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

121–130 of 289 posts

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

#121

Post by exodust »

jwond wrote: post #117
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LI has a distinctive lack of chill right now contrary to the company image I don't get it. Did linkedin have an image of being a chill place to work?

I am reminded of this video of a young woman showing a "day in the life" of a LinkedIn employee https://youtu.be/X5TZVhKDwpk

I've seen other similar videos made in identical style. I think it was a viral trend. The objective being to enrage people with smug workplace laziness culture, and get plenty of views as a result.

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

#122

Post by wavemode »

pico303 wrote: post #103
jackcosgrove wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but... isn't that kind of strange? Most managers who didn't know half the things their reports were doing, would conclude that their reports were useless. So is it surprising that developers who lack visibility into the things going on above their paygrade, tend to conclude that their managers are useless?

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

#123

Post by wahnfrieden »

darth_avocado wrote: post #65
wahnfrieden wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

200 reports per manager means there’s a lot of ICs who are managers on IC salaries doing free added labor.

yes, bytedance eng ICs reportedly spend more time talking across dozens of peers and coordinating.

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

#124

Post by wahnfrieden »

jacurtis wrote: post #63
tiffanyh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have 50-200 direct reports, you’re not a “manager”. You’re effectively either a recruiter or procurement.

I remember interviewing someone once that claimed to have 200 direct reports. I was really blunt and said "nobody has 200 direct reports". They assured me that they did. So I grilled them on the mechanics of it. If you had biweekly 1x1s with all of your DRs, you would have to do 100 per week. If 1-on-1s were your fulltime job you could at most do 80 per week (2 per hour x 40 hrs). Thats just rotating through 1x1s. Th…

Bytedance Eng managers don’t do any 1:1s.

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

#125

Post by wahnfrieden »

fencepost wrote: post #71
tiffanyh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have 50-200 direct reports, you’re not a “manager”. You’re effectively either a recruiter or procurement.

Given the grandparent was talking about Bytedance, perhaps you're the floor supervisor for dozens of disposable people watching reported or flagged content to identify porn, violence, etc. on TikTok - disposable because depending on what sort of banned content actually gets posted, you might have a lot of mental trauma and burnout that the company would really rather just replace people than deal with.

I was talking about engineering at bytedance. Developer teams.

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

#126

Post by hx8 »

charles_f wrote: post #92
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…

> As the money got bigger we got more grifters / professional manager types. That. Same for all the decorative functions with low value added. > make management non technical This is a big flag to me. I know this is a devisive opinion, but I don't think you can do a good job at managing people without knowing their core business. > making higher level IC engineering roles being “above” coding. There is little that re…

> But I've worked with quite a number of managers, PMs and TPMs who talk down to me the moment I tell something even remotely technical, like I'm some sort of amateurish geek only tolerated at the adult's table.

You're working with the wrong people.

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

#127

Post by hx8 »

upupupandaway wrote: post #55
swader999 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just taylor your experience a bit :)

The worst thing is that I never wanted to be a manager but somehow always got pushed that way by the higher ups. I blame my background as evangelist being able to explain technical things to management. Ugh.

I feel justified in always pushing back now.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

jwond wrote: post #117
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LI has a distinctive lack of chill right now contrary to the company image I don't get it. Did linkedin have an image of being a chill place to work?

I am reminded of this video of a young woman showing a "day in the life" of a LinkedIn employee https://youtu.be/X5TZVhKDwpk

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by dna_polymerase »

jwond wrote: post #117
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LI has a distinctive lack of chill right now contrary to the company image I don't get it. Did linkedin have an image of being a chill place to work?

I am reminded of this video of a young woman showing a "day in the life" of a LinkedIn employee https://youtu.be/X5TZVhKDwpk

There were a lot of videos in this style from the twitter people. Turns out they run fine on 20 % remaining workforce.

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

#130

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

gruez wrote: post #31
kuchenbecker wrote: post #15

I'm at LI and my reporting chain is Sr mgr > Sr Director > VP > Sr vp > CEO. A year ago it was mgr > sr mgr > director > sr Director> vp> svp > ceo. No one in my management chain was impacted but the flattening has been happening organically as folks leave. LI has a distinctive lack of chill right now contrary to the company image, but generally things are just moving faster.

>LI has a distinctive lack of chill right now contrary to the company image I don't get it. Did linkedin have an image of being a chill place to work?

I used to work for Large Tech Company and I would pretty frequently fly out to San Francisco Suburb for work. One of the more interesting time periods of that phase was when the office building I worked at for Large Tech Company was across the parking lot from LinkedIn in San Francisco Suburb. We frequently played a largesse game of hangman with the LinkedIn employees drawn on the windows across our parking lot. LinkedIn employees then were fun and living the Hooli roof meme for sure from our perspective.
Post reply on HN