I'm wondering... In my org pretty much every team is divided into 2-4 subteams, each with team lead assigning work, coordinating with PMs, escalating issues etc.., and everyone individually creates and rates own OKRs, and writes own Insights.
As far as I can tell the only things FLMs do is holding staff meetings to pass down notes from second level staff (what could be accomplished with just e-mails from SLMs), having useless 1:1s with the team, and rubberstamping Insights and requests from the leads. Sometimes perhaps acting as a middleman passing requests and replies between upper management and TLs. All in all, probably around 5-7 hours of work a week. What do they do all the time? Seems like we could have one manager for 30-40 engineers, not 7-10 as is the case currently.
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Nothing. There's a lot of those in IFS validation group
My manager does not even have 1:1s. All he does is attend meetings all day long and forward random emails. Does not know anything about security and we are in the security department of Intel
The same as most managers at Intel: not much.
Pat is getting rid of the PMs at Intel. You heard him say that in the ACM. The work will fall to FLMs and Engineering leads. They do and will continue to su-k at it and its one of the reasons Intel is in this mess.
In my experience FLM are failed ICs promoted from the team. After ACT, my FLM decided to return to an IC role because of the stress and carnage of letting people go. His words were "I didn't sign up for this sh*t." So the "failed" Sr Engineer "stepped up" and took the FLM job. He had been with INTC for a couple of years, never actually produced anything, the "essential sw tool" he worked on the whole time was eventually ZBB'd, and for a couple of years he kept blaming on others outside the team, and forever waiting on feedback and specs and buy-in. And after he became the manager, it was a complete mess, we had a pretty good team and it went south, and a few people actually left on their own. So yeah, FLMs are often terrible and useless.
Powerpoints, meetings, taking credit for others' work.
Btw team "leads" are just as incompetent as the rest of them. I've met interns who were more knowledgeable than their leads, leading to some very funny head clashing.