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Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
271–280 of 292 posts
Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
#272Earlier 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…
> At that time my M was a staff level IC TLM with 4 reports who was forcibly converted to EM. I am obviously not disputing your experience, but wanted to mention that this was not the standard pattern. The standard pattern for forced conversion at L6 (Staff) was either 6 or 7 reports (I don't remember exactly). > Principal EM I don't want to be overly pedantic, but there's no Principal EM on Google eng ladders and so…
> I am obviously not disputing your experience, but wanted to mention that this was not the standard pattern. The standard pattern for forced conversion at L6 (Staff) was either 6 or 7 reports (I don't remember exactly).
Given more reports and forced to be on the EM track.
I think 4 is still OK for L6 (L7 can have up to 19!).
> I don't want to be overly pedantic, but there's no Principal EM on Google eng ladders and so it's not entirely clear which level you're referring to.
I meant L7 EM - I have no idea why I wrote Principal (probably because I was moving too fast), and now it's too late to edit.
Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
#273Google's job titles feels like military ranks.
Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
#274Interesting to see Google flattening their org structure. Management overhead is real, especially in engineering organizations.
At early-stage companies, every manager hire needs to be justified. Can this person actually multiply the productivity of their team, or are they just adding coordination overhead?
The best managers I've worked with were former ICs who understood the technical work deeply. Generic "people managers" rarely add value in technical organizations.
Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
#275Next up: super frustrated ex-google PMs complaining "that's not how it's done at Google" at their new jobs.
believe it or not the same line is how it works at google too!
Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
#276Im 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.
This was how I felt about Google in 2018. It's gotten less bloated and better in some ways, but the CEO is still autopilot.
Frankly autopilot is probably in the top quartile of company leadership. CEO flailing only seems to make things worse.
Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Furthermore, a bunch of functionality was entirely deleted, and the effect on the quality of discourse has been... Profoundly negative.
Yea but hey 80% of people lost their job. No wonder all SV CEOs are so eager to copy Elon
Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
TLM role has always sounded like a trap to me, I would never say yes to it personally. I’m sure it’s sold as an expected 50% code, 50% management but everyone I’ve talked to who has been near it says the expectation is more like 80% code 80% management.
A few thoughts: (1) 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. (2) A manager who actually understands the tech is often better at unblocking the team. (3) Since senior IC openings tend to grow very thin as you become older, TLM path might be a viable career path for at least some. Can this role work if we don't expect IC output fro…
What you're asking for is more of a TL.
At the risk of oversimplifying, the role of a manager is to find you that TL.
Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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…
> 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 Manager.
But the value of the capital you had sway over as a 200k manager is significantly higher. You have to accept that you won't ever have total agency over 7+ digits worth of both human and non-human capital if you're not a VP/CEO (or a fintech bro I guess).
Re: Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
#280Good riddance. 7 years too late. I worked as a Google Cloud consultant for a major part of my career. We had this really large client, we were bleeding money because one of our ex-employees promised the client a cost reduction strategy that was impossible and I took over his role - literally a hot seat. We walked into Google's office, it was fantastic, they had something like 12 cuisines in the dining area, multiple…
I have a similar story, many years ago I worked in Brazil as an "IBM consulting partner". Meaning my company implemented IBM solutions on clients, but as a separate company from IBM. Usually as a more of a budget option to IBM internal consulting work.
(I didn't actually work with IBM stuff, I did development of our internal product that we sold in conjunction to IBM solutions to our clients)
I went to their office in São Paulo once and it was the most surreal office experience I ever had. The lobby was all promo stuff and self-aggrandizing marketing. Then after some walking came auditoriums full of people on laptops, not rooms, auditoriums. 200 people-big rooms (although they seem only 70% full) with maybe 30cm between each seat on all sides. I thought at the time that I would rather die than have to work in one of those rooms every day. The building is actually quite cool looking (from the outside):
https://arquivo.arq.br/projetos/edificio-sede-da-ibm
Then they took us upstairs where it looked like a concrete maze full of meeting rooms without windows. The discussions were not very fruitful.
My manager told me once that IBM consulting was considerably worse than most of their certified partners (even though they were implementing IBM own products) because they rely on the brand name. They pay slightly more than the partner does for their employees but they treat them like crap.
From that experience I understood how this world of consulting/client-interaction works. Unlike software, consulting scales linearly. So the companies want to squeeze as much as they can from these labor-linear income flows. So it is usually not the best people doing that kind of work.
These companies much rather you buy their solutions and do it yourself, the consulting is just a growth strategy for the product. That is why the external partners were better with the tools than the people inside the company.