9 ms·

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 abs

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 I met two really good ones. This is after working with hundreds of them as a consultant. Actual, natural-born managers are such an incredibly rare species that you can go a long time without seeing any in the wild. It's basically the equivalent of the legendary 10x programmer — you hear about them, but it's rare to actually meet one, and there are sure a lot more people claiming to be one than who actually are. My theory is that there are a set number of great managers in the world, and that number doesn't scale with the number of people who take on the role. They're just out there, being awesome, while a bunch of pretty lousy ones share their job title.

dijit 4y ago
Any traits to identify these people? I am a massive sufferer of imposter syndrome, I do my best to help everyone and smooth over things and set direction in a clear way with as much freedom in execution as possible. but i am always second guessing myself. I know I am almost certainly a middling manager (if not a bad one), but I would like to improve. Not because I love doing it, but because I don't trust that anyone else in my position (or who would take my position) actually wants to improve.
- solarmist 4y ago
  The distinguishing factor I've seen is servant leadership [1]. They believe that supporting and developing their people is their main job. Execution is just a prerequisite to being able to do the rest. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership
  - pvarangot 4y ago
    > The distinguishing factor I've seen is servant leadership I've never encountered a servant leadership styled EM that is not also a good IC.
    - solarmist 4y ago
      I have, actually; my two best examples were not great engineers. They were passable, but their strengths really came out in management.
  - bradlys 4y ago
    The problem is that what makes a good manager for an IC does not make a good manager for the manager’s manager. They are fundamentally at odds unless you have servant leadership from the top down. (Which is nearly unheard of)
    - solarmist 4y ago
      I disagree. What are you thinking of that’s at odds with it? The only thing I can think of is MBA disease. But that’s rent seeking not productive management techniques.
- urthor 4y ago
  It's remarkably easy. For some reason it's simply not taught at schools. 1. Psychological security. 2. Crystal Clear targets, planning, goals, written down. To paraphrase this, a top manager will write their ICs an 8-12 week JIRA backlog. Obviously, these goals will iterate. However, the ironclad clarity is essential. 3. Positive, effective, coaching and feedback at the principle skill the IC performs. Aka, coding. 4. Lead by example. Conspicuous, hard, effort, devoting majority of time and energy to managing down and shielding. The issue is simple. All of the above requires sweat from the manager. Manager's are lazy, and nobody is watching them manage their IC's.
likeabbas 4y ago
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.
- ncann 4y ago
  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.
  - knert 4y ago
    I interviewed for FB once and I don’t believe this is the case there. I was told the comp levels ran parallel for ICs and Managers. They do value their ICs it seems. This was one of the main reasons I was interested in working for them. You can see it on levels.fyi
    - loeg 4y ago
      The levels are parallel but it’s easier to get promoted to level 6+ on the management track.
      - donkey-hotei 4y ago
        There is M1 and there is M2, and then there's Director. There's no level 6+ on the management track. I'll disagree with this statement by saying that I think the step function in skills between managing people and managing people who manage people is huge. There are larger gaps between M1 -> M2 -> D than IC6 -> IC7 -> IC8... but, I think the answer depends. If you are a really strong individual contributor, I presume getting an IC promotion is easier. If you are just decent, getting an IC7+ promotion seems incredibly challenging because IC7 requires an very high level of competence. If you are just decent as a manager, you can get luckier.
        4y ago
throwaway2037 4y ago
This is an incredible post with a lot of insight. Can you please (please!) blog some stories about what you have seen? You are lucky to "work[ing] with hundreds of them as a consultant". Do you think it can be trained into people? I do, but most companies are too lazy. Plus, it is not a one time exercise of X hours of training. It needs to be constantly monitored. In my career, I frequently see two-faced managers who say one thing when in front of the big boss, but do another when they are not around. (TL;DR: I call it: "The mouth moves, but the body doesn't.") It's always about the interpersonal clashes that drives away great ICs. The high performers get tired of the b-s from their manager and get hired away. Terrible loss for the company, but a (political) gain for the manager. (One less fly in the potato salad!) Example: Below, someone mentioned "servant leadership". It is my first time to learn about term. It sounds brilliant. This idea seems possible to train into managers. Plus, the it is an interesting idea to strictly tie manager's comp to reports' comp. It would much better align the manager's incentives instead of today's world of "empire building".
