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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

#131

Post by humbleharbinger »

upupupandaway wrote: post #58
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

I'm not a scam, I like to believe, because I've always gotten good feedback from my teams. But definitely the job description is quite light and a bit handwavy, so all companies could use fewer engineering managers, not more. I myself would volunteer to go back to IC right now.

I never criticize a manager. It has very limited upside on the off chance that a manager takes my feedback seriously. OTOH the downside is tremendous.

I don't think feedback in a corporate setting from someone you have power over can be relied on.

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

#132

Post by vegetablepotpie »

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…

MBAs succeeded in making management a distinct discipline that has been divorced from the work, only connected through metrics and KPIs. If you cannot talk to them on their terms, they are happy to impose sanctions on you.

They’re very effective at solving first order optimization problems. Increasing revenue and reducing costs can all be done in a spreadsheet. This is the value they contribute.

If you’re dealing with problems that are closely coupled, are non-linear, or have emergent phenomena, their contributions are not just ineffective, they’re counterproductive and destructive. You need creative, skeptical, and technical people for these problems. Closing feedback loops and building fault trees help you more than a Gantt chart and flashy buzzwords.

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

#133

Post by myself248 »

mongol wrote: post #107
onethought wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. They're doing all that other stuff that _can't_ be delegated, and the team under them is now spending time doing stuff that _technically can be delegated_ but would be much more efficient for the manager to do.

Typically what happens then, is one of the underlings becomes the de-facto also-manager, relieving the burden from the rest of the team and increasing overall productivity by re-centralizing certain duties. However, this hurts their individual productivity metrics, so in bean-counter companies this is a hazardous move. It's safer to not help the team and just let the sick structure shamble on.

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

#134

Post by saagarjha »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #129
jwond wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely this is because Elon is there picking up the slack for the missing 80%.

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

#135

Post by monkeydreams »

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?

I have 10 direct reports across 2 teams, with responsibility for a number of actual deliverable work pieces external to these staff.

10 direct reports is about half a week's work at a bare minimum without development, process improvement, etc. 20 is insane and would lead to skill atrophy and team dissatisfaction in short order.

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

#136

Post by Aurornis »

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

Where are all of these scam manager jobs where I don’t have to do anything other than a little bit of scrum mastering? Sign me up!

For some reason I can only find the heavy workload manager jobs. It’s different work than being an IC (I’ve gone back and forth) but I wouldn’t call being a manager easier.

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

#137

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

wavemode wrote: post #122
pico303 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is kinda funny. I will admit this is the first time I thought about it in that way.

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

#139

Post by baby »

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?

That’s what I heard from someone who worked there

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

#140

Post by hnaccount_rng »

saagarjha wrote: post #134
dna_polymerase wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Surely this is because Elon is there picking up the slack for the missing 80%.

Or, you know, the people dealing with the advertisers ("partners") are gone and no money is coming in. But sure the servers are still running ;)
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