Yeah, when I worked at thousand-person companies it was like this: CEO -> SVP -> VP -> Eng manager -> IC Or, alternatively, CEO -> Director -> Manager of man

Yeah, when I worked at thousand-person companies it was like this: CEO -> SVP -> VP -> Eng manager -> IC Or, alternatively, CEO -> Director -> Manager of managers -> Manager -> IC I didn't feel like either needed more middle management (each had about ~2k employees), but in the case of the latter some reorganization would have helped (some managers had 50+ reports).