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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

#221

Post by p_v_doom »

kelnos wrote: post #175
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…

Wait, so you have ICs who work on multiple projects, and report to a different manager depending on the project? That sounds like a nightmare. Having one manager to manage is usually enough work...

In the company i work at this is the standard. Its all pure waterfall and its dreadfull

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

#222

Post by KoolKat23 »

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 few companies can do what musk did on an ongoing basis without losing all experienced staff and system knowledge. It's short term gains at the expense of long term gains. People only put up with it if they think they can capitalize on the prestige.

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

#223

Post by jajko »

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…

> Contrast with the usual software engineering types I know that work insanely hard solving difficult problems day-in and day-out.

Well you just know some... not effective or smart folks then, unless they literally enjoy living such life. There is time for some hard work, but if that's one's default modus operandi long term, rest of their lives suck pretty badly, no realistic way to avoid that.

That's failure to manage one of most critical aspects of life. Especially bad fail if employed at some heartless mega corporation, or just usual often amoral FAANGs of these days (unless the goal is to earn enough money in few years and move to saner place in life, but few achieve that even if they plan for it, ie mortgages and kids happen).

Some of us live to work, and the rest work to get some good actual life.

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

#224

Post by Scea91 »

JustExAWS wrote: post #121
Spivak wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your position has no upward mobility juniors will change jobs, likely change companies, once they have the experience and all the effort you spent training them will be wasted.

Statistically you should charge companies. Even if you get promoted, you’ll make less than someone hired in at the same level. Even if you like the company, it’s best to “boomerang”

Its tricky to use statistics for personal decisions. In general something might be correct but not for your specific subgroup. I know many people who changed for worse.

If you are in a bad position then change, but if you like the company and role, don’t take it for granted and think carefully.

This advice is consistent with the broad statistic if more than half of the sample is currently in “bad position”.

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

#226

Post by Scea91 »

kelnos wrote: post #174
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #11

This was called the TLM role at google. Technical Lead/Manager. You were expected to code and manage a couple of more junior engineers. It’s part of an effort to have dedicated managers and dedicated engineers instead of hybrid roles. This is being sold as an efficiency win for the sake of the stock price but it’s really just moved a few people around with the TLMs now 100% focused on programming.

I think this is a good thing. Every time I've seen people in dual tech/management roles at any company, they've always been incredibly stressed about their job, and always have way too much to do. I've also never really liked the idea of engineering managers who are technical enough to approve/veto tech decisions that team members make, since there's a power imbalance there. Even if your TLM is pushing a bad technolo…

I was in such a role and am now being pushed out of it (promoted to PE).

What I really love about it is the leverage. In a technical domain with a good core team it is almost like running your small company.

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

#227

Post by b112 »

kelnos wrote: post #177
xenotux wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLM roles are a trap, but not in that sense. There's no expectation that you do two jobs at once. It's just a way to ease unsuspecting engineers into management. If you don't suck at management, your team inevitably grows (or you're handed over other teams), and before long, you're managing full-time. Which means that there are three type of people who remain TLMs in the long haul: those who suck at management; those…

> There's no expectation that you do two jobs at once. I laughed out loud when I read this. I've never seen anyone at any company in a hybrid tech/manager role that wasn't expected to do two jobs at once. Or at least they felt like they were, which is still the same problem. 80% coding & 80% management for that role sounds about right.

Most work 40 to 50 hrs per week. Some places even a more extreme 60.

For this to be accurate, you're saying 160% aka 1.6 or 64 to 80 hrs per week, with 96hrs as the extreme?

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

#228

Post by ulfw »

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.

How was there no effect on product? What has 'X' even been able to launch since the acquisition?

All he showed was you can an existing thing running with 20% of staff.

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

#229

Post by seanhunter »

Honestly as an outsider this is the not the most important role for them to have eliminated. I have interacted with google a couple of times in the last few years and the company I work for are considered a priority account that they want to do more business with.

In every meeting, they put forward one engineer (who is usually quite capable) and 6 or 7 spreadsheet-trackers who all come from McKinsey or straight out of MBA school and seem to have no function other than to consume the oxygen in the room. Every meeting another one shows up and introduces themselves as being the person in charge of the relationship (this has become a running joke between me and the CTO).

At one stage I stopped going to one of the weekly meetings that these people put on my calendar so the guy called me up to ask why. I explained I got no value from the meeting as all the meeting was for was so he could read through a spreadsheet that everyone already had shared so if I was interested (which spoiler I wasn’t) I could just read it for myself and didn’t need a 45min meeting. He was most offended and disappeared soon after to be replaced by some other person who introduced themselves as the head of the relationship.

So in short if they get rid of everyone on the client-facing side who describes themselves as head of some relationship they would cut a lot more dead wood than TLMs.

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

#230

Post by nailer »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #75
nailer wrote: post #59

I met a long time Google employee this week interventions that most of the senior management were ex oracle people. It’s nearly 20 years since Google had a category defining product - they haven’t built or acquired a single thing that dominates in the same way that android, maps, search, docs, etc. has since about 2006. It figures.

Gemini and transformers in general from Google Brain might say "hold my beer"

Gemini is absolutely not a category defining product. ChatGPT is. That’s why people talk about looking something up on ChatGPT but not on Gemini. I will hold your beer while you go outside, talk to people outside tech and confirm this.
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