security, low-level programming and verification. They also seem like a wonderful place to work partly because they're tackling fascinating, research-level problems and partly because the internal culture seems like something fundamentally special.
• Inlinked 10y ago
  All lives matter.
• lifeisstillgood 10y ago
  * "Influencer" - you can say that well respected technical people have as much influence as management - but if you spend most of your day coding you don't have the same information about the organisation so you just won't know there are decisions being made that you can influence. Management is like politics - it is a full time job. * at some point companies need to become more democratic. Yes "influencers" should be involved in these discussions, and management should almost be the press - letting people know these decisions are underway. * I personally think if we spend more time writing good discussion documents around our projects we will be able to write good discussion documents about our organisations
• officepolitics 10y ago
  > Managers focus on building a great team, creating a vision for how that team will execute its goals, and helping the people on that team develop in their careers. They are put in those positions because of their strong people skills. They aren’t there to tell teams what to do. That almost brings a tear to my eye. This is such a huge contrast to what my current experience is at BigCorp. And that's just a few miles away from Facebook. The question then becomes, how much power does a manager have at Facebook? Can they block you from transferring to another team? Can they block your vacation/time off requests? Are they the only ones responsible for doing the performance reviews? Is said performance review audited so as to contain verifiable facts? > We make escalation “legal” by making sure people know they won’t be blamed or punished for speaking up or asking hard questions. I really wish that was expanded on. Theoretically, I could escalate. In practice, that would backfire horribly. After all, if there's no accountability, what's preventing your manager from simply retaliating by giving you a hard time, possibly a while after the escalation happened? There are lots of subjective ways your work can be criticized/sabotaged which are not obviously connected to the escalation. > Obviously, these strategies are at their most effective when the whole company adopts them. Actually, it is way, way worse when the whole company doesn't support that. You can move from a great project to your own personal purgatory.
  • natarius4k 10y ago
    No, manager can't prevent you from switching to any other team or even start a team on your own. The idea behind this is that it ensures that talent naturally gravitates towards teams with most impact. Managers have no say! Reviews are written by your peers (that usually includes your manager). Reviews need to quote actual success metrics to prove the impact you had...just writting "bob is dope" won't take you far :)
    • amaks 10y ago
      What about situations when your performance review score is low? Sure, manager may not prevent you from moving the team, but company policy may do.
• zzzcpan 10y ago
  It's really unclear whether whatever they are doing actually does anything. And the author doesn't sound like he has any idea on what matters for productivity, given that productivity is what they were after. But at least it's clear that anyone can get far in management as long as they don't screw up too much.
• ryguytilidie 10y ago
  Probably a good idea, but I can say that when I worked there in 2011 it was EASILY the most political place I've ever worked, including the US Government.
• vinceguidry 10y ago
  > 360-degree reviews What like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y93rSKRE38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y93rSKRE38
• datashovel 10y ago
  I think this concept works well until you consider "lateral movement" between companies. ie. it works as long as a developer leaving / laid-off-from the company will be compensated at their new job just as well as the manager will. Don't get me wrong. Some people will embrace this. Namely those who aren't interested in managing others. But it seems a bit disingenuous to say you can "level the playing field" by having a value structure that doesn't map well to how most other companies' value structure is set up.
• warcher 10y ago
  I think the root of office politics comes when positions and influence within the company become a zero sum game. It wasn't until relatively late in Microsoft's career that you started hearing about all the reindeer games in Redmond. I'll be interested in seeing how this culture develops as Facebook reaches a growth fixpoint.
• negamax 10y ago
  Lost job recently to office politics at a fortune XXX. It sounds good in theory but I doubt Facebook or any Corp will ever manage to get people put self secondary (tertiary according to article). Or may be they have.. They are awfully successful and it has to come with great team spirit
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• ninkendo 10y ago
  > Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order I would politely ask Facebook to go fuck themselves if they asked me to put the company before myself. I don't exist to serve a company.
  • paulddraper 10y ago
    It's commonly called "teamwork over ego", though we might be talking past each other.
  • tomjen3 10y ago
    Of course not. You get paid to serve the company, and they aren't interested in people who aren't going to make them more than what they pay. You should always remember that a company will fire you the moment they think they can make a penny more that way, plan and act accordingly.
• known 10y ago
  "Man is by nature a political animal." --Aristotle
• Etheryte 10y ago
  Leaving the interesting article aside for a moment, the page has an insane weight of fixed tool/menu/other bars. On my small laptop screen they account for 24% of the whole viewport height. Who thought that's a good idea?
• dunkelheit 10y ago
  Some time ago at my workplace new top management proclaimed that "there was too much politics". In retrospect, what they really meant is they were uncomfortable with middle management holding too much decision-making power. So they took steps to ensure a more top-down structure and middle management was basically left with a task of overseeing their reports so they don't slack off.
