Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 289 posts

Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

#101

Post by onethought »

alexpotato wrote: post #7

Speaking 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 yo…

This scenario actually looks completely logical. Are you saying this is a stupid way to think or you agree?

Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

#102

Post by tock »

screye wrote: post #79
killjoywashere wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> India Ok, so, I have a friend who works big tech and he has no chill for Indians (SWEs, PMs, etc). Is there a grain of truth to the “lazy Indian” trope? I always assumed, especially first generation immigrants, would be working balls-to-the-wall. Am I wrong? Is there some sort of incentive misalignment in the H1B program? Is it cultural (e.g. like “island time”, which I’ve learned is at least partially attributable…

Huh, my experience is the opposite. Indians work themselves to death, while Americans have very clear boundaries on when they stop working. Chinese Americans & Indian Americans work about the same as Americans, but 1st generation Chinese immigrants easily take #1 for the most hours put in. > Is there a grain of truth to the “lazy Indian” trope? I wonder if it has to do with out-sourcing farms. I have been lucky enoug…

For context: your average outsourcing companies like Infosys pay their new hires ~$4500/year. And before you say thats a lot for India: it's not. That's paycheck to paycheck life in cities where these outsourcing companies have offices.

Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

#103

Post by pico303 »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #67
bombcar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel some people have never had a good manager, and so they don’t realize just how much bullshit they can insulate you from.

Maybe also some had good managers but didn't realize it because you don't notice the lack/lessening of bullshit.

As an engineering manager, my team doesn’t know half the crap I keep off their shoulders. But that’s the part I play these days if we want to get things done.

Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

#105

Post by marcellus23 »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #97
ditonal wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley used to have engineering managers who managed engineering. As the money got bigger we got more grifters / professional manager types. First thing they do is rebrand middle management as “leaders” and the other thing they do is make management non technical. This has even bled into making higher level IC engineering roles being “above” coding. “Staff engineers don’t code, they set high level architectur…

I moved over to Silicon Valley fairly late (in 2018), and I was immediately shocked at how frowned upon... even disincentivized technical knowledge was at the management level. To the extent that people started removing hard numbers from their presentations and replacing them with smiley faces. Needless to say, I left and that company TANKED. I think Steve Jobs said something about A people versus C people... well he…

I don't think "we all know" that.

Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

#106

Post by kenjackson »

Raidion wrote: post #51
ecshafer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had a manager before who didn't complain about how many meetings they have, but I think they are a necessary evil for the position. My short stint in management sure saw meeting numbers balloon.

I'm a manager for two dev teams (~10 people) my breakdown per week is: * 2.5h for 30 minute 1:1s for people that want them once a week * 1.25h for 30 minutes 1:1s for people that want them every other week * 2.5h for team standup (15 mins/day * 2 teams) * 4h for project meetings (status or technical discussions) (4 projects at 1h a day, but might be two 30m) * 2h ceremonies a week (could be refinement/planning/retro)…

That's pretty standard. And where I work we have each manager also drive at least one major initiative that spans multiple teams. So that ensures that you're the domain expert in at least one thing above and beyond what your team is working on.

Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

#107

Post by mongol »

onethought wrote: post #101
alexpotato wrote: post #7

Speaking 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 yo…

This scenario actually looks completely logical. Are you saying this is a stupid way to think or you agree?

Having 17 direct reports is too much. Managers are not just a link in the chain of command. They also do stuff that needs to be taken care of. All kinds of unusal things happen and not all are suitable for delegation. 17 direct reports is not only a measure of how many colleagues they need to manage. It is also a measure of the large the weird-things-that-needs-taking-of-scope is.

Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

#108

Post by [deleted] »

killjoywashere wrote: post #60
kubrickslair wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, at least among my colleagues - both in the US and India offices.

> India Ok, so, I have a friend who works big tech and he has no chill for Indians (SWEs, PMs, etc). Is there a grain of truth to the “lazy Indian” trope? I always assumed, especially first generation immigrants, would be working balls-to-the-wall. Am I wrong? Is there some sort of incentive misalignment in the H1B program? Is it cultural (e.g. like “island time”, which I’ve learned is at least partially attributable…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

#109

Post by yazaddaruvala »

darth_avocado wrote: post #5

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…

> Typical ratio of people to managers in a company is about 1:4, so that tracks.

Over the last 10 years, we have improved productivity tools, and for every other role the expectations are higher.

I find it funny that the ratio of ICs:Managers has not gone up and the industry doesn't discuss that it should go up or what tools we need to help make it grow.

Re: Ask HN: 20% of LinkedIn's recent layoffs were managers

#110

Post by DamnYuppie »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #96
greatpostman wrote: post #11

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

Scrum masters are the real scam. Let some non technical with neither a background in engineering or tech or management run things.

I think even worse than that are Product Managers who want to run their own developers using Scrum.....just no.....
Post reply on HN