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Not sure what I’m more surprised about HN, the amount of Musk believers or how many people do not work for tech/MAANG. I can’t believe how many people here are

Not sure what I’m more surprised about HN, the amount of Musk believers or how many people do not work for tech/MAANG. I can’t believe how many people here are spewing bullshit like “oh, Google is heading this direction too” or “Good, fire these lazy fucks!”. Anecdotally, there are no tech companies with even 1:5 manager to IC ratio, let alone anything greater than 1:1. And why is there wine on tap for workers at Twitter? Because they want talent. Most major tech companies, each engineer makes more than 1M per year on NET revenue.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> each engineer makes more than 1M per year on NET revenue. This is dated. More like 1.25 or 1.5 million.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  I'd say about tree fiddy.
angrycontrarian 4y ago
thruway516 4y ago
I think it's more like 1 employee makes 10M net revenue, and 9 employees coast on their success.
- returnInfinity 4y ago
  The theory is that the superstar employee needs the support form 9 others to achieve the success. As an example, a super star programmer, requires support from DevOps, QA, PM, EM, UX, Docs to deliver the great results. Alone not a super star anymore.
  - GauntletWizard 4y ago
    To reuse and refocus an old quote: 50% of those people are probably useless. The problem is figuring out which ones.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
      You can find out easily - when an employee leaves and you see a huge productivity drop, you'll know. (Also the opposite happens: you fire a bad manager and productivity goes up.)
      - 6510 4y ago
        I coin the long paid vacation hack
    - professoretc 4y ago
      > The problem is figuring out which ones. To be more precise: figuring out which ones are useless may cost more time/money/effort than you would save by removing them.
ummonk 4y ago
I don't think he's talking about engineering managers. It seems to be common practice to make "manager" part of the title for many non-technical roles (not just product managers but also content managers, customer success managers, etc.).
aaron695 4y ago
incomingpain 4y ago
To me it's entirely believable because I've been in a similar situation. When hired it was my original manager to 2 employees; but it was obvious there would be some hiring. Which did happen. Eventually it was 'too much' for said manager to be dealing with us on a daily. So he found a marketing person to be our new manager. He was lazy as well, so his contribution was more or less creating salesforce reports to track and grade each of us. I was constantly #1 so I didn't care but if someone went on vacation, they showed up in last place and would be chastised for poor numbers. Generally the team didn't like him. Then comes the snitch sales person who becomes our manager, not above or below this other manager, but below the original. She tried to keep educated on the ongoing work, I dont blame her. Except about 1/3rd of the team refused to talk to her; they realized a pattern of her talking to them and them getting in shit an hour or 2 later. Personally I outright went to the original manager and asserted she's not managing me and if she is, please tell me right away. Because I was planning to instant quit. He of course said she's not and that I seem to manage myself fine enough, these other managers were to keep the team going. So the team was getting a little angry with 3 layers of managers. What happens? A junior on the team proposes he becomes the manager and reports to the managers so they dont have to interact with the team. I had mostly excluded myself from this team by this point. It was a sinking ship and I wanted to be just far enough to watch what happened. Now what happens? This junior basically was turned into the snitch on her behalf. He started getting hated by the team and decides he doesn't want the position anymore. So he orchestrates to be out of the office all day. So then an outside management team was hired to figure out why this team was so dysfunctional. I was apparently uninvolved and never the subject of the meeting. But guess who is in the meetings? All the managers and none of the team. All of the problems of the team... obviously the team and not the managers. I specifically again went to the original manager and asked about the meetings. He reassured me they weren't about me at all. That one of the primary discoveries is they need at least 1 more manager to manage the managers.
xiphias2 4y ago
Even 1:5 PM ratio (not engineering manager, where the engineer can write programs as well) is bad when PMs are fighting for engineer attention instead of having a complementary role of communiating in a way that engineers with deep technical knowledge are unable to because of their closeness to the technical details of the product.
davidguetta 4y ago
To be honest your message is literally "musk is wrong" while there is probably some better take to have either Elon has definetely a different "style" of building compagnies, more technical, and it might just also be partizlly true in absolute terms
prions 4y ago
There have been a lot of people cheering twitters downfall because they feel personally or politically vindicated. But it’s especially bewildering to see how many people here on Hn completely cheer on the absolute disrespect and humiliation of twitter employees as a good thing.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

