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I know someone that is an executive at a F500 who does this with his team. According to him most divisions similar to his require a staff of 150-200 but he gets

I know someone that is an executive at a F500 who does this with his team. According to him most divisions similar to his require a staff of 150-200 but he gets in done with 50 distributed around the world (mostly Poland & US). He tells me that he still has to argue for his budgets despite massive success and other adjacent coworkers get very toxic once they find out a division in the company pays good wages to their workers. Not only do they get good pay, but the SWEs love working in the org because their leaders regularly listen to them and employ solutions they suggest. There is very very little turnover in the rg. You'd think the success of his model would be used elsewhere to reduce employer costs and increase retention (no SWE has left his org in 4 years). Instead other petty executives get pissy and poison the well. Something is extremely off with modern corporate America.

andrewflnr 4y ago
I'm curious exactly what that toxic and pissy behavior looks like, and how it's motivated. Is it just because he's making them look bad?
- azemetre 4y ago
  Seems to be just jealousy. From what I gather the old CEO and CTO liked him and his successes/goals but other junior level executives did not. When the new CEO was brought on they started to listen to the junior executives. They poison the well by stating things like how what he is doing isn't necessary or slowing down their own goals. Just humans being humans. As a result he will likely leave in <2 years. I don't doubt that his old org will falter extremely fast. It seems like well run orgs with less people are highly susceptible to quick change than large useless behemoths. Seems paradoxical, but a common fate at many companies/orgs.
galdosdi 4y ago
What they don't get outside of Big Tech is that non-junior developers are (relative to the traditional pre-software 20th century industrial business model) more like managers than like line workers. It's just that the "workers" we manage are robots. But even a pretty low level developer is going to end up making important business decisions just incidentally as part of their job, because it's hard to specify out every little decision that could impact the business without basically doing the dev's job for them. Businesses can embrace that or they can ignore it at their peril.
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  I find that any company that actually gives its college-hires the formal job-title "Junior Developer" is not a good place to work: I interpret it as saying they don't respect their own employees. YMMV.
  - ckdot 4y ago
    How would you name them then? In my experience many companies tend to give all the developers senior statuses even though they are actually still quite juniorish. What’s wrong to be a Junior Developer?
    - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
      I'd trim-off the "Junior" and leave it at that. For a formal job-title (as HR would demand) it's common to have Roman numerals appended, e.g. "SWE I" and "SWE II" before you get "Senior". The semantics is the same: "SWE I" == "Junior SWE" but without the unpleasant connotations that the term "Junior" specifically has, especially when you have older folks coming in at an entry-level (e.g. from coding-camps or a midlife career change) where referring to a 40something as "Junior" just feels weird. That's how it's done at all the US software companies I've worked at, including Microsoft and some startups. My current company does has done away with job-titles entirely and we make up whatever we want on our business-cards (within reason).
    - ckdot 4y ago
      Ok, seems like a good alternative. I didn’t know about it, in Germany it’s simply „Junior“ and „Senior“. If you are like a year or two in a company you usually are simply upgraded to „Senior“ no matter what. Even though I wouldn’t consider Junior offensive I like the system you describe much more.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  What managers don't get is that almost all roles are like that. In fact, I'm wondering if that "almost" word should be there at all. Everybody organizes people, decide how work should be done, and has to make a lot of little decisions that nobody could anticipate. Not with the same leverage as developers, but with important consequences too. Somehow, management experts can't accept this.
ok_dad 4y ago
I bet your friend works super hard to manage 50 people as well as you say. I was in the Navy and the primary way to make a division/department great was for the leader to work 2x as hard as their peers to make sure theor division/department was performing awesomely. I recall having to get up 2 hours early to review my division's maintenance schedule so I could do surprise spot-checks. Peers would let the 1st class PO choose the spot-checks, and of course they're going to chose the easiest and fastest ones to finish, rather than something representative of the most important maintenance that day. The thing is, my division wasn't angry at me for doing the hard spot-checks (or anything else I was a hard-ass about), because I also spent more time to make sure they got ranked at the top of the stack and fought for them to get more time off and freedoms even if my superiors got irritated at me, so they were willing to work hard and perform above the rest of the crew. Managers that suck and don't work as hard have shit teams.
- silvestrov 4y ago
  In tech and other creative jobs: the better the developers are, the less (micro)management they need. Bad managers thinks a managers role is all about making decisions. Great managers knows it's about enabling employees: great managers act more like secretaries, making sure everybody knows everything they need. When a manager can communicate what is going on and what the strategy is, most decisions become obvious and this results in everybody agreeing to what needs to be done.
Joeri 4y ago
Something is extremely off with modern corporate America. That’s because large corporations are typically run like communist states, where the workers have little say in their own work, and tyrannical unelected leadership sets up hierarchies that reward political infighting to build power. Why don’t corporations try democracy and bottom-up decision-making? Is corporate capitalism incompatible with democracy?
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > That’s because large corporations are typically run like communist states, where the workers have little say in their own work, and tyrannical unelected leadership sets up hierarchies that reward political infighting to build power. You're describing capitalism, actually. > try democracy and bottom-up decision-making Those are called worker co-ops. They're very socialistic. And democratic. It's quite possible for them to be profitable, too.

