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I have a long held belief that engineering managers are mostly a scam, and are actually just overpaid scrum masters. This is from working at some top companies
My manager filters my email. And tells me what the new priority is.
Two levels up is a director. Above that is a department head. Out of 100 people there are about six that truly build, ship, accelerate the goal arrival.
The rest of us make waves allowing the divers to have a soft landing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also ensures communication vertically and horizontally across the org, works with partner teams, provides guidance and mentorship, and who’s efficacy is the number 1 cause of attrition. If you deal with “bad” managers, that’s a function of working at a “bad” company and you only have yourself to blame for that.
The amount of communication and reporting required increases with an increase in number of managers. By reducing number of levels and number of managers, you are reducing the amount of communication required in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can code. I hate meetings. I like my home office and have been remote for about eight years. I don't think you know what people managers do.
I’ve never seen a manager like you describe but I’d sure like to have more of this!
Complain to your company for poor recruiting.
I have a long held belief that engineering managers are mostly a scam, and are actually just overpaid scrum masters. This is from working at some top companies
My manager does little else besides asking what everyone is working on every day. We could automate her position with a slack bot and get the same results.
Typical 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."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
Interesting. Parent comment is about 4:1 even. In my career I saw from 5:1 to 20:1 IC to managers on a direct level. However the higher one go the better the ratio, like VP to SVP ratio rarely reaches 10:1 even. Now I'm curious what are the industry 'standard' numbers.
my suspicion is lower numbers are more a function of worker power (demand for 1:1s, career growth conversation, offloading more tasks to your manager, etc)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. Parent comment is about 4:1 even. In my career I saw from 5:1 to 20:1 IC to managers on a direct level. However the higher one go the better the ratio, like VP to SVP ratio rarely reaches 10:1 even. Now I'm curious what are the industry 'standard' numbers.
bytedance has 50-200 reports per manager in some teams and are wildly successful my suspicion is lower numbers are more a function of worker power (demand for 1:1s, career growth conversation, offloading more tasks to your manager, etc)
You’re effectively either a recruiter or procurement.