Amazon and Facebook are notorious for having bad work life balance for ICs, but what about for managers? Can they act busy and not do any work? Are their days typically filled with meetings? How is the work load compared to ICs? #amazon #facebook #fang
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I am ex-amazon PM. I use to see many EMs chilling and just reporting perf. I mean he didnt even know the features we were launching or wont read any doc. And he was rated much highly as he managed his team well. He was lucky to get great engineers as this was in Alexa.
I’ve worked at both amazon and fb as IC and manager. Generally WLB and stress are worse for almost everyone I know and myself as manager, but it’s a different kind. As an IC there is delivery pressure so WLB can be bad if you are not organized or do not set expectations well, as a manager a bunch of stuff is beyond your control and you can get pulled into after hours stuff because of xfn relationships, leadership escalations, issues with your team members etc etc. also managers are in so many meetings it leaves little time to get “real work” done so most managers I know have to use evenings or weekends to catch up on email, doc writing, organizational stuff etc I think IC is better if you have a strong manager and good projects, manager may be better if you have a team of rock stars. All else being equal IC you have more within your control which means better WLB generally.
Thanks defnotzuck for your honest feedback
I've never worked more than my manager at F
What kind of work does your manager do? Why does it seem so much work?
I'm not a manager, no idea. DefNotZuck sounds knowledgeable below.