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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 bu
by switchbak 4y ago
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.
- andrestc 4y agoThe technical bar for EMs at Meta is quite high.
- kevinventullo 4y agoAs a former EM at Meta, I beg to differ.
- disgruntledphd2 4y agoHarsh, but potentially fair. I think that pre-2016, there was definitely more expectation that managers should be graduates from IC ranks, but that got lost around one of the (many) doublings of headcount FB experienced over the last decade.
- ryan_lane 4y agoMost of the worst managers I've worked with now work at Meta.
- disgruntledphd2 4y agoIt's definitely a way to reset the culture and get rid of people who don't fit what Mark is trying to achieve.
- justizin 4y agoIt can't be that difficult to contribute to the achievement of absolutely tanking the company's value by investing in a dead-end VR-for-work platform that was always just a distraction to avoid responding in any way to Congress pressing him about election interference.
- disgruntledphd2 4y agoLook 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.
- r00fus 4y agoI absolutely don't know why Facebook balked at making their own phone back in the day. Facebook's entire value prop about 10-15 years ago was the fact that you could find anyone on there who you even remotely knew. 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.
- klodolph 4y agoI think Facebook didn’t have the kind of capital to do it at the time they would have needed the captial to make a phone. Keep in mind that the Windows phone was reportedly pretty good but came out in 2010 and it turned out the smart phone space didn’t give out prizes for third place. People always underestimate the cost of developing a smartphone, even when working with modern OEMs, never mind working in the 2008-2010 time frame.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y ago> connect me to that girl Megan from my 5th grade classroom if you only look at the tech then yeah it's compelling. but in reality it's creepy and people don't want it.
- r00fus 4y agoWhen did that ever stop Zuck?
- blsapologist42 4y agoThey tried to make their own phone but it just didn't work out. So they ended up releasing something just so they could show something after all that investment. Of course teh company was much smalelr then.
- vkou 4y agoI somehow doubt Mark has great visibility into the culture of his line managers. 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.
- zabzonk 4y agobut what the heck is he "trying to achieve" - write a third-rate web video game?
- rsynnott 4y agoDepends on the company, of course (and I've no idea how it works at Facebook), but some companies make their EMs out of ICs (much like Pokemon, I assume touching a special rock is required to effect the evolution) and it's somewhat common for EMs to re-IC-ify on their own anyway.
- the_af 4y agoWhen the EM becomes an IC, how does this help the team grow their own skills and not get distracted by problems the EM should be moving out of their way? 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?
- whatshisface 4y agoTheir manager should be keeping an eye on them. That's why you have "middle management."
- the_af 4y agoI thought we wanted to get rid of layers of management?
- hello_moto 4y agoThis is effectively demoting and laying off middle management. These SDMs won't be an IC _and_ manager. These SDMs are demoted.
- rsynnott 4y agoEh, not necessarily demoted; many companies, and I'd assume Facebook, would have IC levels parallel to their EM levels. They might be looking at... sidemotion?
- yamtaddle 4y ago"Here's an option you'll hate—take it, or leave" is a tried-and-true way of making people quit. "You've been re-assigned" is a common form for it to take.
- henriquez 4y agoIsn’t that basically constructive termination?
- Alupis 4y agoNo, because these positions are genuinely being offered as an alternative to being laid off. If you choose not to take the new position, then you have terminated yourself.
- benj111 4y agoWhat are individual contributors in English? I took it to mean they were becoming contractors?
- yamtaddle 4y agoAnyone non-tech I know would just call it "labor", as opposed to management. The people who mostly do the things that make the stuff, rather than mostly telling others to do the things to make the stuff. 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.
- Nevermark 4y agoI think “labor” is associated with repetitive or at least well characterized jobs 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
- 4y ago
- friedman23 4y ago> 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. The point is that the company doesn't need the managers.
- heleninboodler 4y agoAnd/or that they aren't particularly good as managers either.