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> The balance of crafter to manager numbers is a tricky one to strike. Too few and you risk misalignment on the most important things, too many and you add heav
by jrochkind1 3y ago
> The balance of crafter to manager numbers is a tricky one to strike. Too few and you risk misalignment on the most important things, too many and you add heavy layers of process, approvals, meetings and… side quests. Our numbers were unhealthy, just like it is in much of the tech industry. One of the insidious consequences of this is that it leads to the company increasingly celebrating activities rather than crafter driven outcomes. With the right numbers we’ll fully focus on outcomes and impact.
Am I reading this right that they decided they had too many managers, and are laying off some? They don't say it clearly in which direction they thought they were unbalanced, but I think that's the implication of "activities rather than crafter-driven outcomes", or just what is supposed to be the obvious answer when anyone says this is unbalanced?
- icegreentea2 3y agoYes, I read the statement as Shopify having too many managers and is weighting their layoffs to address that ratio (as well as generally pruning "side quests"). > too many and you add heavy layers of process, approvals, meetings and… side quests (emphasis mine) and > A more fit for purpose Shopify centered on its main quest has less scope creep, fewer meetings, and more shipping great features for our merchants. (emphasis mine)
- tgtweak 3y agoYet they're not offering those managers IC positions, they're just cutting and targeting managers with higher salaries for the most part. Also heard of a few staff engineers that went.
- jrochkind1 3y agoI'm a rubyist, and they have been recently known for hiring people to work on ruby as a language and contribute to ruby/rails ecosystem in a general way, not always directly and specifically related to their own codebase. I wonder if they're gonna stop all that stuff. https://shopify.engineering/shopify-ruby-at-scale-research-investment https://shopify.engineering/shopify-ruby-at-scale-research-i...
- jacques_chester 3y agoTo my knowledge most of those folks have been retained (until today I worked in that group).
- abledon 3y agothank goodness, get rid of the bloat