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.

It sounds to me like Google is moving to a more typical "technical lead" model where leads have substantial authority and some mentorship responsibilities, but they're essentially an IC and someone else up the chain actually handles proper management. Informally, tech leads can gently chew out less senior devs, but if someone actually needs to be disciplined then the lead needs to talk to the manager.

TLM is an odd role. I understand big tech companies have their own culture but it does seem like a poor management strategy regardless of efficiency.

The original ethos was that you didn't want the company ran by MBAs, so you wanted to build your management team by tapping into talented engineers.

Of course, this can backfire in many ways. You end up wasting engineering talent, and as the organization grows, managers spend more time on paper-pushing than on creative work. And there's no shortage of engineers who are just bad at reading, talking to, and managing people.

But the huge perk of management is leverage. If you're technically competent and credible, and want something to happen, your team will see it your way. If you're a random "ideas guy" in an IC role, that's not a given.

> But the huge perk of management is leverage. If you're technically competent and credible, and want something to happen, your team will see it your way. If you're a random "ideas guy" in an IC role, that's not a given.

There are three levers of power in an organization - relationship, expertise and role. Role power is by far the least effective. If you can’t get team buy in for your ideas or they believe you’re an idiot, you won’t get anything done.

A high level trusted IC who builds relationships inside and outside of the team and who is strong technically can work miracles.

At my current 700 person company, I’m pushing through a major initiative that management up to the CTO was at first skeptical about because I convinced them of my vision and I built relationships to get buy in.

I’m a staff engineer.

Even at BigTech I saw L6s and L7s ICs push through major initiatives the same way.

> Role power is by far the least effective.

Eh, maybe at faangs or at the executive level but at non faangs you might not notice a role having power because most roles with the Manager title are no longer actual managers but supervisors.

I had more agency over where capital was deployed as a teenager deciding how many people were going to be on the shift for closing, then I have making over 200k/yr as a Senior Manager.

Any role that has decision making power over where money goes automatically has a massive amount more power than a role that does not

The article is mostly about first level managers. I’ve never had any “manager” that really has any power over raises more than 3-4% or any real control over budgets.

When I was being hired as a strategic hire for startups - and was being interviewed by the director or CTO - I specifically asked would I be reporting directly to them or another manager. I actually refused one job because I saw that the expectations they had from me and how far I was down in reporting structure was incongruous.