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Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

(www.cnbc.com)
574 points frays | 5 comments | 27 Aug 25 21:16 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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AnotherGoodName ◴[27 Aug 25 22:01 UTC] No.45045883[source]▶
This was called the TLM role at google. Technical Lead/Manager. You were expected to code and manage a couple of more junior engineers.

It’s part of an effort to have dedicated managers and dedicated engineers instead of hybrid roles.

This is being sold as an efficiency win for the sake of the stock price but it’s really just moved a few people around with the TLMs now 100% focused on programming.

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1. giantg2 ◴[27 Aug 25 22:33 UTC] No.45046165[source]▶
We did something like this but called it a different name. It was absolute garbage. Its really no surprise to see those roles move back to a more traditional alignment.
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2. p1esk ◴[27 Aug 25 22:36 UTC] No.45046185[source]▶
Why was it bad?
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3. virtue3 ◴[27 Aug 25 22:42 UTC] No.45046230[source]▶
Managing skills and techlead and IC skills are pretty different disciplines.

Being 50/50 makes it hard to advance/develop in either one of them significantly.

The biggest issue is that management requires a lot of "wasted time" paying attention to whats going on around you and IC skills require a lot of "heads down time". It's a big fight between those two modes.

I've done it at a startup but it required doing most of my IC work after hours. Which isn't that sustainable.

4. prinny_ ◴[27 Aug 25 22:47 UTC] No.45046270[source]▶
It’s the only point in one’s career where you’re expected to do both programming and managing and it’s hard to do both at the same time and at a good level.
5. giantg2 ◴[27 Aug 25 23:29 UTC] No.45046558[source]▶
It was terrible because the "managers" had very little training which made them mostly useless and a legal liability to the company in regards to employment law cases. In many instances they weren't even on the same direct team but an adjacent team, so rhey hahd very little interaction. This completely invalidated the premise that a technical/coding manager would be a better mentor since there was never any time for it. Of course the company paid them the same rate as the senior devs that weren't managers. I'd say at least 50% of the first year cadre left the company or reverted to a regular senior dev after one year or less. Most divisions of the company don't use this model now. The only real reason they did it was because Google did it.