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

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

#201

Post by pmontra »

toast0 wrote: post #26
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?

IMO, overseeing 0 people is great. I'm not likely to take any position where I have to oversee more or less than that; although I'm willing to compromise and oversee one person where they're actually independent and I don't have to do much overseeing.

I'm sure that some company has managers overseeing imaginary and complex people.

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

#202

Post by Rainbooow »

nostrademons wrote: post #67
mandevil wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked in companies from 100k, I would say that what an EM does is more about communication. Think of a company with m employees as a m by m matrix, with a 1 where there regular communication and a 0 where there is no communication and a 0.5 for those hallway meetings which our CEO's assure us are why RTO is so important. In a small company (let's say anything under Dunbar's Number), you have a ver…

That's a large part of it. Probably the best description I've heard of the EM role is that "It's a large collection of part-time roles, all with disparate skillsets, that together are responsible for ensuring the success of the project." Communication is a huge part of that - downwards (telling reports the information they need to be successful), sideway (getting information from cross-functional partners and manager…

Thanks for this message, this is actually helpful :). I have been a TLM/EM for the last 4 years, and I still struggle at times to define what my role is about...and in downtime moments (which are rare, most of the time, you are overloaded), what the fuck should I spend my time on.

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

#203

Post by jjav »

tayo42 wrote: post #63
godelski wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kinda brings up a question I've often thought about. Why is it that we structure growth in a company to be so biased towards moving into management roles? I mean there is the obvious part of the answer in that managers are the ones that are given the power to define that growth ladder, but I'm not sure this fully explains things. If people are transferring from technical positions to managerial positions then sh…

This hasn't been true in a lot of companies for like my entire career. You can move up as an ic. Titles like Staff, senior staff principal. A Staff and Sr manager would be paid the same

> This hasn't been true in a lot of companies for like my entire career. You can move up as an ic.

You can, but it's a dead end ultimately. I've been a distinguished engineer which is about as far as one can go (some companies have Fellows, but it's just a few people so basically impossible). If you have any desire to grow beyond that, management track is the only possibility.

Also, moving to management from a DE level is harder because you're basically around a Sr.Director level (give or take, depending on company) but have no management experience.

If you care about career growth (and I'm not saying you have to, geeking out on the IC ladder is way more fun), I suggest as soon as you are at the equivalent level of a manager on the numeric ladder, switch to management.

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

#204

Post by sokoloff »

hliyan wrote: post #168
rubidium wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you become a good enough IC, “ As an engineer, I prefer to be managed and guided by someone who actually knows what I work on, preferably better than I know it.” is no longer reasonable. Then your managers role is to maximize your ability to make an impact by putting you in the right place/project. As a manager of people who know far more about the things they do than I do, my goal is to assist and ensure in the…

Not sure why you'd take the leap from the idea of technical people managing technical people to "hiring peons who know less than me", that wasn't my intention. Also "as an engineer" was rhetorical -- I'm a manager myself and it's been over 15 years since I've been an engineer. So I do see the point you're trying to make. I still feel the immediate management layer above mid-level ICs should have some level of hands-o…

GP made the point that early in your career, your boss should absolutely know more than you do about your technical work, but at some point (fairly early), that inverts and your leader unavoidably knows less than you do about your technical work, because you’re the expert on the team at it and they can’t know more than all 5-8 of their reports like you can when leading 3-5 junior/new devs.

In post 1, you want your lead to preferably know more, someone says that’s not realistic, and in post 2, you profess to not understand their point while changing the goal post to now be “some level of hands-on knowledge”, which sounds like you do understand their point.

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

#205

Post by sokoloff »

Jensson wrote: post #199
JustExAWS wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being very visibly anointed by some VP helps, but that's essentially tapping into the exec's leverage - an illusion of IC influence. Of course that’s the play. Even a lind manager can’t get major initiatives through without getting the buy in from their manager. When I was working for startups, the director (1st company I had influence at) and the CTO at the second had been convinced of my idea and gave me the auth…

> the CTO at the second had been convinced of my idea and gave me the authority to pull who I needed to get it done. But that mean those people have the power, not you. Without that formal power structure you wouldn't do so much work trying to convince these people, the formal power structure forces everyone to try to manipulate and work with it, even you. So it makes it so much easier to do anything if you are that…

Power structures exist in any group of size. Companies can choose how formal to make them, but they can’t avoid them.

Imagine instead of having to convince the Director, VP, or CTO to support your good idea, that instead you had to convince 100 out of 700 people to support it, while at the same time, those 100 people are hearing good-sounding ideas from 99 people who aren’t you.

I’d way rather work in the former than the latter.

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

#206

Post by dgoldstein0 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #195
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…

Everytime I see such charts and explanations it helps me understand how Musk could fire 80% of Twitter with no visible effect on product.

Except extreme outages? Their reliability went to shit for a while. Fortunately half their users and advertisers quit too so the load downscaled a lot

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

#208

Post by paulbjensen »

Having worked in organisations of various sizes, my observation is that the network effects issue rings true, and large companies feel horrendously bureaucratic.

I had one Engineering Manager joke that his year at Volvo Cars had been one long meeting. Even the then-CEO at the time complained about the number of meetings the company held.

I also remember a tale from a colleague in a startup that had come from a much bigger company talking about how colleagues in India were asking for promotions or pay raises every year. Why? It turned out the colleagues in India had strong expectations from their parents to consistently be progressing in their career, hence they had to show progress in the form of being promoted or having increased salary.

What did the company do? They started creating job titles to essentially create the impression of being promoted without much changing in terms of the day to day job.

It seems like a kind of inflationary effect on organisation structures, where you solve one issue but potentially create other issues, namely bureaucracy.

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

#209

Post by lovich »

JustExAWS wrote: post #159
lovich wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Role power is by far the least effective. Eh, maybe at faangs or at the executive level but at non faangs you might not notice a role having power because most roles with the Manager title are no longer actual managers but supervisors. I had more agency over where capital was deployed as a teenager deciding how many people were going to be on the shift for closing, then I have making over 200k/yr as a Senior Manage…

The article is mostly about first level managers. I’ve never had any “manager” that really has any power over raises more than 3-4% or any real control over budgets. When I was being hired as a strategic hire for startups - and was being interviewed by the director or CTO - I specifically asked would I be reporting directly to them or another manager. I actually refused one job because I saw that the expectations the…

>The article is mostly about first level managers

Maybe for faangs. At every company I have worked at with a manger title from 2019 to present, this was expected of people with "director" in their title and below.

You are not a manager if you do not get to decide where capital is deployed, without your boss's approval.

For anyone reading this comment, if you think you are a manager, ask yourself this question

"If I decided tomorrow that the company would be better off if I hired someone to do role {X}, can I open a new req for that role without permission?"

If the answer is no, you are a supervisor with less agency than the a Walmart deli leader circa 2010

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