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Typical ratio of people to managers in a company is about 1:4, so that tracks. And before this becomes controversial, I don’t mean every manager has 4 reports,

Typical ratio of people to managers in a company is about 1:4, so that tracks. And before this becomes controversial, I don’t mean every manager has 4 reports, but because organization is a tree, for every 4 ICs, there’s one manager. For example, you could have 3PMs, 3 designers and 10 engineers, but the org could have 4 managers: 1 PM manager, 1 Design manager, 1 eng manager with 7 reportees and a sr manager with 3 engineers & the 3 managers reporting to him/her.

alexpotato 3y ago
Every time I see more than 10 direct reports, I think of this quote: "Yasser Arafat had 17 lieutenants (aka direct reports). Why? So he could pit them all against each other: if they were fighting each other and jockeying for position then they were too busy to go after him."
- betaby 3y ago
  Interesting. Parent comment is about 4:1 even. In my career I saw from 5:1 to 20:1 IC to managers on a direct level. However the higher one go the better the ratio, like VP to SVP ratio rarely reaches 10:1 even. Now I'm curious what are the industry 'standard' numbers.
  - swyx 3y ago
    industry standard is 8:1, per https://lethain.com/sizing-engineering-teams/ https://lethain.com/sizing-engineering-teams/
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    bytedance has 50-200 reports per manager in some teams and are wildly successful my suspicion is lower numbers are more a function of worker power (demand for 1:1s, career growth conversation, offloading more tasks to your manager, etc)
    - tiffanyh 3y ago
      If you have 50-200 direct reports, you’re not a “manager”. You’re effectively either a recruiter or procurement.
      - wahnfrieden 3y ago
        then bytedance doesn't have managers
      - bradleyjg 3y ago
        I’ve heard of companies where hundreds of people officially report to person X but there are “mentors” with 3-5 mentees that seem an awful lot like other company’s mangers. Not sure what the point is exactly.
        duskwuff 3y ago
        > Not sure what the point is exactly. A promotion to "manager" is expected to come with a pay raise. Acting as a "mentor", less so.
        betaby 3y ago
        I mean manager has at least some power, 'mentors' or 'leads' - don't. At current org. we have ~20 ICs in the department and one manager, there are clearly 3, maybe 4 folks who are more senior in experience and more influential, but no, no one perceive them as managers.
      - jacurtis 3y ago
        I remember interviewing someone once that claimed to have 200 direct reports. I was really blunt and said "nobody has 200 direct reports". They assured me that they did. So I grilled them on the mechanics of it. If you had biweekly 1x1s with all of your DRs, you would have to do 100 per week. If 1-on-1s were your fulltime job you could at most do 80 per week (2 per hour x 40 hrs). Thats just rotating through 1x1s. That's not doing anything else. He claimed "team leads" did 1x1s, which is fine, but its hard to call them a direct report if you're not even aware of their daily work. Theres just no way you can adequately manage 200 people. As mentioned above, you are just a glorified HR person, you're no longer in engineering. I would never hire a manager below Director level that isn't themselves an individual contributor. I know its possible to have that but I wouldnt hire it, because we expect IC on our teams.
  - darth_avocado 3y ago
    20:1 is terrible. You may not have managers but other ICs then need to burden themselves with management duties. Even if you have 1:1 for half an hour every week, that’s 10 hours of just 1:1s. There is no reasonable way to keep track of it. It’s bad for the manager, it’s bad for the IC. Anything more than 10 is bad, ideal would be 7-8 reportees.
