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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

#241

Post by nrawe »

wenebego wrote: post #238
nrawe wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managing people properly takes time. For example, a 30 min 1:1 with the report looking at their wellbeing, motivation, challenges, career goals should be a weekly task. The 30 mins is really 45 mins because notes need to be made following so that there is audit trail, and clarity of expectations for both parties. QoS is important so they can't be shoved back to back, otherwise one will find actively concentrating dif…

>This is all before you get to your own work Isnt all of that your own work, as a manager?

That point is quite variable. In some cases, yes, that's the whole job. In others, that can be a split e.g. some EM roles are 20/80 heads down to heads up.

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

#242

Post by nrawe »

muro wrote: post #201
akie wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a team of 13. It's a lot of work. One-on-ones, setting direction, making plans for the coming period, talking and negotiating with stakeholders, scrum ceremonies, quality control, helping people grow, resolving conflicts - it never ends. I enjoy it though.

There is a religion of weekly 1:1s that preaches a lot of wasted time.

Like all things, if it's done as a cargo-cult activity, then yes it can sap a lot of time for little reward. However, when done well, a 1:1 can be a high-value activity.

I'd agree with you that weekly can sometimes be the wrong cadence; some individuals will find that an encroachment. I set the goal with my reports that they own the 1:1 meeting invite and can set the cadence as they see fit, within some prescribed limits. That has tended to have good results.

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

#243

Post by ido »

mcny wrote: post #223
ido wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was probably a lot of slack at twitter, but as an outsider it's incredibly hard to correctly identify who is the slack and who is doing real work (and a lot of people are somewhat in-between) in such a short amount of time. Musk took a massive risk and I'm sure a lot of the collateral damage were people doing genuine work. Keep in mind a lot of the slacker are really good at pretending to do real work and they'…

That's any company. Twitter is not special. The gp I think is talking about rage bait videos on social media where people used to post how work was so easy at xyz company. We should know better than rely on rage bait for information. Ask your friends who worked there if they knew anyone slacking off.

with that i agree, the video was just a funny video and not meant to be taken as a documentary.

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

#244

Post by nrawe »

ditonal wrote: post #82
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

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 think you're right on the money, with a single exception: there is a value to engineering managers being trained in professional management skills.

Honestly, most of the dysfunction I see in orgs is as a result of "senior" (read: tenured, not skilled) engineers being put in charge of teams/work without having the competencies needed to be successful.

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

#245

Post by swader999 »

bdsa wrote: post #218
busterarm wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. I always want to put my head down and write code, but because I actually know how systems work and help everyone else out to accomplish the basics, every job ever pushes me into infrastructure roles and I end up being the organization's Brent all the time. It fucking sucks.

Brent?

Not the parent but, the reference to "Brent" in this context likely comes from the book "The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT. In the book, Brent is a key IT employee who is knowledgeable and skilled, but he becomes a bottleneck because everyone relies on him to fix problems. Due to his deep knowledge and expertise, many tasks and critical issues can only be resolved by him. This reliance on Brent causes delays and inefficiencies in the organization's IT operations. The term "Brent" in the tech and DevOps community has come to symbolize a single point of failure within a team or organization.

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

#246

Post by bdsa »

swader999 wrote: post #245
bdsa wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brent?

Not the parent but, the reference to "Brent" in this context likely comes from the book "The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT. In the book, Brent is a key IT employee who is knowledgeable and skilled, but he becomes a bottleneck because everyone relies on him to fix problems. Due to his deep knowledge and expertise, many tasks and critical issues can only be resolved by him. This reliance on Brent causes delays and…

Thanks!

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

#247

Post by quadrifoliate »

adharmad wrote: post #205
quadrifoliate wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Indian here. First generation, naturalized American, et cetera. I'll be honest and say that my initial response was, “Ugh! Your friend is a big old racist”. Moving on from that reflexive thought, I'll attempt to answer your question of: > I’m asking is there a perceptual…

Nitpick but it was Paul Buchheit who came up with “Don’t be evil”.

It looks like there are multiple stories [1] — some crediting Amit, others Paul. I guess I'd heard or read the one crediting Amit previously.

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[1] https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/2/16/22280502/google-dont-be...

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

#248

Post by alephnerd »

j7ake wrote: post #172
raydev wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This person is incentivized to show off how glamourous and laid back it is rather than the actual work they are doing in the 8 hours around this 2 minute video, so I'm not sure why you'd be reminded of it.

What’s the incentive to show how laid back they are? I imagine a significant population of tech workers would want to show off how much they work.

It's stunting/showing that you made it.

Watch shows that are popular in my age demographic (eg. Succession) and the flashiness is the takeaway for most people about high paying "elite" jobs (and ignoring the toxicity and horrible WLB these jobs often have).

I've met many younger friends and mentees who have this idealized image of IB/PE/PM/VC/BigTech SWE/Consulting because the perks seem dope and it sounds "sexy".

No one wants to message that in reality, high paying jobs have high responsibility, ownership, and politics - it's my head on the chopping board if my product/divison's P&L sucks.

Also, a lot of these TikToks and Reels have some backing from HR/Recruiting. My sibling has done something similar on their own IG after getting the go-ahead from HR and Recruiting.

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

#249

Post by quadrifoliate »

klibertp wrote: post #219
quadrifoliate wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Indian here. First generation, naturalized American, et cetera. I'll be honest and say that my initial response was, “Ugh! Your friend is a big old racist”. Moving on from that reflexive thought, I'll attempt to answer your question of: > I’m asking is there a perceptual…

> It is sometimes possible that a young Indian employee might call you “Sir” There's nothing wrong with that - it's awkward the first 3 times, a non-issue ever after. My problem is with the use of flowery, deferential language to mask misunderstandings. My sample count is 3, so I'm not going to say anything about a 1bln+ nation (I somehow don't want to self-identify as the GP's friend) - I'm just noting it happened m…

Yep, being a first generation person who moved cultures from India to the US, I am pretty sure I was a lot more deferential, if not flowery when I began working here. It took me a while to internalize the “No, I think you're wrong” or the “No, there's no way I can do that by Tuesday, sorry” confidence that seems to come naturally to even new grads at their first job in the US. I also suspect that this held me back a bit early in my career.

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

#250

Post by Siecje »

nostrademons wrote: post #194
myself248 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. The most effective teams I've ever worked in, had 3-5 people under a manager. The manager occasionally got their hands dirty when they could spare the time, but in general, "getting every roadblock out of 5 people's way" is a lot of work, and combined with all the non-delegatable stuff, would keep them pretty busy. When a team grows much beyond that, the manager is no longer removing all the roadblocks. Th…

Was thinking about this in mathematical terms recently, in terms of what's efficient vs. what can scale . In general, managers can't do things for reports that don't scale fairly across their whole team, because otherwise it'll give the appearance of favoritism for those reports who get favors and demotivate the rest. So to a first approximation, a manager with N reports can devote at most 1/N of their time to making…

This makes sense.

What are some examples of things that a manager can do which will save time for an IC?

A mature team will hopefully have implemented efficient workflows.

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