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.

I think this is a good thing. Every time I've seen people in dual tech/management roles at any company, they've always been incredibly stressed about their job, and always have way too much to do.

I've also never really liked the idea of engineering managers who are technical enough to approve/veto tech decisions that team members make, since there's a power imbalance there. Even if your TLM is pushing a bad technology choice, you might not want to push back too hard because they're also responsible for your performance review and comp changes and whatnot.