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      My manager has a bit more than 20 direct reports, and it works well in my experience. We have 1:1 every two weeks, but often there's not much to say. The manager can manage that many people because he's not involved with our day-to-day work. We have a Scrum Master and Product Owner who handle their "management" parts. If there's some problem which needs manager's attention it's typically SM who communicates that. The manager takes part in some meetings (like planning), but mostly just listening.
      - darth_avocado 3y ago
        So you do have managers, just different titles.
        The_Colonel 3y ago
        The difference is that they are not managing me, they "manage" their area of expertise. Better than an "all-rounder" who is doing PO, SM, HR, approving vacations and doing 1 on 1s ...
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > In my career I saw from 5:1 to 20:1 IC to managers on a direct level. I was once put in charge of over 20 direct reports against my wishes. At that ratio, you’re not really managing the team in a traditional sense. You’re providing high level direction and dealing with the individual issues that are most pressing. It invariably becomes a situation where there are team leads acting as pseudo-managers for groups of the people you’re managing. On the other hand, it did make me more efficient as a manager. Whenever I encounter teams with 3-4 people and a full-time manager who only manages them, it feels inefficient. Either the manager is stretching managerial duties within the team too far to fill their time, or the company has an unreasonable amount of process and cruft that takes up managers’ time.
    - dilyevsky 3y ago
      What you described in first half is how things should (and used) to work imo. > On the other hand, it did make me more efficient as a manager. Whenever I encounter teams with 3-4 people and a full-time manager who only manages them, it feels inefficient. Because it is?
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    3-7 is considered the optimal number in high risk (emergency services) situations. Beyond 7, you start to lose insight into what all is going on.
- crmd 3y ago
  I reported to a CEO who did this selectively. What was quite frustrating was that even when we figured it out it was hard to unite.
dilyevsky 3y ago
When I started my career it was pretty common to have a team of ~12 under one manager with a couple of TLs. Nowadays it's more like 1:4 or even 1:3 - that's 3x management bloat for mostly bureaucratic reasons and with no obvious improvement in productivity or retention. Then there's the thing you said - people with "manager/lead" in title but no obvious managerial responsibilities.
- thekrowndnf 3y ago
  Leads are expected to do technical work. I wouldn't call them bloat.
  - dilyevsky 3y ago
    In many shops managers are now doing TLs work like designs and technical vision except they dont actually write any code. This goes about as well as one would expect…
tomcam 3y ago
I like how you distinguish people from managers
yazaddaruvala 3y ago
> Typical ratio of people to managers in a company is about 1:4, so that tracks. Over the last 10 years, we have improved productivity tools, and for every other role the expectations are higher. I find it funny that the ratio of ICs:Managers has not gone up and the industry doesn't discuss that it should go up or what tools we need to help make it grow.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 3y ago
  Productivity tools don't help you when dealing with people problems. You can't throw a TODO app or some other bullshit on someone who is underperforming or to coach someone for a promotion.
  - yazaddaruvala 3y ago
    Is it a hard problem? Sure. Isn't increasing productivity by solving hard problems why we get paid? My biggest question is, why isn't it even talked about and/or have aspirational goals set up?
osigurdson 3y ago
I do think all of these various kinds of managers - none with any actual clout, is part of the problem. It is although the structure is designed by employees for employees, not stakeholders.