- ninjagoo 4y ago
  > Below, someone mentioned "servant leadership". It is my first time to learn about term. It sounds brilliant. It's a term from Agile/Scrum. > Plus, the it is an interesting idea to strictly tie manager's comp to reports' comp. Then the incentive exclusively becomes raising the reports' comp. That might be detrimental to organizational goals. Many salaries are structured as base + short-term incentive + long-term incentive, but clearly that obviously doesn't seem to work as well as it should, either. For companies, it's well-known that aligning objectives is complicated. After decades of 'Management Science', it doesn't seem to me that we are any closer to managing alignment across orgs ideally than we've been in the past. There may not be a silver bullet to this. That said, thinking about OP's comments about natural-born managers, and how there are natural-born artists, and how generative AI like Stable Diffusion can deliver good results for those that are not natural artists, we may actually need to turn to generative AI to solve for managerial tasks in an optimal way across large orgs. That might even resolve issues with misaligned incentives. Training such an AI could be done on a curated corpus of HBR-type case studies. And you could actually test performance of different corpuses by measuring real-world performance of the corresponding business units in which these AIs operate.
spike021 4y ago
>the best managers I've worked with were not good ICs Reminds me of baseball. Many of the best managers weren't the best when they were players. Some never even made it to the major leagues. But as a manager/coach they're incredibly well-regarded.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  Managers don't have to have the hands on skills. What's more important is their understanding of the players, and making players better than they would be otherwise. Those well-regarded managers are often so because they create a whole greater than the parts. Average managers break even. Bad managers decrease value.
- itsdrewmiller 4y ago
  Isn't the research on baseball managers that they are in fact nearly useless? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-managers-are-headed-to-the-hall-of-mediocrity/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-managers-are-heade...
vonnik 4y ago
What the leading indicators of a good manager? How would you recognize one in a hiring process?
cutenewt 4y ago
Can you elaborate on these "two really good ones?" What did they do that made them so special?
1over137 4y ago
What does "IC" mean in this context?
- alexgolive 4y ago
  Individual contributors - as opposed to managers
- shagie 4y ago
  Individual contribuitor. In most cases, this is roughly "people who write code." https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/what-is-an-individual-contributor https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/what-is-a...
  - LadyCailin 4y ago
    Not strictly. Architects I think are generally considered ICs. An IC is basically anyone that doesn’t have people under them officially in the org hierarchy, even if they do thought leadership, like a tech lead or architect.
groby_b 4y ago
Being a manager is hard and comes with a boatload of emotional responsibilities[1]. It takes a long term to learn, and our process of training managers is fundamentally broken. It's not that there's a "set number of great managers", but we fail to train people, and many who could've been simply wash out because they were thrown into the deep end without any support. ("Hey, you're a good IC, you must be a manager") And before somebody suggests it, no, MBAs are not the answer[2]. And I don't think we're fixing that if we don't manage to move away from a world where the ends justify the means. As a manager, your fundamental job is to care. Not to goose numbers, but to care enough about people that they feel safe enough to take risks and grow. In an environment that lives and dies by "what did you do for the metrics/the quarterly numbers", developing that care without losing the job or becoming a deep cynic is really, really hard. If you have a good manager, hang on to them. If you're reporting to one, think hard about following them if they leave, because they are rare, and you might not get the experience again. And if you have the opportunity to become a manager, think carefully if the environment will allow you to care enough. [1] https://fortune.com/2023/02/06/managers-impact-worker-mental-health-more-than-therapists-research-shows-bosses-change-conversation/ https://fortune.com/2023/02/06/managers-impact-worker-mental... [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2962506 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2962506
chiefalchemist 4y ago
Managing is like any skill, if you want to develop it you have to work at it. For it to come naturally, is luck. That is, some collection of personal / personality traits, in the right place, at the right time. The problem is, few (are allowed / encouraged) to develop their manager-ness. That aside, managers are a function of leadership. Got a bad manager? That means some leader is not doing their job. Yes, there are few great managers, just as their are few great leaders. My theory is, we could have more great leaders (or at least on average better), but we collectively use that word / title (i.e., leader) so loosely that in too many cases people get the luxury of wearing the crown without out actually doing the work. If it doesn't walk like a duck...and it doesn't talk like a duck...yet it's still a duck?? That is creating a false sense of accomplishment.
