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

Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 292 posts

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#111

Post by unclad5968 »

Aurornis wrote: post #49
whatever1 wrote: post #9

Around 5 is the correct number for a first line manager of a technical team. Go to 10 and it’s impossible to keep track of things. The day has only so many hours. Managing takes time. For bigger teams (10+) you either need individuals who are very independent and driven, or have dependable line managers.

> Go to 10 and it’s impossible to keep track of things. The day has only so many hours. Managing takes time. I've actually had better experiences with higher employee:manager ratios for this reason. When the manager can't possibly be involved in everything they're forced to let go, delegate, and skip the management busywork. My worst experiences have been at companies with one manager per 2-3 employees and skip-level…

This is my experience as well. I currently have two managers for a team of three people. One manager basically wants nothing to do with us, and the other wants hourly activity reports that I'm fairly certain he's never looked at.

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#112

Post by joshuamorton »

dhx wrote: post #110
B-Con wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GOOG has made a systemic push to eliminate the role starting ~3 years ago. At that time my M was a staff level IC TLM with 4 reports who was forcibly converted to EM. In those last 3 years I've only seen TLMs used to assist an overloaded EM. The pattern I've seen is something like: Principal EM |- Staff EM (7 reports, project A) |- Staff EM (8 reports, project B) |- Staff IC (projects A, B, C) |- Senior IC (projects…

Do you have a mapping to roles/levels[1], for example: Principal EM - USD$1.3m/yr per https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en... Staff EM - USD$664k/yr per https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en... Staff IC - USD$557k/yr per https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en... Senior IC - USD$410k/yr per https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en…

TPM, TAM, and PM have nothing to do with this. A technical lead is usually a semi-formal role for an IC or a TLM that implies that they are leading a project with other folks working on it. There are situations where the Mid, Senior, or Staff IC could all be a technical lead of various sized projects.

> Does the change mean the most competent solution architect who has successfully designed and implemented many complex systems from scratch is capped in salary package because they're not doing the important job of demanding those around them fill out TPS reports all day?

No.

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#113

Post by yalogin »

> The 35% reduction refers to the number of managers who oversee fewer than three people, according to a person familiar with the matter.

I wonder why these people are made managers in the first place. That too this kind of title seems quite prevalent in the company given they found 35% of all managers are like this. Either the statistic is just plain false or google is really dysfunctional

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#114

Post by decimalenough »

Aeolun wrote: post #92

Fewer managers with fewer direct reports seems impossible. If you eliminate managers, then the remaining ones will naturally absorb the direct reports. So one of these cannot be true. Unless people don't report to anyone.

The stat refers only to managers with less than 3 reports.

> The 35% reduction refers to the number of managers who oversee fewer than three people, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#115

Post by danpalmer »

dhx wrote: post #110
B-Con wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GOOG has made a systemic push to eliminate the role starting ~3 years ago. At that time my M was a staff level IC TLM with 4 reports who was forcibly converted to EM. In those last 3 years I've only seen TLMs used to assist an overloaded EM. The pattern I've seen is something like: Principal EM |- Staff EM (7 reports, project A) |- Staff EM (8 reports, project B) |- Staff IC (projects A, B, C) |- Senior IC (projects…

Do you have a mapping to roles/levels[1], for example: Principal EM - USD$1.3m/yr per https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en... Staff EM - USD$664k/yr per https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en... Staff IC - USD$557k/yr per https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en... Senior IC - USD$410k/yr per https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en…

TPM and TAM are completely different roles. TPMs are essentially project or program managers across wider parts of the org, and the "technical" means they have something beyond a surface understanding of the technical aspects, but are likely not writing any code. TAMs are account managers in the sales org with a focus on giving clients more technical support or planning integrations etc.

"Technical lead" is not a role profile or ladder, it's what you're doing. You could be a TL at L4 on a small project, and you could not be TL at L7 if it's a big enough project. All very subjective.

The point of this thread is that there are teams with a manager who is the defacto TL for the projects the team is doing, so they have IC responsibilities, and then there are teams where the manager does manager things and there's one or more separate TLs.

I've worked on teams in both structures, both in and out of Google, and whether TLMs vs EMs work well depends on so many factors: who the manager is, their management style, the org's priorities, the projects, etc.

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#116

Post by dyauspitr »

mikestew wrote: post #2

The 35% reduction refers to the number of managers who oversee fewer than three people, according to a person familiar with the matter. If you oversee 0-2 people, in most cases that’s probably not an efficient ratio. How did Google get so many folks in that position in the first place? And I assume the other 65% take up the slack to fluff their teams? Or what? Leave the other 65% managing 0-2 people?

It’s that semi role of being a “manager” while still writing code. They’re just doing away with that role and having dedicated people managers and dedicated engineers.

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#117

Post by lmm »

mikestew wrote: post #2

The 35% reduction refers to the number of managers who oversee fewer than three people, according to a person familiar with the matter. If you oversee 0-2 people, in most cases that’s probably not an efficient ratio. How did Google get so many folks in that position in the first place? And I assume the other 65% take up the slack to fluff their teams? Or what? Leave the other 65% managing 0-2 people?

Sometimes there are products where 1-3 people is the right size of team for that product; letting a team that size exist can be better than trying to smush together two or three unrelated products to fit a bigger team. Per other comments these are TLM positions where the manager is also expected to contribute technically.

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#118

Post by culi »

BobbyJo wrote: post #87
gttalbot wrote: post #86

The way the execs talk down to employees now is really depressing to read about. That's a really unfortunate culture change since I was there.

I was there 2013 to 2017 and it was a pretty big shift start to finish just in that window.

Not too far off the timeline of when Google employees started trying to unionize and when Google started hiring union busters

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#119

Post by JustExAWS »

xenotux wrote: post #72
AIPedant wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like Google is moving to a more typical "technical lead" model where leads have substantial authority and some mentorship responsibilities, but they're essentially an IC and someone else up the chain actually handles proper management. Informally, tech leads can gently chew out less senior devs, but if someone actually needs to be disciplined then the lead needs to talk to the manager. TLM is an odd r…

The original ethos was that you didn't want the company ran by MBAs, so you wanted to build your management team by tapping into talented engineers. Of course, this can backfire in many ways. You end up wasting engineering talent, and as the organization grows, managers spend more time on paper-pushing than on creative work. And there's no shortage of engineers who are just bad at reading, talking to, and managing pe…

> But the huge perk of management is leverage. If you're technically competent and credible, and want something to happen, your team will see it your way. If you're a random "ideas guy" in an IC role, that's not a given.

There are three levers of power in an organization - relationship, expertise and role. Role power is by far the least effective. If you can’t get team buy in for your ideas or they believe you’re an idiot, you won’t get anything done.

A high level trusted IC who builds relationships inside and outside of the team and who is strong technically can work miracles.

At my current 700 person company, I’m pushing through a major initiative that management up to the CTO was at first skeptical about because I convinced them of my vision and I built relationships to get buy in.

I’m a staff engineer.

Even at BigTech I saw L6s and L7s ICs push through major initiatives the same way.

Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

#120

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #21
floren wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any opinion on the success/value of the TLM role?

Former TLM that was involuntarily reclassified as an EM because I had too many reports. I'm from old-line (pre-2011) Google, so was an engineer back when the TLM role was one of our unique competitive advantages. I have a lot of thoughts on this. IMHO, it's appropriate for the state that Google is in now , where it is a large mature conglomerate, basically finance & managerially driven, built around optimizing 10-K r…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN