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The 35% reduction refers to the number of managers who oversee fewer than three people, according to a person familiar with the matter. If you oversee 0-2 peop

The 35% reduction refers to the number of managers who oversee fewer than three people, according to a person familiar with the matter. If you oversee 0-2 people, in most cases that’s probably not an efficient ratio. How did Google get so many folks in that position in the first place? And I assume the other 65% take up the slack to fluff their teams? Or what? Leave the other 65% managing 0-2 people?

andreimackenzie 1y ago
From my experience: re-orgs and limiting backfills for attrition can lead to these awkward states. Someone starts off with a sensible number of directs, but it can devolve over time.
TheBigSalad 1y ago
How is it not efficient?
- n1b0m 1y ago
  I guess it depends on what other responsibilities the manager has. If a manager has too little to do, they might over-manage their small team, constantly checking in on their work, which is inefficient and demoralising.
- Etheryte 1y ago
  If managers oversee 0-2 people in a company, that means it's roughly just one person managing one person managing one etc.
  - LudwigNagasena 1y ago
    Imagine you have a cohesive system that has 10 services, each service requires 1-3 people. The head of the system can assign 10 tech leads responsible for the overall quality of the services or they may have over 20 direct reports, most of whom have nothing of interest to report to the higher-up.
- michaelt 1y ago
  In certain types of company, it's workers without management responsibilities who do the work that brings in the money. Think of a delivery company, for example, where drivers make deliveries, which is what the company gets paid for. Too many managers - AKA too few employees per manager - will sink the company, because managers draw a salary but don't make deliveries. Of course, this analysis might not work as well for a company like Google. I'm pretty sure I can publish an ad without any human intervention on Google's end, so maybe they have no equivalent to the drivers, making the ratio incalculable.
bayindirh 1y ago
By plucking employees from larger teams until said teams have 0-2 people.
jeffbee 1y ago
The article says they were converted to ICs so these were TLMs or similar people. It sounds like the headline is clickbait and what's really been eliminated is small teams.
tibbar 1y ago
For a team that size, you would assume the manager is only spending around half of their time on people management and probably around half their time working directly on whatever the team does. It can be a good arrangement if the goal is just to give a little more leverage to the manager, but it's also equally possible that the manager doesn't have time to do anything particularly well. Also, a lot of time a part-time line manager like that won't have enough organizational clout to look out properly for the team. Having tried that arrangement a few times, I think it's better to have small pods where everyone is an engineer and then all the pods report up to a dedicated people manager.
jldugger 1y ago
Not a Goolger but my experience is that this is usually an optimistic promotion where someone is made a manager with the expectation of growing headcount later. But later never happens, or coincides with turnover to the degree that they never bubble up to a decent span of control.
toast0 1y ago
IMO, overseeing 0 people is great. I'm not likely to take any position where I have to oversee more or less than that; although I'm willing to compromise and oversee one person where they're actually independent and I don't have to do much overseeing.
- LambdaComplex 1y ago
  > overseeing 0 people is great. I'm not likely to take any position where I have to oversee more or less than that; I would have so many questions if I got an offer for a position where I had to oversee less than 0 people
  - fuzzy_biscuit 1y ago
    Would that mean you have to undersee one or more people? cue rimshot
    - shoo 1y ago
      Up on the shore they work all day Out in the sun they slave away While we devotin' Full time to floatin' Under the sea
- omoikane 1y ago
  Overseeing 0 people is great if your role is an individual contributor. If your role is a manager and there is no one for you to manage, it would seem that your role is redundant.
- pmontra 1y ago
  I'm sure that some company has managers overseeing imaginary and complex people.
JCM9 1y ago
Fewer than 3 people? That almost never makes sense. Right on Google to sort that out but I’d have a lot of questions for whatever leaders allowed such nonsense to develop on their watch in the first place. Also 35% is way too low if it’s really less than three. Should be more like eliminating 95% of those scenarios.
QuadmasterXLII 1y ago
In some circumstances it can be an effective way to lose efficiency in exchange for velocity- basically there are large tasks that can’t be developed by a team any faster than by an individual ( mythical man month) because they are fundamentally sequential not parallel. In these cases there are often parallel subtasks, so you can buy some speed by having one individual forging ahead as if they are the only one on the project, and then rope in the team for parallelizable subtasks. Instead of any amount of decision-making or communication overhead, everyone jumps when the team lead says jump – this is the step that bounds performance to not be slower than a solo project. Being the team lead in this sort of structure is grand fun, of course, but being a team member is brutal on the ego, and requires enormous skill to be a boost to velocity instead of a drag. Thus, it requires ridiculous compensation, even if you’re mostly sitting idle when the project is in a serial phase. it’s the sort of play that I could believe 2012 google could profitably execute and 2025 Google can’t.
mkoubaa 1y ago
It's only inefficient if the manager only had management responsibilities, which I doubt is the case in most of these situations.
deltaburnt 1y ago
When I started, I was told that one of the easier ways to get promo at L5 was to become a manager. I don't know how true that was at the time, but I think this could be a consequence of that sort of local optimizing. I think now they don't even allow you to be a manager at L5 unless you're grandfathered in?
- pfannkuchen 1y ago
  Search and ads, at least, had the L6 requirement for manager going back as long as I’m aware. I was under the impression that the requirement was relaxed at some point in some of the less revenue critical orgs, but that the L6 restriction actually goes back a long way.
  - aix1 1y ago
    FWIW I was L5 manager (on the SWE ladder) in two PAs. The L6 requirement did exist but in my experience was quite soft. All that my management had to do was justify to the VP that I was capable of doing the job and would soon be ready for promo to L6 (though the first org got nuked and the promo took a long time).
    - pfannkuchen 1y ago
      Interesting. Where I was I never saw an exception to the L6 rule.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dyauspitr 1y ago
It’s that semi role of being a “manager” while still writing code. They’re just doing away with that role and having dedicated people managers and dedicated engineers.
lmm 1y ago
Sometimes there are products where 1-3 people is the right size of team for that product; letting a team that size exist can be better than trying to smush together two or three unrelated products to fit a bigger team. Per other comments these are TLM positions where the manager is also expected to contribute technically.
ddoolin 1y ago
I am on a team of 2 people with a dedicated manager. That is, the manager does not write code and is not even really technical. It is awful, send help.
abustamam 1y ago
I work for a startup with an engineering team size of about 6, and I manage one person. I agree it's not an efficient ratio but it works for now. I don't think mature enterprise companies should have managers of 0-2 people though.

