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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

#211

Post by Jensson »

skylurk wrote: post #176
lokar wrote: post #153

It goes in cycles. I remember the last time G did this (2006?) they had the 7 rule: No manager with more then 7 reports No IC with more then 7 managers between them and CEO

How is that number picked? 7 people with one manager seems fine. It could go up to 10 maybe, but that's just my own vibes. 7 layers thick of management feels like too much to me. You'll get a company full of professional middle management who's jockeying define the company culture and strategy. Is that the point? Vibes seem off though. Is there a more scientific approach?

> 7 layers thick of management feels like too much to me

Yeah, so having more than that was banned. They didn't say you need 7 people between employee and CEO, just that there shouldn't be more than 7 people between them.

When you ban something you want to allow reasonable levels so you take a reasonable level, pad a bit, and ban that unreasonable level, so you agree.

But, also note for large companies, like 100k people, you need around that many layers or managers will have too many people to manage each.

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

#212

Post by LudwigNagasena »

Etheryte wrote: post #10
TheBigSalad wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not efficient?

If managers oversee 0-2 people in a company, that means it's roughly just one person managing one person managing one etc.

Imagine you have a cohesive system that has 10 services, each service requires 1-3 people. The head of the system can assign 10 tech leads responsible for the overall quality of the services or they may have over 20 direct reports, most of whom have nothing of interest to report to the higher-up.

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

#213

Post by andriesm »

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.

I've always been perplexed when I see 100s-1000+ people work on software product development and very little happen with the product for YEARS while there are tons of obvious (to me) improvements possible. Only tiny bug fixes released on a pretty slow release cycle. Then I also just think of the twitter/X example.

Occasionally one reads stories of how people get paid pretty hefty salaries to mostly just work very casually. Contrast with the usual software engineering types I know that work insanely hard solving difficult problems day-in and day-out.

When I was younger I remember a lot of project managers (almost exclusively ladies in my environment back then) that mostly just ran around interrupting the programmers and relaying feedback and status and a lot of chitchatting and busy work. Often there can be tons of support roles, wellness officers and who knows what that can probably be slashed. What shocks me is when a lot of these really low value-add positions are given high seniority with crazy paychecks and very little real skill required and fairly low responsibility or accountability for anything vaguely tangible. I suspect in tech companies generating huge cashflows that almost seem decoupled from headcount in comparison to non-tech businesses, this stuff just get covered up. A big machine that is very profitable due to massive competitive advantage/network effects, can hide a ton of HR waste.

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

#214

Post by usrusr »

thrown-0825 wrote: post #169

Listening to googlers drone on about their byzantine corporate structure and acronyms is always so bizarre. Reminds me of severance and the polite little drones reciting their eigan lore. Google is a blight on our society.

> Google is a blight on our society.

Will be worse when they "scale up" to funnel a larger fraction of revenue to shareholders (directly or indirectly by accumulating a larger hoard) by paying less people to provide the same service.

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

#215

Post by brainzap »

starky wrote: post #170
para_parolu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I see manager with 5 people I know it will be daily 30m standups, friday “summary” meeting, weekly 1:1 and other nok work related activities. If team of 5 people need a babysitter fulltime it means there are no adults on that group.

No, 5 is about ideal. If you are micromanaging with that many people on your team then you are neglecting other aspects of being a manager. More than about 7 and you start being unavailable to your team when they need you, and won't have time to do the planning and process tasks.

both can be true

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

#216

Post by brainzap »

utyop22 wrote: post #83

Im convinced the big tech firms are so overly bloated simply because they do not possess high-quality leadership at the top who are able to clearly distill a vision of where they want their sub-ordinates to go. That's not to say it's easy - its absolutely not. But Apple is living off of Steve Job's visionary prowess and continues to do so.

high-quality leadership is actually so rare in general

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

#217

Post by johannes1234321 »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #206
mytailorisrich wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In addition they reduced API by a lot, some backend and advertiser focussed things are gone and the big thing: we can't know what would have come.

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

#218

Post by DanielHB »

andriesm wrote: post #213
mytailorisrich wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've always been perplexed when I see 100s-1000+ people work on software product development and very little happen with the product for YEARS while there are tons of obvious (to me) improvements possible. Only tiny bug fixes released on a pretty slow release cycle. Then I also just think of the twitter/X example. Occasionally one reads stories of how people get paid pretty hefty salaries to mostly just work very cas…

> I see 100s-1000+ people work on software product development and very little happen with the product for YEARS while there are tons of obvious (to me) improvements possible

I worked in an org with about 60 engineers all working on the same product and I have to actively _not_ fix small issues to keep my sanity. Whenever I see a small issue I would have:

0) If it changes anything visible to the user discuss it with UX or PM (very annoying)

1) Fix it (easy part, usually)

2) Create PR and explain issue

3) Get someone from the other overworked team to look at it (not as bad if it is from my own team)

4) Get comments for often trivial things (depends a lot on the changes)

5) Get asked to refactor some related functionality because the fix is a bit messy without it (workaround) or to address the root cause of the issue (this is usually a big deal)

6) Possibly several rounds of reviews

7) Someone break my fix next time anyone makes a change to that part of the code

All to get something done that wasn't asked of me, that my manager will probably not see or know about unless I bring it up, that if I do bring it up my manager will probably tell me to not waste time on it since "it is the other team's problem".

So I would either ignore the issue or create a ticket that will probably be ignored. Only if it is a really trivial uncontroversial change would I bother to actually proactively do it.

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

#219

Post by doublerabbit »

moandcompany wrote: post #142
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, I’d happily be Lundberg for $1.3M/year. Shoot, I’d probably even do it for just $1.0M — and the Bobs would be pleased! It also sounds like the 10x developers are underpaid by a factor of 100!

It's been a few years, but from what I recall, a Principal is a Director-equivalent (L8) level. The prior poster is missing the L7 tier, which is Senior Staff Engineering Manager for the Engineering Manager Ladder. L8 is a Director on the Engineering Manager Ladder L8 is a Principal on the Software Engineer (SWE) Ladder. Tech-Lead Managers (TL/M or TLMs) were on the SWE Ladder. For reference: Software Engineer Ladder…

What's the difference between Staff and Senior engineer?

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

#220

Post by sokoloff »

lovich wrote: post #209
JustExAWS wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I think the common vernacular for that cutoff is “director” rather than “manager”.

Directors direct (including opening hiring reqs without higher-level approval).

Managers manage (which doesn’t include unreviewed role openings).

Both do useful work in a well-functioning company.

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