I'm not surprised this is happening. Many org structures were pretty sparse as a result of changes, reorgs, attrition, and planning for future growth. When th

I'm not surprised this is happening. Many org structures were pretty sparse as a result of changes, reorgs, attrition, and planning for future growth. When the growth slowed, stopped, or reversed, that meant those sparse trees weren't going to get filled in. In my past life at one of those as a direct manager of ICs, I had 12 direct reports, while my manager, and their manager each had 4 or 5. There was definitely room to flatten things a bit. That said, 15-18 is far too many for a single manager to handle, IMHO. If you're managing ICs, you're still (hopefully) using your hands-on experience to provide guidance and mentorship and also staying in touch with technical discussions. With 18 reports, you're basically have no time to really dig into everything, and end up just being the performance monitor.