loeg 4y ago
I think Zuck would really prefer the bad managers go back to being ICs, not the good ones. I am also not sure how to best make that happen.
boringg 4y ago
That and the really good managers probably dont much cred at their org since it isnt highly valued.
ninjagoo 4y ago
> Actual, natural-born managers are such an incredibly rare species that you can go a long time without seeing any in the wild. So how do we replicate this ability in people? For sports, there are academies to surface and nurture sporting talent. As a society, at least to me, it seems we have not been able to do something similar for "management" at societal scale. Maybe because the whole domain requires a broader set of competencies in many fields, including the specific technical domain, the humanities, business skills, and political savvy, amongst others. Maybe we no longer need to replicate this with people. Instead, repeating what I said elsewhere in the thread: consider how there are natural-born managers, and how there are natural-born artists, and how generative AI like Stable Diffusion can deliver good results for those that are not natural artists, we may actually need to turn to generative AI to solve for managerial tasks in an optimal way across large orgs. That might even resolve issues with misaligned incentives. Training such an AI could be done on a curated corpus of HBR-type case studies. And you could actually test performance of different corpuses (reflecting different management styles, for example) by measuring real-world performance of the corresponding business units in which these AIs operate.
ryloric 4y ago
Hard agree, it's incredible that there's no systematic way to train such managers. When I was younger I thought maybe that's what business schools did, but they produce a completely different kind of manager who's probably worse at managing people than they would've been had they not gone to business school in the first place.
- urthor 4y ago
  It's remarkably easy. For some reason it's simply not taught at schools. 1. Psychological security. 2. Crystal Clear targets, planning, goals, written down. To paraphrase this, a top manager will write their ICs an 8-12 week JIRA backlog. Obviously, these goals will iterate. However, the ironclad clarity is essential. 3. Positive, effective, coaching and feedback at the principle skill the IC performs. Aka, coding. 4. Lead by example. Conspicuous, hard, effort, devoting majority of time and energy to managing down and shielding. The issue is simple. All of the above requires sweat from the manager. Managers are lazy, and nobody is watching them manage their ICs.
baxtr 4y ago
Could you describe how these 2 were different from the rest? How did they act differently?
andrei_says_ 4y ago
Could you elaborate a bit on the qualities and approaches of the two 10x managers?
nvarsj 4y ago
Oh I completely agree with you. Good managers have an amazing multiplying effect on their team. People underestimate how important it is for a team to gel to be productive - although it's been said since the Peopleware days. On the other hand, I've had maybe 2 great managers my entire career. The majority were either bean counters or empire builders. The latter is particularly toxic - they don't manage down at all beyond the minimum required. They focus almost exclusively on external optics and climbing the ladder. So given that, I can see an appeal to trim down on managers. Of course, choosing the right managers to let go or convert is incredibly challenging.
koonsolo 4y ago
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. With one you think "wow this is such a tough business, the manager is doing crazy effort to keep things going", and then another manager jumps in and "wow, this is an easy project. Manager is taking a walk through the park. All seems like a piece of cake."
- leokennis 4y ago
  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.
cptcobalt 4y ago
and good managers probably started out as bad managers until they figured it out!
gofreddygo 4y ago
> 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.
- fairity 4y ago
  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.
  - gofreddygo 4y ago
    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.
mmsimanga 4y ago
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.
fsckboy 4y ago
> were not good ICs, but they did multiply the effectiveness of the ICs they worked with that sounds nice (meaning, "I know what you are saying") but it's not really true. As organizations grow, they become less efficient. If a manager can keep a team of N working at N*1 productivity, that's amazing, but it's not a multiple. Now, people can be dragged down by poor communication, poor leadership, changing targets, stepping on each other's feet, bad attitudes, etc. and a good manager can get that 0.1 efficiency multiplier back up to something approaching 1, so it might feel like a multiple.

