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I’ve noticed that in larger technology companies there has also been a trend towards getting a “Manager” title but leading a team of 1-2 people. Maybe there wi

I’ve noticed that in larger technology companies there has also been a trend towards getting a “Manager” title but leading a team of 1-2 people. Maybe there will be intent to grow this to 3-4 people or more in future years, but that hinders giving others a title and their own small team (which can be considered career progression). Then you might see another leader (Manager of Managers, or “MoM”) who has 5 of these small-team managers, a different title, but a total organization size of 10-15 people. This feels like a shift from a generation ago when the bigger technology companies wanted flatter organizations and most managers would have teams of 8-12 people, the MoM roles might be 50-80 people, and beyond that executive roles with 100s of people.

jrockway 4y ago
I don't really have a problem with this. The best organizations lean into the fact that an organization needs to do more than just make a product, they also need to help their employees "grow" in their career. For those interested in the management track, starting small with a small "blast radius" makes a lot of sense. The organization isn't saying that having managers for every 2 people is the best way to allocate management resources, it's saying that it's the best way to train new managers.
- nixgeek 4y ago
  No disagreement on blast radius and the point on training new managers, instead what I find less logical is when a 50+ person organization has 25-30% of people as manager roles, meaning this isn’t an exceptional or temporary situation (i.e. training one or a small number of new managers), it’s actually a core part of organizational design.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    It’s done like this bc leadership at those companies want to have certain number of directors reporting to them (for resume padding purposes). The directors then need sr manager reports who in turn need multiple manager reports, etc. Pretty sure it has nothing to do with concern for low level employees’ careers as up and coming managers
kevstev 4y ago
I got stuck in this trap for a bit at my last job. I was called a "manager" and expected to do all of the managerial bits, but only had 2 others on my team that were very junior. Yet I was still expected to take on a full IC load, yet also deal with all the upwards reporting stuff, and I had to "find the resources" for all the forced work that was being put on us, and there was tons of it- datacenter moves, all kinds of transparent changes that were happening beneath us but still needed someone to "check out" on the weekends to ensure things weren't broken, etc. And of course any outage that happened, my name was front and center, but big successes, it was in there... somewhere. This was during covid, and headcount was always "about to be approved" but Covid. But this. But that... Never again will I fall into that trap.
NegativeK 4y ago
After seeing my first job promote devs working solo to "director", I learned that titles mean absolutely nothing, or less than nothing since they're often a distraction. You can go become a senior or lead developer in some companies with only two years of experience, but the head of the local very large international airport is a director.
ak_111 4y ago
It is getting even worse where you are seeing increase of “head of…” titles, my friend just became “head of performance analytics” at an online media company and he is the only one in his “team” (so technically his title is vacuously true as logicians would say :D ).
therealdrag0 4y ago
My friend at Microsoft manages a small team. The expectation is managing takes 1hr a day per report. So if you have 4 reports you should still be making IC contributions half the time. It’s not like once you get the title you get to sit around and fill space the rest of the time. (Not to say that never happens but any competitive company would resist that.)
deleted 4y ago
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jrockway 4y ago

I don't really have a problem with this. The best organizations lean into the fact that an organization needs to do more than just make a product, they also need to help their employees "grow" in their career. For those interested in the management track, starting small with a small "blast radius" makes a lot of sense. The organization isn't saying that having managers for every 2 people is the best way to allocate management resources, it's saying that it's the best way to train new managers.

nixgeek 4y ago
No disagreement on blast radius and the point on training new managers, instead what I find less logical is when a 50+ person organization has 25-30% of people as manager roles, meaning this isn’t an exceptional or temporary situation (i.e. training one or a small number of new managers), it’s actually a core part of organizational design.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  It’s done like this bc leadership at those companies want to have certain number of directors reporting to them (for resume padding purposes). The directors then need sr manager reports who in turn need multiple manager reports, etc. Pretty sure it has nothing to do with concern for low level employees’ careers as up and coming managers

kevstev 4y ago

I got stuck in this trap for a bit at my last job. I was called a "manager" and expected to do all of the managerial bits, but only had 2 others on my team that were very junior. Yet I was still expected to take on a full IC load, yet also deal with all the upwards reporting stuff, and I had to "find the resources" for all the forced work that was being put on us, and there was tons of it- datacenter moves, all kinds of transparent changes that were happening beneath us but still needed someone to "check out" on the weekends to ensure things weren't broken, etc. And of course any outage that happened, my name was front and center, but big successes, it was in there... somewhere. This was during covid, and headcount was always "about to be approved" but Covid. But this. But that... Never again will I fall into that trap.

NegativeK 4y ago

After seeing my first job promote devs working solo to "director", I learned that titles mean absolutely nothing, or less than nothing since they're often a distraction. You can go become a senior or lead developer in some companies with only two years of experience, but the head of the local very large international airport is a director.

ak_111 4y ago

It is getting even worse where you are seeing increase of “head of…” titles, my friend just became “head of performance analytics” at an online media company and he is the only one in his “team” (so technically his title is vacuously true as logicians would say :D ).

therealdrag0 4y ago

My friend at Microsoft manages a small team. The expectation is managing takes 1hr a day per report. So if you have 4 reports you should still be making IC contributions half the time. It’s not like once you get the title you get to sit around and fill space the rest of the time. (Not to say that never happens but any competitive company would resist that.)

deleted 4y ago

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