alexpotato 3y ago

Every time I see more than 10 direct reports, I think of this quote: "Yasser Arafat had 17 lieutenants (aka direct reports). Why? So he could pit them all against each other: if they were fighting each other and jockeying for position then they were too busy to go after him."

betaby 3y ago
Interesting. Parent comment is about 4:1 even. In my career I saw from 5:1 to 20:1 IC to managers on a direct level. However the higher one go the better the ratio, like VP to SVP ratio rarely reaches 10:1 even. Now I'm curious what are the industry 'standard' numbers.
- swyx 3y ago
  industry standard is 8:1, per https://lethain.com/sizing-engineering-teams/ https://lethain.com/sizing-engineering-teams/
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  bytedance has 50-200 reports per manager in some teams and are wildly successful my suspicion is lower numbers are more a function of worker power (demand for 1:1s, career growth conversation, offloading more tasks to your manager, etc)
  - tiffanyh 3y ago
    If you have 50-200 direct reports, you’re not a “manager”. You’re effectively either a recruiter or procurement.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      then bytedance doesn't have managers
    - bradleyjg 3y ago
      I’ve heard of companies where hundreds of people officially report to person X but there are “mentors” with 3-5 mentees that seem an awful lot like other company’s mangers. Not sure what the point is exactly.
      - duskwuff 3y ago
        > Not sure what the point is exactly. A promotion to "manager" is expected to come with a pay raise. Acting as a "mentor", less so.
      - betaby 3y ago
        I mean manager has at least some power, 'mentors' or 'leads' - don't. At current org. we have ~20 ICs in the department and one manager, there are clearly 3, maybe 4 folks who are more senior in experience and more influential, but no, no one perceive them as managers.
    - jacurtis 3y ago
      I remember interviewing someone once that claimed to have 200 direct reports. I was really blunt and said "nobody has 200 direct reports". They assured me that they did. So I grilled them on the mechanics of it. If you had biweekly 1x1s with all of your DRs, you would have to do 100 per week. If 1-on-1s were your fulltime job you could at most do 80 per week (2 per hour x 40 hrs). Thats just rotating through 1x1s. That's not doing anything else. He claimed "team leads" did 1x1s, which is fine, but its hard to call them a direct report if you're not even aware of their daily work. Theres just no way you can adequately manage 200 people. As mentioned above, you are just a glorified HR person, you're no longer in engineering. I would never hire a manager below Director level that isn't themselves an individual contributor. I know its possible to have that but I wouldnt hire it, because we expect IC on our teams.
- darth_avocado 3y ago
  20:1 is terrible. You may not have managers but other ICs then need to burden themselves with management duties. Even if you have 1:1 for half an hour every week, that’s 10 hours of just 1:1s. There is no reasonable way to keep track of it. It’s bad for the manager, it’s bad for the IC. Anything more than 10 is bad, ideal would be 7-8 reportees.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    My manager has a bit more than 20 direct reports, and it works well in my experience. We have 1:1 every two weeks, but often there's not much to say. The manager can manage that many people because he's not involved with our day-to-day work. We have a Scrum Master and Product Owner who handle their "management" parts. If there's some problem which needs manager's attention it's typically SM who communicates that. The manager takes part in some meetings (like planning), but mostly just listening.
    - darth_avocado 3y ago
      So you do have managers, just different titles.
      - The_Colonel 3y ago
        The difference is that they are not managing me, they "manage" their area of expertise. Better than an "all-rounder" who is doing PO, SM, HR, approving vacations and doing 1 on 1s ...
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > In my career I saw from 5:1 to 20:1 IC to managers on a direct level. I was once put in charge of over 20 direct reports against my wishes. At that ratio, you’re not really managing the team in a traditional sense. You’re providing high level direction and dealing with the individual issues that are most pressing. It invariably becomes a situation where there are team leads acting as pseudo-managers for groups of the people you’re managing. On the other hand, it did make me more efficient as a manager. Whenever I encounter teams with 3-4 people and a full-time manager who only manages them, it feels inefficient. Either the manager is stretching managerial duties within the team too far to fill their time, or the company has an unreasonable amount of process and cruft that takes up managers’ time.
  - dilyevsky 3y ago
    What you described in first half is how things should (and used) to work imo. > On the other hand, it did make me more efficient as a manager. Whenever I encounter teams with 3-4 people and a full-time manager who only manages them, it feels inefficient. Because it is?
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  3-7 is considered the optimal number in high risk (emergency services) situations. Beyond 7, you start to lose insight into what all is going on.
crmd 3y ago
I reported to a CEO who did this selectively. What was quite frustrating was that even when we figured it out it was hard to unite.

dilyevsky 3y ago

When I started my career it was pretty common to have a team of ~12 under one manager with a couple of TLs. Nowadays it's more like 1:4 or even 1:3 - that's 3x management bloat for mostly bureaucratic reasons and with no obvious improvement in productivity or retention. Then there's the thing you said - people with "manager/lead" in title but no obvious managerial responsibilities.

thekrowndnf 3y ago
Leads are expected to do technical work. I wouldn't call them bloat.
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  In many shops managers are now doing TLs work like designs and technical vision except they dont actually write any code. This goes about as well as one would expect…

tomcam 3y ago

I like how you distinguish people from managers

yazaddaruvala 3y ago

> Typical ratio of people to managers in a company is about 1:4, so that tracks. Over the last 10 years, we have improved productivity tools, and for every other role the expectations are higher. I find it funny that the ratio of ICs:Managers has not gone up and the industry doesn't discuss that it should go up or what tools we need to help make it grow.

isbvhodnvemrwvn 3y ago
Productivity tools don't help you when dealing with people problems. You can't throw a TODO app or some other bullshit on someone who is underperforming or to coach someone for a promotion.
- yazaddaruvala 3y ago
  Is it a hard problem? Sure. Isn't increasing productivity by solving hard problems why we get paid? My biggest question is, why isn't it even talked about and/or have aspirational goals set up?

osigurdson 3y ago

I do think all of these various kinds of managers - none with any actual clout, is part of the problem. It is although the structure is designed by employees for employees, not stakeholders.