dijit 4y ago

Any traits to identify these people? I am a massive sufferer of imposter syndrome, I do my best to help everyone and smooth over things and set direction in a clear way with as much freedom in execution as possible. but i am always second guessing myself. I know I am almost certainly a middling manager (if not a bad one), but I would like to improve. Not because I love doing it, but because I don't trust that anyone else in my position (or who would take my position) actually wants to improve.

solarmist 4y ago
The distinguishing factor I've seen is servant leadership [1]. They believe that supporting and developing their people is their main job. Execution is just a prerequisite to being able to do the rest. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership
- pvarangot 4y ago
  > The distinguishing factor I've seen is servant leadership I've never encountered a servant leadership styled EM that is not also a good IC.
  - solarmist 4y ago
    I have, actually; my two best examples were not great engineers. They were passable, but their strengths really came out in management.
- bradlys 4y ago
  The problem is that what makes a good manager for an IC does not make a good manager for the manager’s manager. They are fundamentally at odds unless you have servant leadership from the top down. (Which is nearly unheard of)
  - solarmist 4y ago
    I disagree. What are you thinking of that’s at odds with it? The only thing I can think of is MBA disease. But that’s rent seeking not productive management techniques.
urthor 4y ago
It's remarkably easy. For some reason it's simply not taught at schools. 1. Psychological security. 2. Crystal Clear targets, planning, goals, written down. To paraphrase this, a top manager will write their ICs an 8-12 week JIRA backlog. Obviously, these goals will iterate. However, the ironclad clarity is essential. 3. Positive, effective, coaching and feedback at the principle skill the IC performs. Aka, coding. 4. Lead by example. Conspicuous, hard, effort, devoting majority of time and energy to managing down and shielding. The issue is simple. All of the above requires sweat from the manager. Manager's are lazy, and nobody is watching them manage their IC's.

likeabbas 4y ago

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.

ncann 4y ago
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.
- knert 4y ago
  I interviewed for FB once and I don’t believe this is the case there. I was told the comp levels ran parallel for ICs and Managers. They do value their ICs it seems. This was one of the main reasons I was interested in working for them. You can see it on levels.fyi
  - loeg 4y ago
    The levels are parallel but it’s easier to get promoted to level 6+ on the management track.
    - donkey-hotei 4y ago
      There is M1 and there is M2, and then there's Director. There's no level 6+ on the management track. I'll disagree with this statement by saying that I think the step function in skills between managing people and managing people who manage people is huge. There are larger gaps between M1 -> M2 -> D than IC6 -> IC7 -> IC8... but, I think the answer depends. If you are a really strong individual contributor, I presume getting an IC promotion is easier. If you are just decent, getting an IC7+ promotion seems incredibly challenging because IC7 requires an very high level of competence. If you are just decent as a manager, you can get luckier.
      - 4y ago

throwaway2037 4y ago

This is an incredible post with a lot of insight. Can you please (please!) blog some stories about what you have seen? You are lucky to "work[ing] with hundreds of them as a consultant". Do you think it can be trained into people? I do, but most companies are too lazy. Plus, it is not a one time exercise of X hours of training. It needs to be constantly monitored. In my career, I frequently see two-faced managers who say one thing when in front of the big boss, but do another when they are not around. (TL;DR: I call it: "The mouth moves, but the body doesn't.") It's always about the interpersonal clashes that drives away great ICs. The high performers get tired of the b-s from their manager and get hired away. Terrible loss for the company, but a (political) gain for the manager. (One less fly in the potato salad!) Example: Below, someone mentioned "servant leadership". It is my first time to learn about term. It sounds brilliant. This idea seems possible to train into managers. Plus, the it is an interesting idea to strictly tie manager's comp to reports' comp. It would much better align the manager's incentives instead of today's world of "empire building".

