1 in 5 of those laid off were managers. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s higher than the typical ratio, correct?
Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
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Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
#2Managerial bloat tends to lack a short term counter balance. Boom/Bust cycles seem to emerge.
Personally I wish we needed fewer managers but I often see their necessity.
Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
#3Yeah, Zuck seems to have set the trend of eliminating a lot of middle managers.
Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
#4I don't think it's that weird.
In a boom cycle, it's not a great use of resources to try to really tighten up the manger/report ratios because the size of the org because the slack lets you grow faster. The higher the growth, the more managers at a more inefficient manager/report ratio generally.
Certain orgs in LinkedIn were growing really fast. Now they're not and they know the headcount for the next year, time to ratchet down the number of managers to get a more steady, cost-efficient ratio.
Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
#5Typical ratio of people to managers in a company is about 1:4, so that tracks.
And before this becomes controversial, I don’t mean every manager has 4 reports, but because organization is a tree, for every 4 ICs, there’s one manager.
For example, you could have 3PMs, 3 designers and 10 engineers, but the org could have 4 managers: 1 PM manager, 1 Design manager, 1 eng manager with 7 reportees and a sr manager with 3 engineers & the 3 managers reporting to him/her.
Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
#6What’s the fan out at LinkedIn? Is 20% proportional to the direct contributors or higher or lower?
Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
#7Speaking as someone who has been a "middle manager":
I've seen a trend where a company is trying to do WAY too much outside of their core competencies or too many things at the same time.
A strong temptation is to to just say "well, we will just hire a bunch of managers to oversee each project we are working on b/c having 17 direct reports who are front line employees is too many people."
Then, times get tough and you think: "Well we can't fire X b/c they are the front line employee actually doing the work for Project Make Money so we'll just fire their manager. The manager manager will just have to deal with having 19 direct reports again"
Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
#8Typical ratio of people to managers in a company is about 1:4, so that tracks. And before this becomes controversial, I don’t mean every manager has 4 reports, but because organization is a tree, for every 4 ICs, there’s one manager. For example, you could have 3PMs, 3 designers and 10 engineers, but the org could have 4 managers: 1 PM manager, 1 Design manager, 1 eng manager with 7 reportees and a sr manager with 3…
Every time I see more than 10 direct reports, I think of this quote:
"Yasser Arafat had 17 lieutenants (aka direct reports). Why? So he could pit them all against each other: if they were fighting each other and jockeying for position then they were too busy to go after him."
Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
#9Tell HN:
Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers
#10Manager is the one who can't code, love meetings (part of their job), love Office (so they won't get boring for doing reporting all day).