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Chamath talked about manager bloat on a recent All-in podcast in a way that seemed to make sense. Basically there is pressure to grow your career by moving from
by _9omd 4y ago
Chamath talked about manager bloat on a recent All-in podcast in a way that seemed to make sense. Basically there is pressure to grow your career by moving from being an IC to a manager and once a manager there are incentives to grow your number of reports. The organizational efficiency suffers when you have top tier ICs start managing teams of average people. You might get a team of 6 engineers that’s only doing 2x as much work as the former IC that’s managing them used to do, which means the cost per unit of work has increased tremendously.
- lxm 4y agoImagine what Michelangelo could’ve accomplished if he was tasked with managing a team of painters.
- nsajko 4y agoIs this ironic, I can't tell? "The Mythical Man-Month" seems relevant in any case.
- ttoinou 4y agoHas to be ironic, since that's what Michelangelo did
- ramraj07 4y agoHe hired the painters to complement him, he never stopped painting altogether. I’ve seen the same pattern work. Make star IC a TL, pair them with good product and manager, add many engineers who can take care of all the simpler work and let the star do the main work. For orgs which can’t or won’t hire “A people”, this is the only workable solution I think.
- kerpotgh 4y ago[dead]
- csense 4y agoIf the reward for competence is promotion, in the steady-state equilibrium everybody's incompetent at their current job: If they were competent, they would have been promoted into a different job. It's called the Peter Principle [1] and it's pretty well-known. I suppose Facebook's realized it's in a Peter Principle situation, and the remedy for it would, in theory, be to send some of the people back to previous jobs where they were competent. The problem is that, in practice, it seems a lot like a demotion, especially if the original move was touted as a promotion, and the pay and prestige of your new old job is less. It's a real puzzle how this can be done without demoralizing the affected employees into quitting -- especially the best ones, who presumably have lots of good career options elsewhere, and whose value is the entire reason for doing this in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
- pirate787 4y agoThe answer is to pay the top IC as much as managers
- twayt 4y agoThe premise of this always puzzled me. I’ve seen many people “promoted” to a “higher” level because they displayed characteristics that they would be more successful at that role than anyone else despite lacking competence in their current role. I’ve also seen people who are great at their current role but lack the attributes to rise into higher roles. So the premise of competence being rewarded by promotion doesn’t really seem useful in practice.
- Jensson 4y agoIncompetence being rewarded as in your case doesn't seem better at all though.
- backtoyoujim 4y agoThe Gervais Principle https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... ... illustrates the fallacy of the Peter Principle.
- ugh123 4y agoSome organizations have tried to limit manager-bloat by offering an alternative track for ICs (senior-> staff -> principle -> whatever). But the expectations at those levels have been hard to define and individual output seems to plateau or even degrade back to 'senior' level or even less when these high ranking ICs are asked to join a plethora of meetings on behalf of the team.
- diebeforei485 4y agoIt's also common at some of these companies to get "demoted" from a higher track. That basically never happens to managers.
- Gunnerhead 4y agoSorry, do you mean it’s common for someone to go from, say, L6, to L5?
- diebeforei485 4y agoYes.
- lennixm 4y agoI've never heard of that happening.
- chengiz 4y agoThis concept is as old as any organizations existed. Not sure why it needs a modern podcast.
- mavelikara 4y agoDavid Sacks, not Chamath.