ninjagoo 4y ago
> Below, someone mentioned "servant leadership". It is my first time to learn about term. It sounds brilliant. It's a term from Agile/Scrum. > Plus, the it is an interesting idea to strictly tie manager's comp to reports' comp. Then the incentive exclusively becomes raising the reports' comp. That might be detrimental to organizational goals. Many salaries are structured as base + short-term incentive + long-term incentive, but clearly that obviously doesn't seem to work as well as it should, either. For companies, it's well-known that aligning objectives is complicated. After decades of 'Management Science', it doesn't seem to me that we are any closer to managing alignment across orgs ideally than we've been in the past. There may not be a silver bullet to this. That said, thinking about OP's comments about natural-born managers, and how there are natural-born artists, and how generative AI like Stable Diffusion can deliver good results for those that are not natural artists, we may actually need to turn to generative AI to solve for managerial tasks in an optimal way across large orgs. That might even resolve issues with misaligned incentives. Training such an AI could be done on a curated corpus of HBR-type case studies. And you could actually test performance of different corpuses by measuring real-world performance of the corresponding business units in which these AIs operate.

spike021 4y ago

>the best managers I've worked with were not good ICs Reminds me of baseball. Many of the best managers weren't the best when they were players. Some never even made it to the major leagues. But as a manager/coach they're incredibly well-regarded.

chiefalchemist 4y ago
Managers don't have to have the hands on skills. What's more important is their understanding of the players, and making players better than they would be otherwise. Those well-regarded managers are often so because they create a whole greater than the parts. Average managers break even. Bad managers decrease value.
itsdrewmiller 4y ago
Isn't the research on baseball managers that they are in fact nearly useless? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-managers-are-headed-to-the-hall-of-mediocrity/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-managers-are-heade...

vonnik 4y ago

What the leading indicators of a good manager? How would you recognize one in a hiring process?

cutenewt 4y ago

Can you elaborate on these "two really good ones?" What did they do that made them so special?

1over137 4y ago

What does "IC" mean in this context?

alexgolive 4y ago
Individual contributors - as opposed to managers
shagie 4y ago
Individual contribuitor. In most cases, this is roughly "people who write code." https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/what-is-an-individual-contributor https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/what-is-a...
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  Not strictly. Architects I think are generally considered ICs. An IC is basically anyone that doesn’t have people under them officially in the org hierarchy, even if they do thought leadership, like a tech lead or architect.

groby_b 4y ago

Being a manager is hard and comes with a boatload of emotional responsibilities[1]. It takes a long term to learn, and our process of training managers is fundamentally broken. It's not that there's a "set number of great managers", but we fail to train people, and many who could've been simply wash out because they were thrown into the deep end without any support. ("Hey, you're a good IC, you must be a manager") And before somebody suggests it, no, MBAs are not the answer[2]. And I don't think we're fixing that if we don't manage to move away from a world where the ends justify the means. As a manager, your fundamental job is to care. Not to goose numbers, but to care enough about people that they feel safe enough to take risks and grow. In an environment that lives and dies by "what did you do for the metrics/the quarterly numbers", developing that care without losing the job or becoming a deep cynic is really, really hard. If you have a good manager, hang on to them. If you're reporting to one, think hard about following them if they leave, because they are rare, and you might not get the experience again. And if you have the opportunity to become a manager, think carefully if the environment will allow you to care enough. [1] https://fortune.com/2023/02/06/managers-impact-worker-mental-health-more-than-therapists-research-shows-bosses-change-conversation/ https://fortune.com/2023/02/06/managers-impact-worker-mental... [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2962506 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2962506

chiefalchemist 4y ago

Managing is like any skill, if you want to develop it you have to work at it. For it to come naturally, is luck. That is, some collection of personal / personality traits, in the right place, at the right time. The problem is, few (are allowed / encouraged) to develop their manager-ness. That aside, managers are a function of leadership. Got a bad manager? That means some leader is not doing their job. Yes, there are few great managers, just as their are few great leaders. My theory is, we could have more great leaders (or at least on average better), but we collectively use that word / title (i.e., leader) so loosely that in too many cases people get the luxury of wearing the crown without out actually doing the work. If it doesn't walk like a duck...and it doesn't talk like a duck...yet it's still a duck?? That is creating a false sense of accomplishment.

