
How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics - wallflower
https://hbr.org/2016/06/how-facebook-tries-to-prevent-office-politics
======
wskinner
"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.

~~~
dreamsofdragons
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.

~~~
proksoup
I've found consensus decision making to be frustrating in the environments
I've encountered it.

A lot of flip flopping and lack of follow through.

Who made that decision? We did. Can we give up on that and try something else?
Of course.

I kinda like to have _at least_ a shepherd for the day to day decisions, if
not a commander.

In practice in my current environment it's been the occasional PM that takes
some ownership that fills that role, but in many groups I see the floundering
without leadership.

Internally I think they think they're making progress because everyone on the
team is always happy with their decisions, I may just be the old curmudgeon
that's frustrated with what I see as wasted effort.

~~~
specialist
While it can work, "consensus" usually means ad hoc, no accountability, no
followthru.

This essay was illuminating:

Tyranny of Structurelessness

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness)

~~~
proksoup
Yes, <3 that.

"Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a
structureless group."

The same essay was linked to me a previous time I made a similar public
complaint :)

------
nilkn
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
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
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.

~~~
pkaye
One thing that helps is to get to personally know the people up the management
chain better. Respect comes easier when they know you as a person instead of
just a name on a document.

I learned this the easy way at a company when our manager left and it took a
long time to find a replacement so all the directors and VPs would come
directly to us for questions, advice, etc.

------
gregdoesit
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&...](https://www.facebook.com/the.philip.su/timeline/story?ut=32&wstart=-2051193600&wend=2147483647&hash=10153933142446458&pagefilter=3&ustart=1)

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
With many close friends who work at $FB, I promise you politics are alive and
well :)

~~~
FaOS2qDWbFeRK2h
Is "$FB" the new "Micro$oft"?

~~~
Gigablah
It's just a reference to their stock ticker symbol.

------
devy

        "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
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.

~~~
kawera
3M is another company with similar dual track system for engineers/scientists.

~~~
astrange
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.

------
tikhonj
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.

------
1024core
> 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.

~~~
jankassens
There are definitely Individual Contributors who are on the same compensation
level as directors. These are the engineers who revolutionize how the company
operates, such as inventing HHVM and saving tons of resources.

~~~
1024core
There's a huge chasm between Directors and SVPs.

------
tibbe
> "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
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
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."

------
Swizec
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.

------
officepolitics
> 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
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
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.

------
elgoog1212
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
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.

~~~
zump
> 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.

What does this mean?

~~~
elgoog1212
Memegen is actually the best part about Google. It's an internal meme site
where people poke fun at the various failings (perceived or real) of Google,
each other, and upper management. You can even poke fun at the founders and
the CEO, and people often do. Though of course neither the founders nor the
CEO actually read it.

------
winfred
>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.

------
datashovel
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.

------
ryanlm
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.

------
lifeisstillgood
* "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

------
dunkelheit
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.

------
warcher
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.

------
zzzcpan
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.

------
MrZipf
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.

------
Etheryte
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?

------
ryguytilidie
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.

------
negamax
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

------
p4wnc6
Have only heard negative things about FB office politics from the folks I know
who work there.

~~~
mVChr
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
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.

------
muse900
You can't take politics out of people... no matter how hard you try.

~~~
raarts
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.

------
vinceguidry
> 360-degree reviews

What like this?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y93rSKRE38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y93rSKRE38)

------
vidoc
Another hagiographic facebook article with the classic royal-we style we all
love :)

~~~
iamleppert
Don't you know? They're doing gods work over there. Connecting the world and
serving ads?

------
known
"Man is by nature a political animal." \--Aristotle

------
gmarx
"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

~~~
Spivak
> 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)

~~~
danielweber
I see "team" three times and "company" zero times. Can you point to the
specific portion?

~~~
viewer5
"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.

------
ninkendo
> _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.

~~~
tomjen3
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.

------
serge2k
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
> 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.

------
bbcbasic
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.

------
yarou
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
Managers don't only evaluate performance.

~~~
yarou
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
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
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).

------
Inlinked
All lives matter.

