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

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.

we had this in my company it was pretty hit miss. Almost always the 'TLM' was someone who was in the role for a really long time and it warranted a second person, so it ended up being a 1-2 junior reporting in absorbing the knowledge that the tlm had.

If you were in a growing domain, and the TLM stayed engaged with the code it worked really well, but as soon as one of those failed it was a bad roi for the company and a pretty terrible experience for everyone. the juniors were never getting promoted since there was only room for 1 expert on the small domain. The TLM was just chilling getting 5-10% raises a year without going outside of their little kingdom, but making sure their domain worked well.

As their junior got better they coded less but their juniors couldn't grow as long as they were there because the niche didn't need that many people.

I don't think its a coincidence that all these companies eliminated these rolls after 2022. When you have unlimited money and massive headcount growth these roles can exist and give your good but not exceptional people room for career growth. At static headcount, you basically need to do what banks do -- yearly cuts or no one can be promoted or hired.

This reads like "get rid of the old experienced people so I can get promoted".

If your position has no upward mobility juniors will change jobs, likely change companies, once they have the experience and all the effort you spent training them will be wasted.