andrewflnr 4y ago

I'm curious exactly what that toxic and pissy behavior looks like, and how it's motivated. Is it just because he's making them look bad?

azemetre 4y ago
Seems to be just jealousy. From what I gather the old CEO and CTO liked him and his successes/goals but other junior level executives did not. When the new CEO was brought on they started to listen to the junior executives. They poison the well by stating things like how what he is doing isn't necessary or slowing down their own goals. Just humans being humans. As a result he will likely leave in <2 years. I don't doubt that his old org will falter extremely fast. It seems like well run orgs with less people are highly susceptible to quick change than large useless behemoths. Seems paradoxical, but a common fate at many companies/orgs.

galdosdi 4y ago

What they don't get outside of Big Tech is that non-junior developers are (relative to the traditional pre-software 20th century industrial business model) more like managers than like line workers. It's just that the "workers" we manage are robots. But even a pretty low level developer is going to end up making important business decisions just incidentally as part of their job, because it's hard to specify out every little decision that could impact the business without basically doing the dev's job for them. Businesses can embrace that or they can ignore it at their peril.

DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
I find that any company that actually gives its college-hires the formal job-title "Junior Developer" is not a good place to work: I interpret it as saying they don't respect their own employees. YMMV.
- ckdot 4y ago
  How would you name them then? In my experience many companies tend to give all the developers senior statuses even though they are actually still quite juniorish. What’s wrong to be a Junior Developer?
  - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
    I'd trim-off the "Junior" and leave it at that. For a formal job-title (as HR would demand) it's common to have Roman numerals appended, e.g. "SWE I" and "SWE II" before you get "Senior". The semantics is the same: "SWE I" == "Junior SWE" but without the unpleasant connotations that the term "Junior" specifically has, especially when you have older folks coming in at an entry-level (e.g. from coding-camps or a midlife career change) where referring to a 40something as "Junior" just feels weird. That's how it's done at all the US software companies I've worked at, including Microsoft and some startups. My current company does has done away with job-titles entirely and we make up whatever we want on our business-cards (within reason).
  - ckdot 4y ago
    Ok, seems like a good alternative. I didn’t know about it, in Germany it’s simply „Junior“ and „Senior“. If you are like a year or two in a company you usually are simply upgraded to „Senior“ no matter what. Even though I wouldn’t consider Junior offensive I like the system you describe much more.
marcosdumay 4y ago
What managers don't get is that almost all roles are like that. In fact, I'm wondering if that "almost" word should be there at all. Everybody organizes people, decide how work should be done, and has to make a lot of little decisions that nobody could anticipate. Not with the same leverage as developers, but with important consequences too. Somehow, management experts can't accept this.

ok_dad 4y ago

I bet your friend works super hard to manage 50 people as well as you say. I was in the Navy and the primary way to make a division/department great was for the leader to work 2x as hard as their peers to make sure theor division/department was performing awesomely. I recall having to get up 2 hours early to review my division's maintenance schedule so I could do surprise spot-checks. Peers would let the 1st class PO choose the spot-checks, and of course they're going to chose the easiest and fastest ones to finish, rather than something representative of the most important maintenance that day. The thing is, my division wasn't angry at me for doing the hard spot-checks (or anything else I was a hard-ass about), because I also spent more time to make sure they got ranked at the top of the stack and fought for them to get more time off and freedoms even if my superiors got irritated at me, so they were willing to work hard and perform above the rest of the crew. Managers that suck and don't work as hard have shit teams.

silvestrov 4y ago
In tech and other creative jobs: the better the developers are, the less (micro)management they need. Bad managers thinks a managers role is all about making decisions. Great managers knows it's about enabling employees: great managers act more like secretaries, making sure everybody knows everything they need. When a manager can communicate what is going on and what the strategy is, most decisions become obvious and this results in everybody agreeing to what needs to be done.

Joeri 4y ago

Something is extremely off with modern corporate America. That’s because large corporations are typically run like communist states, where the workers have little say in their own work, and tyrannical unelected leadership sets up hierarchies that reward political infighting to build power. Why don’t corporations try democracy and bottom-up decision-making? Is corporate capitalism incompatible with democracy?

drewcoo 4y ago
> That’s because large corporations are typically run like communist states, where the workers have little say in their own work, and tyrannical unelected leadership sets up hierarchies that reward political infighting to build power. You're describing capitalism, actually. > try democracy and bottom-up decision-making Those are called worker co-ops. They're very socialistic. And democratic. It's quite possible for them to be profitable, too.