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Not a Googler, but I’m my experience 25 person managers can work (barely) if they are just their to keep the HR stuff in line and people actually transactional

Not a Googler, but I’m my experience 25 person managers can work (barely) if they are just their to keep the HR stuff in line and people actually transactional work with other teams or if there is an informal team structure beneath the manager. Think a team where there are 4 tech leads that actually run the teams, but where the “manager” deals with career and hr issues. While working in consulting I spent about 4 months with a manager who had 60 direct employees. That was a disaster, but I got to spend 3 /4 months with no responsibilities :)

antognini 5y ago
I remember hearing a story (maybe apocryphal) that after Larry and Sergey abandoned their "no managers" experiment, they decided to give each manager a minimum of 10 direct reports and preferably closer to 20 so that the manager wouldn't have time to micromanage any of them.
sulam 5y ago
Speaking as a Google manager of a reasonably sized org, 25 direct reports is too many. Twice a year you have to do Perf for them, if nothing else, and doing that well for 25 people would likely be the only thing you get done. I think it’d be possible, but it would be at the expense of your own career. “Did Perf for my team of 25” is not a next level accomplishment. “Organized my team so that I didn’t have 25 directs” is much more of an accomplishment (next level or not depends on the level, it’s something my group would evaluate as “meeting expectations” of an L7). The rule of thumb at Google is 10 directs in an engineering management role, less if you’re a TLM (an IC with some management responsibilities) since you’re still evaluated on the IC ladder. There are exceptions, but they usually involve “managing” a number of contractors where you have significant program management support for coordinating their day to day activities.
ashtonkem 5y ago
I think the only way 25 comes anywhere close to working is by creating an informal team structure under the manager who has 25 “directs”, as you said. But at that point you’re informally creating the team structure that should formally exist, which in and of itself is a management failure. Either the org should hire some managers to manage those people, or some of the ICs in that informal structure are functionally performing management duties, and deserve the recognition, comp, and training opportunities that a formal promotion into management comes with.

antognini 5y ago

I remember hearing a story (maybe apocryphal) that after Larry and Sergey abandoned their "no managers" experiment, they decided to give each manager a minimum of 10 direct reports and preferably closer to 20 so that the manager wouldn't have time to micromanage any of them.

sulam 5y ago

Speaking as a Google manager of a reasonably sized org, 25 direct reports is too many. Twice a year you have to do Perf for them, if nothing else, and doing that well for 25 people would likely be the only thing you get done. I think it’d be possible, but it would be at the expense of your own career. “Did Perf for my team of 25” is not a next level accomplishment. “Organized my team so that I didn’t have 25 directs” is much more of an accomplishment (next level or not depends on the level, it’s something my group would evaluate as “meeting expectations” of an L7). The rule of thumb at Google is 10 directs in an engineering management role, less if you’re a TLM (an IC with some management responsibilities) since you’re still evaluated on the IC ladder. There are exceptions, but they usually involve “managing” a number of contractors where you have significant program management support for coordinating their day to day activities.

ashtonkem 5y ago

I think the only way 25 comes anywhere close to working is by creating an informal team structure under the manager who has 25 “directs”, as you said. But at that point you’re informally creating the team structure that should formally exist, which in and of itself is a management failure. Either the org should hire some managers to manage those people, or some of the ICs in that informal structure are functionally performing management duties, and deserve the recognition, comp, and training opportunities that a formal promotion into management comes with.