However, what this person didn't consider (because they were new) that the org was not going to …

… However, what this person didn't consider (because they were new) that the org was not going to give much (if any) time to move stuff over to this new system. As a result, we're about 50% of the way done 18 months in, and in the interim, we've had to not do a bunch of stuff that would actually improve our product. Like, I remember (and HN hate this company so it's unlikely to be listened to) when FB started getting really successful (2013-15), we ended up hiring a lot of Google/Amazon managers and leaders externally and probably through negligence, they ended up destroying a bunch of what made the culture great. Hiring bad managers is much, much worse than no managers, but if you promote an IC then they have a valid stepdown path if it doesn't work, which an external manager is less likely to have (or indeed, accept). And thus concludes my Ted Talk about avoiding external managers.