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.
In those last 3 years I've only seen TLMs used to assist an overloaded EM.
The pattern I've seen is something like:
Principal EM
|- Staff EM (7 reports, project A)
|- Staff EM (8 reports, project B)
|- Staff IC (projects A, B, C)
|- Senior IC (projects A, B)
|- Senior IC (project C)
|- Mid level IC (project C)
|- Mid level IC (project C)
So the Principal EM deputizes Senior IC on project C as a TLM until things have changed enough that there can be a dedicated EM. Eventually the TLM converts to EM, a new EM is brought in, or there's a reorg, etc.
Of the two times I saw saw it happen locally, both converted back to ICs after a year or two and noted that the role felt like being 70% IC and 70% EM.
Nowadays the TLM role doesn't exist so the principal would delegate most of the technical responsibilities of the M role, giving them nearly full control of project C, but would not give them a formal role. (I've been that senior IC for project C.)
(Edit for formatting.)
Occasionally one reads stories of how people get paid pretty hefty salaries to mostly just work very casually. Contrast with the usual software engineering types I know that work insanely hard solving difficult problems day-in and day-out.
When I was younger I remember a lot of project managers (almost exclusively ladies in my environment back then) that mostly just ran around interrupting the programmers and relaying feedback and status and a lot of chitchatting and busy work. Often there can be tons of support roles, wellness officers and who knows what that can probably be slashed. What shocks me is when a lot of these really low value-add positions are given high seniority with crazy paychecks and very little real skill required and fairly low responsibility or accountability for anything vaguely tangible. I suspect in tech companies generating huge cashflows that almost seem decoupled from headcount in comparison to non-tech businesses, this stuff just get covered up. A big machine that is very profitable due to massive competitive advantage/network effects, can hide a ton of HR waste.
I worked in an org with about 60 engineers all working on the same product and I have to actively _not_ fix small issues to keep my sanity. Whenever I see a small issue I would have:
0) If it changes anything visible to the user discuss it with UX or PM (very annoying)
1) Fix it (easy part, usually)
2) Create PR and explain issue
3) Get someone from the other overworked team to look at it (not as bad if it is from my own team)
4) Get comments for often trivial things (depends a lot on the changes)
5) Get asked to refactor some related functionality because the fix is a bit messy without it (workaround) or to address the root cause of the issue (this is usually a big deal)
6) Possibly several rounds of reviews
7) Someone break my fix next time anyone makes a change to that part of the code
All to get something done that wasn't asked of me, that my manager will probably not see or know about unless I bring it up, that if I do bring it up my manager will probably tell me to not waste time on it since "it is the other team's problem".
So I would either ignore the issue or create a ticket that will probably be ignored. Only if it is a really trivial uncontroversial change would I bother to actually proactively do it.
Well you just know some... not effective or smart folks then, unless they literally enjoy living such life. There is time for some hard work, but if that's one's default modus operandi long term, rest of their lives suck pretty badly, no realistic way to avoid that.
That's failure to manage one of most critical aspects of life. Especially bad fail if employed at some heartless mega corporation, or just usual often amoral FAANGs of these days (unless the goal is to earn enough money in few years and move to saner place in life, but few achieve that even if they plan for it, ie mortgages and kids happen).
Some of us live to work, and the rest work to get some good actual life.
It's reasonable, when a company is looking into buying a new SaaS product, that the legal team review the contract.
It's reasonable for legal to ask for variations in the contract, if there's something in it they can't approve.
It's reasonable for the product to be reviewed for compliance with our privacy laws, before we order employees to start using it.
It's reasonable that the information security team get to be consulted before a new product is adopted, we don't want insecure products sneaking in.
It's reasonable that we want single-sign-on from our vendors, that's good for security. And we want SOC2 compliance if possible, as we're trying to be SOC2 compliant ourselves.
It's reasonable that a vendor have a record in our finance database, so we can pay them and know who we've paid what.
It's reasonable that, before approving a vendor, we get a statement from them that they do not use slave labour in their supply chain.
It's reasonable that every expense be attributed to a project or department within the business.
It's reasonable that the project or department's budget have an owner, who has to approve major expenditures.
It's reasonable that the work above is split across quite a few teams, and that each team have a queue of work where non-emergency requests can take a week or two.
But take those reasonable policies together, and it takes 3-6 months to adopt a new SaaS product - so it's a heck of a lot easier to stick with an under-performing, over-priced vendor than it is to get a new vendor approved.
Example: Why does my kitchen bluetooth, that I connect to the most, and that I am located nearest to, always go to the bottom of my bluetooth list, meaning I can't select from the quick screen and have to unlock and pull up another screen (when my hands are kitchen dirty)? I consume media on bluetooth the most showering and in the kitchen. The devices used should be 1 and 2, but they never are. EVERYTHING on Android is this 'devs must not actually use this' unfriendly. I still can't use the timer function using voice because if I don't wait for my phone to repeat back all the timer info and I touch something it just blanks out my timer, so I've learned I can't trust it after ruining too much food. These are my two most common use cases for my phone and where it ads value to my life, and both are needlessly annoying on Android causing me to hate the platform because in 2025 these little details should work. Someone at Google must cook things that need timers. Someone at Google must listen to music/audiobooks and have enough devices they spill over to the secondary screen. If feels like Android has zero actual world love/care from the devs or these daily annoyances would bubble up instantly.