> each engineer makes more than 1M per year on NET revenue. This is dated. More like 1.25 or 1.5 million.

bheadmaster 4y ago
I'd say about tree fiddy.

angrycontrarian 4y ago

thruway516 4y ago

I think it's more like 1 employee makes 10M net revenue, and 9 employees coast on their success.

returnInfinity 4y ago
The theory is that the superstar employee needs the support form 9 others to achieve the success. As an example, a super star programmer, requires support from DevOps, QA, PM, EM, UX, Docs to deliver the great results. Alone not a super star anymore.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  To reuse and refocus an old quote: 50% of those people are probably useless. The problem is figuring out which ones.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
    You can find out easily - when an employee leaves and you see a huge productivity drop, you'll know. (Also the opposite happens: you fire a bad manager and productivity goes up.)
    - 6510 4y ago
      I coin the long paid vacation hack
  - professoretc 4y ago
    > The problem is figuring out which ones. To be more precise: figuring out which ones are useless may cost more time/money/effort than you would save by removing them.

ummonk 4y ago

I don't think he's talking about engineering managers. It seems to be common practice to make "manager" part of the title for many non-technical roles (not just product managers but also content managers, customer success managers, etc.).

aaron695 4y ago

incomingpain 4y ago

To me it's entirely believable because I've been in a similar situation. When hired it was my original manager to 2 employees; but it was obvious there would be some hiring. Which did happen. Eventually it was 'too much' for said manager to be dealing with us on a daily. So he found a marketing person to be our new manager. He was lazy as well, so his contribution was more or less creating salesforce reports to track and grade each of us. I was constantly #1 so I didn't care but if someone went on vacation, they showed up in last place and would be chastised for poor numbers. Generally the team didn't like him. Then comes the snitch sales person who becomes our manager, not above or below this other manager, but below the original. She tried to keep educated on the ongoing work, I dont blame her. Except about 1/3rd of the team refused to talk to her; they realized a pattern of her talking to them and them getting in shit an hour or 2 later. Personally I outright went to the original manager and asserted she's not managing me and if she is, please tell me right away. Because I was planning to instant quit. He of course said she's not and that I seem to manage myself fine enough, these other managers were to keep the team going. So the team was getting a little angry with 3 layers of managers. What happens? A junior on the team proposes he becomes the manager and reports to the managers so they dont have to interact with the team. I had mostly excluded myself from this team by this point. It was a sinking ship and I wanted to be just far enough to watch what happened. Now what happens? This junior basically was turned into the snitch on her behalf. He started getting hated by the team and decides he doesn't want the position anymore. So he orchestrates to be out of the office all day. So then an outside management team was hired to figure out why this team was so dysfunctional. I was apparently uninvolved and never the subject of the meeting. But guess who is in the meetings? All the managers and none of the team. All of the problems of the team... obviously the team and not the managers. I specifically again went to the original manager and asked about the meetings. He reassured me they weren't about me at all. That one of the primary discoveries is they need at least 1 more manager to manage the managers.

xiphias2 4y ago

Even 1:5 PM ratio (not engineering manager, where the engineer can write programs as well) is bad when PMs are fighting for engineer attention instead of having a complementary role of communiating in a way that engineers with deep technical knowledge are unable to because of their closeness to the technical details of the product.

davidguetta 4y ago

To be honest your message is literally "musk is wrong" while there is probably some better take to have either Elon has definetely a different "style" of building compagnies, more technical, and it might just also be partizlly true in absolute terms

prions 4y ago

There have been a lot of people cheering twitters downfall because they feel personally or politically vindicated. But it’s especially bewildering to see how many people here on Hn completely cheer on the absolute disrespect and humiliation of twitter employees as a good thing.