<story><title>Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-07/meta-to-ask-many-managers-to-become-individual-contributors-or-leave</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>likeabbas</author><text>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.</text></item><item><author>karaterobot</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s too bad, because the best managers I&amp;#x27;ve worked with were not good ICs, but they did &lt;i&gt;multiply&lt;/i&gt; 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&amp;#x27;m sure they must, then they&amp;#x27;d presumably get jettisoned as a result of this choice. That would be bad long term.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s basically the equivalent of the legendary 10x programmer — you hear about them, but it&amp;#x27;s rare to actually meet one, and there are sure a lot more people claiming to be one than who actually are.&lt;p&gt;My theory is that there are a set number of great managers in the world, and that number doesn&amp;#x27;t scale with the number of people who take on the role. They&amp;#x27;re just out there, being awesome, while a bunch of pretty lousy ones share their job title.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>Not going to happen, fundamentally just due to supply and demand.&lt;p&gt;I have been a senior&amp;#x2F;principal engineer, as well as a director&amp;#x2F;senior director. The fact is that being a manager or director is just fundamentally a &lt;i&gt;much harder job&lt;/i&gt; than being an IC. It&amp;#x27;s not that it&amp;#x27;s inherently more difficult, it&amp;#x27;s just that the day-to-day is much more of a grind than being an IC. For people wondering why engineering interviews can be so obscure&amp;#x2F;difficult, it&amp;#x27;s often because the cost of a bad hire can be catastrophic to a manager. I had a great team of about 30 people, except for 1 person who just couldn&amp;#x27;t get along with others. I spent about 80% of my energy on that person, and it sucked.&lt;p&gt;So for people wondering why managers get paid more, it&amp;#x27;s just that it&amp;#x27;s a shittier job that fewer people want to do than program.</text></comment>
<story><title>Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-07/meta-to-ask-many-managers-to-become-individual-contributors-or-leave</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>likeabbas</author><text>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.</text></item><item><author>karaterobot</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s too bad, because the best managers I&amp;#x27;ve worked with were not good ICs, but they did &lt;i&gt;multiply&lt;/i&gt; 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&amp;#x27;m sure they must, then they&amp;#x27;d presumably get jettisoned as a result of this choice. That would be bad long term.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s basically the equivalent of the legendary 10x programmer — you hear about them, but it&amp;#x27;s rare to actually meet one, and there are sure a lot more people claiming to be one than who actually are.&lt;p&gt;My theory is that there are a set number of great managers in the world, and that number doesn&amp;#x27;t scale with the number of people who take on the role. They&amp;#x27;re just out there, being awesome, while a bunch of pretty lousy ones share their job title.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ncann</author><text>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.</text></comment>