andreimackenzie 1y ago

From my experience: re-orgs and limiting backfills for attrition can lead to these awkward states. Someone starts off with a sensible number of directs, but it can devolve over time.

TheBigSalad 1y ago

How is it not efficient?

n1b0m 1y ago
I guess it depends on what other responsibilities the manager has. If a manager has too little to do, they might over-manage their small team, constantly checking in on their work, which is inefficient and demoralising.
Etheryte 1y ago
If managers oversee 0-2 people in a company, that means it's roughly just one person managing one person managing one etc.
- LudwigNagasena 1y ago
  Imagine you have a cohesive system that has 10 services, each service requires 1-3 people. The head of the system can assign 10 tech leads responsible for the overall quality of the services or they may have over 20 direct reports, most of whom have nothing of interest to report to the higher-up.
michaelt 1y ago
In certain types of company, it's workers without management responsibilities who do the work that brings in the money. Think of a delivery company, for example, where drivers make deliveries, which is what the company gets paid for. Too many managers - AKA too few employees per manager - will sink the company, because managers draw a salary but don't make deliveries. Of course, this analysis might not work as well for a company like Google. I'm pretty sure I can publish an ad without any human intervention on Google's end, so maybe they have no equivalent to the drivers, making the ratio incalculable.

bayindirh 1y ago

By plucking employees from larger teams until said teams have 0-2 people.

jeffbee 1y ago

The article says they were converted to ICs so these were TLMs or similar people. It sounds like the headline is clickbait and what's really been eliminated is small teams.

tibbar 1y ago

For a team that size, you would assume the manager is only spending around half of their time on people management and probably around half their time working directly on whatever the team does. It can be a good arrangement if the goal is just to give a little more leverage to the manager, but it's also equally possible that the manager doesn't have time to do anything particularly well. Also, a lot of time a part-time line manager like that won't have enough organizational clout to look out properly for the team. Having tried that arrangement a few times, I think it's better to have small pods where everyone is an engineer and then all the pods report up to a dedicated people manager.

jldugger 1y ago

Not a Goolger but my experience is that this is usually an optimistic promotion where someone is made a manager with the expectation of growing headcount later. But later never happens, or coincides with turnover to the degree that they never bubble up to a decent span of control.

toast0 1y ago

IMO, overseeing 0 people is great. I'm not likely to take any position where I have to oversee more or less than that; although I'm willing to compromise and oversee one person where they're actually independent and I don't have to do much overseeing.

