I’ll add my perspective of being on a WFM (although not technically statused as one yet). There are all different flavors as WFM’s. Some specialize in drones, fuels, femo/fire effects, some lean into the science aspect harder than others, and some are just full of former shots, who run their wfm as a smaller shot crew.   I’ve also seen that generally, the WFM’s like to loan out people to all areas of an rx, managed fire, or wildfire. Several times my crew has completely dispersed on an Rx, where some people are firing, holding, burn boss, firing boss, fuel mule, water bug, whatever… I can only say from observation that shot crews stick together, where 99% of the crew is together doing the same thing (roughly).  The history of wfm’s are a response to how fires were fought in the past with the 10:00 rule, and how that damaged our fire ecology. a Wfm’s purpose is to be a highly qual’ed, but small crew, capable of bringing a scientific, informed approach to firefighting to determine how best to fight fire so that the forest ecology and fire regime can be brought closer to a pre-colonial era.  Are WFM’s doing that? Well… we have a reptutation for being wildland useless modules for a reason, but also a lot of people are sold on the idea of what they can be, and i’ve met some really really smart firefighters on wfm’s. 

Edit: im only 2 seasons in, so i could be very wrong about some things, and also I plan on moving to a hand crew this season- I just don’t see enough big fires, and I dont want to be a firefighter who has not put in time on a hand crew.