• nilkn 10y ago
  I can't speak about FB personally, but I learned the hard way my first few years out of college that at most companies managers are simply given more respect, power, and money than engineers in general. It takes an extraordinarily talented high-impact developer who revolutionizes the company's technology in order to match a run-of-the-mill Director or VP who just shows up to work and "manages" teams of developers -- and even then the match will only be in salary, not in overall power in the organization and probably not in bonus structure either. You'll still be left out of countless meetings and kept in the dark on many decisions you could contribute to effectively. I say that I learned the hard way because I focused on being that high-impact developer. At my first job, I rewrote the company's core software to make it (really) an order of magnitude faster, providing the basis for the company's sustainability for the next decade. My salary skyrocketed. My title did not. I was forever stuck in a limbo of being just a "developer" while being paid as much as an executive but being excluded from every executive meeting and not even being involved in hiring for the team that would maintain the software I wrote on which the entire company depended. I was still stuck in a cubicle while the managers were sure to get very nice, spacious offices with ludicrous window views.
  • k-mcgrady 10y ago
    I really don't understand this view. They're different jobs. If you want to have the power an exec has become an exec. More than likely you cannot do both effectively at the same time. Yes, there are shitty managers but there are also a lot of them doing stuff an engineer doesn't have the skills to do. In all industries people think they could do a better job than their boss - usually it's not true and if it is learn new skills to take their job from them or start your own company.
    • nilkn 10y ago
      I didn't say they were the same job. I said they were accorded different levels of respect and prestige, which is what this post is about. I didn't want to be a pure executive or manager. At that company, it was, frankly, impossible for a developer to get the same perks as a manager. I'm sure there are companies out there that handle this a lot better and don't make management the only path to promotion. These have just been the minority in my personal experience. --- I also agree with you for what it's worth that management is a skill in and of itself that most developers wouldn't be good at. The point I was making in my previous post was a little more nuanced. Think of it like this. At a large company, there might be 100 VPs who are pure managers, and there might be 5 very distinguished engineers who are at the same VP level. This creates the impression that developers can rise up just as high in the company, when in reality it's more of an illusion. The technical skill level necessary to reach VP level as a developer is astronomically high. The management skill level necessary to reach VP level as a pure manager is certainly not low by any means, but it's comparatively much lower than it is for VP engineers.
• MrZipf 10y ago
  Kudos to FB. It's a hard problem as you scale. I have a few friends who suggest the article matches their experiences there. Being a 40-something engineer, you hear the same things over and again. I used to work at MSFT and my first manager there used to espouse company, team, self every day as the HBR article does. He'd regular re-evaluate his priorities based on what is the most beneficial task I can work on for the company today. Makes me wonder if it appears in management books or people just get wired that way. It definitely a reasonable way to proceed most of the time. Firsthand, I have no doubt that most of the unpleasantness I've witnessed in tech companies is due to team or self over everything.
• elgoog1212 10y ago
  Throwaway for obvious reasons. I have first hand experience with both FB and Google. When it comes to office politics, Google is currently turning into shit pretty rapidly, comparatively speaking. It's still miles better than most other companies, but the deterioration is now beyond the point of no return. There are _tons_ of layers of management, and 90% of the time, you'd be hard pressed to see what they actually do besides playing power games and fucking up the products as a result (as if Google needed any help with that). Managers here are mostly ex-engineers, and most of them suck at managing. The reason why they are managers in the first place is that it's virtually impossible for an engineer to attain a level beyond T6 (and massive increase in comp that comes with that), whereas the requirement to do so if you're a manager is that you have a pulse, and you're able to take credit for your reports' work. You won't believe what kind of people get L7 and above at Google once they switch to management. At Google you don't have to be good at managing to actually manage. TL;DR: as an engineer your career at Google will end at T6 if you're lucky, and at T5 if you're not; this is where things _begin_ for managers. So Google values managers more. FB is actually more mindful of the quality of their management talent. They put a bonfire under their feet in the form of charging managers with direct responsibility to hire for their teams, and _encouraging_ team members to leave for other teams every now and then to overcome human inertia. If you suck or if your project sucks, you will have trouble hiring and retaining talent, so pretty quickly you won't be a manager anymore.
  • brianx 10y ago
    I'm not sure that Google is turning into shit. It seems to me it's always been like that. I've been at Google for 4 years and noticed very quickly that turning software engineers into managers could not possibly work. I've switched teams recently and am happier for the time being, but my previous manager sucked ass. My new project is actually quite interesting. There's very little politics involved too, which is a plus, and I'm glad I'm not writing yet another chat app that we will deprecate in 2 years time. The worst part about Google for me is the level of incivility. This is what, the 4th time a senior exec has to call people out and tell them to behave on memegen? And it's only getting worse. Also, considering how mediocre many Google engineers are, I never understood where all that arrogance comes from. Edit: fix typos.
• winfred 10y ago
  >Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order. This makes it more likely that they’ll put the company’s mission above their individual interests and that they’ll set the proper example for others. Ah. I understand. So there are people that will set a company/team above their own interest and are reasonably intelligent at the same time? They're just looking for good liars, nothing else.