LambdaComplex 1y ago
> overseeing 0 people is great. I'm not likely to take any position where I have to oversee more or less than that; I would have so many questions if I got an offer for a position where I had to oversee less than 0 people
- fuzzy_biscuit 1y ago
  Would that mean you have to undersee one or more people? cue rimshot
  - shoo 1y ago
    Up on the shore they work all day Out in the sun they slave away While we devotin' Full time to floatin' Under the sea
omoikane 1y ago
Overseeing 0 people is great if your role is an individual contributor. If your role is a manager and there is no one for you to manage, it would seem that your role is redundant.
pmontra 1y ago
I'm sure that some company has managers overseeing imaginary and complex people.

JCM9 1y ago

Fewer than 3 people? That almost never makes sense. Right on Google to sort that out but I’d have a lot of questions for whatever leaders allowed such nonsense to develop on their watch in the first place. Also 35% is way too low if it’s really less than three. Should be more like eliminating 95% of those scenarios.

QuadmasterXLII 1y ago

In some circumstances it can be an effective way to lose efficiency in exchange for velocity- basically there are large tasks that can’t be developed by a team any faster than by an individual ( mythical man month) because they are fundamentally sequential not parallel. In these cases there are often parallel subtasks, so you can buy some speed by having one individual forging ahead as if they are the only one on the project, and then rope in the team for parallelizable subtasks. Instead of any amount of decision-making or communication overhead, everyone jumps when the team lead says jump – this is the step that bounds performance to not be slower than a solo project. Being the team lead in this sort of structure is grand fun, of course, but being a team member is brutal on the ego, and requires enormous skill to be a boost to velocity instead of a drag. Thus, it requires ridiculous compensation, even if you’re mostly sitting idle when the project is in a serial phase. it’s the sort of play that I could believe 2012 google could profitably execute and 2025 Google can’t.

mkoubaa 1y ago

It's only inefficient if the manager only had management responsibilities, which I doubt is the case in most of these situations.

deltaburnt 1y ago

When I started, I was told that one of the easier ways to get promo at L5 was to become a manager. I don't know how true that was at the time, but I think this could be a consequence of that sort of local optimizing. I think now they don't even allow you to be a manager at L5 unless you're grandfathered in?

pfannkuchen 1y ago
Search and ads, at least, had the L6 requirement for manager going back as long as I’m aware. I was under the impression that the requirement was relaxed at some point in some of the less revenue critical orgs, but that the L6 restriction actually goes back a long way.
- aix1 1y ago
  FWIW I was L5 manager (on the SWE ladder) in two PAs. The L6 requirement did exist but in my experience was quite soft. All that my management had to do was justify to the VP that I was capable of doing the job and would soon be ready for promo to L6 (though the first org got nuked and the promo took a long time).
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    Interesting. Where I was I never saw an exception to the L6 rule.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

dyauspitr 1y ago

It’s that semi role of being a “manager” while still writing code. They’re just doing away with that role and having dedicated people managers and dedicated engineers.

lmm 1y ago

Sometimes there are products where 1-3 people is the right size of team for that product; letting a team that size exist can be better than trying to smush together two or three unrelated products to fit a bigger team. Per other comments these are TLM positions where the manager is also expected to contribute technically.

ddoolin 1y ago

I am on a team of 2 people with a dedicated manager. That is, the manager does not write code and is not even really technical. It is awful, send help.

abustamam 1y ago

I work for a startup with an engineering team size of about 6, and I manage one person. I agree it's not an efficient ratio but it works for now. I don't think mature enterprise companies should have managers of 0-2 people though.