loeg 4y ago

I think Zuck would really prefer the bad managers go back to being ICs, not the good ones. I am also not sure how to best make that happen.

boringg 4y ago

That and the really good managers probably dont much cred at their org since it isnt highly valued.

ninjagoo 4y ago

> Actual, natural-born managers are such an incredibly rare species that you can go a long time without seeing any in the wild. So how do we replicate this ability in people? For sports, there are academies to surface and nurture sporting talent. As a society, at least to me, it seems we have not been able to do something similar for "management" at societal scale. Maybe because the whole domain requires a broader set of competencies in many fields, including the specific technical domain, the humanities, business skills, and political savvy, amongst others. Maybe we no longer need to replicate this with people. Instead, repeating what I said elsewhere in the thread: consider how there are natural-born managers, and how there are natural-born artists, and how generative AI like Stable Diffusion can deliver good results for those that are not natural artists, we may actually need to turn to generative AI to solve for managerial tasks in an optimal way across large orgs. That might even resolve issues with misaligned incentives. Training such an AI could be done on a curated corpus of HBR-type case studies. And you could actually test performance of different corpuses (reflecting different management styles, for example) by measuring real-world performance of the corresponding business units in which these AIs operate.

ryloric 4y ago

Hard agree, it's incredible that there's no systematic way to train such managers. When I was younger I thought maybe that's what business schools did, but they produce a completely different kind of manager who's probably worse at managing people than they would've been had they not gone to business school in the first place.

urthor 4y ago
It's remarkably easy. For some reason it's simply not taught at schools. 1. Psychological security. 2. Crystal Clear targets, planning, goals, written down. To paraphrase this, a top manager will write their ICs an 8-12 week JIRA backlog. Obviously, these goals will iterate. However, the ironclad clarity is essential. 3. Positive, effective, coaching and feedback at the principle skill the IC performs. Aka, coding. 4. Lead by example. Conspicuous, hard, effort, devoting majority of time and energy to managing down and shielding. The issue is simple. All of the above requires sweat from the manager. Managers are lazy, and nobody is watching them manage their ICs.

baxtr 4y ago

Could you describe how these 2 were different from the rest? How did they act differently?

andrei_says_ 4y ago

Could you elaborate a bit on the qualities and approaches of the two 10x managers?

nvarsj 4y ago

Oh I completely agree with you. Good managers have an amazing multiplying effect on their team. People underestimate how important it is for a team to gel to be productive - although it's been said since the Peopleware days. On the other hand, I've had maybe 2 great managers my entire career. The majority were either bean counters or empire builders. The latter is particularly toxic - they don't manage down at all beyond the minimum required. They focus almost exclusively on external optics and climbing the ladder. So given that, I can see an appeal to trim down on managers. Of course, choosing the right managers to let go or convert is incredibly challenging.

koonsolo 4y ago

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. With one you think "wow this is such a tough business, the manager is doing crazy effort to keep things going", and then another manager jumps in and "wow, this is an easy project. Manager is taking a walk through the park. All seems like a piece of cake."

leokennis 4y ago
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.

cptcobalt 4y ago

and good managers probably started out as bad managers until they figured it out!

gofreddygo 4y ago

> 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.

fairity 4y ago
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.
- gofreddygo 4y ago
  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.

mmsimanga 4y ago

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.

fsckboy 4y ago

> were not good ICs, but they did multiply the effectiveness of the ICs they worked with that sounds nice (meaning, "I know what you are saying") but it's not really true. As organizations grow, they become less efficient. If a manager can keep a team of N working at N*1 productivity, that's amazing, but it's not a multiple. Now, people can be dragged down by poor communication, poor leadership, changing targets, stepping on each other's feet, bad attitudes, etc. and a good manager can get that 0.1 efficiency multiplier back up to something approaching 1, so it might feel like a multiple.