> They instead encourage them to focus fully on process and sprint management.
Thats literally the point. Its totally fucking batshit that somewhere like meta still uses spreadsheet to plan. This is why properly trained people should be doing management.
Project management at scale is not something you "dip into" its a full time job to project manage and people manage. Its not something most ICs should be doing.
A <Edit> consultant[1]</Edit> surgeon leads a team, but they don't manage the timesheets of the juniors, nurses and assistants. Meta very much expects that a consultant surgeon not only does surgery, but fills rostas, recruits nurses, does some marketing and works on the legal policy for negligence.
The issue at meta is that with the growth there is no "leadership". What is a lowly IC supposed to work on? "create consensus" and "drive from the bottoms up". That doesn't work when you have 11 layers of management, all pissing about talking about impact, but not actually driving projects.
> I would think that the role of an "Engineering Manager" or "Tech Lead" or "Team Lead" etc. should all be pretty interchangeable, or at least have very high overlap.
You should try it. Its pretty clear you've not managed people at any level of scale or formality. Not everything is code, babes.
(No. I'm not a manager at meta, thank fuck, it sounds pretty shitty.)
Chief surgeons do all those things you describe. Check out the job description [0] as they are basically department heads doing recruiting, budgeting, supervising, etc. Chief Surgeon doesn’t mean best surgeon.
But it is a bad analogy, as you've implied. What I was trying to get across is managers should be specialised, they should be someone who might or might not have been a programmer, but is now specifically managing people, or projects.
Managers who code, do exist, as to engineers who manage. But its better at large companies to have specialists to manage projects and people. With support, training and performance management, you tend to get a better outcome.
What’s interesting is that all chief surgeons were once surgeons, probably really good. So there’s idea that you have to do the thing to manage the thing.
Medicine is strange in many ways, but I think this isn’t a bad practice.
I’ve worked for non-dev managers and sometimes they are good. But I prefer to work for someone who at least once was a dev as I think they understand better what is possible and how to coordinate and lead.
When I managed teams I always tried to do something useful in the codebase. I don’t think it is possible to manage well and work deeply enough to make great software. But it’s possible to at least be able to do my own builds and at least test out different techniques.
Thats literally the point. Its totally fucking batshit that somewhere like meta still uses spreadsheet to plan. This is why properly trained people should be doing management.
Project management at scale is not something you "dip into" its a full time job to project manage and people manage. Its not something most ICs should be doing.
A <Edit> consultant[1]</Edit> surgeon leads a team, but they don't manage the timesheets of the juniors, nurses and assistants. Meta very much expects that a consultant surgeon not only does surgery, but fills rostas, recruits nurses, does some marketing and works on the legal policy for negligence.
The issue at meta is that with the growth there is no "leadership". What is a lowly IC supposed to work on? "create consensus" and "drive from the bottoms up". That doesn't work when you have 11 layers of management, all pissing about talking about impact, but not actually driving projects.
> I would think that the role of an "Engineering Manager" or "Tech Lead" or "Team Lead" etc. should all be pretty interchangeable, or at least have very high overlap.
You should try it. Its pretty clear you've not managed people at any level of scale or formality. Not everything is code, babes.
(No. I'm not a manager at meta, thank fuck, it sounds pretty shitty.)
[1]https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/careers-in-surgery/surgical-care-te...
edit I meant uk consultant surgeon, thank you to commentor for pointing out my mistake