Comment by mradek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mradek | Hacker News Reader

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Tangent but I do hope that Musks trim down results in orgs that have less “executives” and a layered cake of a org structure, and more autonomous small teams that execute on shared overarching initiatives.

I really don’t understand why so many tech companies have like 8 layers of engineering levels. If the argument is that you need more money so more levels, just have a bigger band. Don’t chase titles they don’t mean shit. Not to mention the management stacks that seem to just hang out in meetings and take pvt. I haven’t worked at a proper startup but I’ve been on projects where a dozen or so people rebuilt apps used by tens of millions of people in a few months, or launched completely new applications for bigger companies.

Now that I work in a tech company (not big tech, but still a multibillion dollar corp) I’ve noticed that since IPO we have added a ton of bureaucracy whereas back in the day we were small teams building completely new and at times complex features. Literally was in a meeting earlier this month where people were patting each other on the back because we added a single attribute to a table. I’m obviously reducing the entire initiative to a small thing but it kind of explains all we had to do. It’s soul crushing but with the economy the way it is I must deal with it. Hell I’m down to show up next Monday and work for Elon if he wants a go getter. At least I’ll get to DO stuff. Or any other startup in SF if they are hiring.

A lot of those upper layers and the bureaucracy which is seen as "bloat by the bottom layers comes about from compliance. The compliance burden grows as the business grows (e.g PCI, insurance and government requirements kick in at certain thresholds).

Sure engineering adding a new widget to the site might increase profits by 12%, but all that bureaucracy can prevent the company losing its payment provider or breaching a government regulation which might cause the company to close overnight. So if the stakes are +12% vs -100%, who is actually doing the most important work?

I don't disagree with your desire to work somewhere lean and task-focused, but I think it's almost impossible for that to happen anywhere but small(er) workplaces.

I work at a Big Tech adjacent (or Big Tech, depends on your definition) company and was there pre-IPO and it happens for the reason that varjag described in their sibling comment. What makes it even more idiotic is, as the pre-IPO/lean culture dilutes, more people will use their level to pull rank in meetings, as the level itself becomes more of a target than the work/goals. Then the politics around levels will become ultra-competitive. Google didn't get to their tortuous promo process in a vacuum after all.

If 10 engineers can build 5 features in a week, then why can't 50 build 25? We easily understand why as engineers on HN, and even managers and investors understand why. But that wont stop them from trying to solve that problem. And some of them do! All of these big FANG companies are as big as they are because at some point they figured out how to solve this problem. But just like time and growth break architectures and software, they also break processes, and they eventually encounter a level where they can't solve it anymore. Then they stagnate, then they either die or solve the new problems. They have to grow to keep investors, and to grow they have to keep investors. That's why it doesn't stop at 12 dudes building an app. But sometimes it does just fine. It's really just a matter of who's investing and what returns they're looking for.

> Tangent but I do hope that Musks trim down results in orgs that have less “executives” and a layered cake of a org structure, and more autonomous small teams that execute on shared overarching initiatives.

The core problem is that this approach doesn't really scale out because communication overhead exhibits quadratic growth to the orgs size if it's untamed. The feasible options are:

  1. Let the complexity bring chaos across the org
  2. One decision maker rule them all
  3. Gives some sort of management structures to the org

Your proposal is somehow between the option 1 and 2. The option 1 works pretty well for smaller orgs and it might scale to a quite sizable business if the members are generally competent so org-wide trust can be well-established. But anyway you'll hit a road blocker eventually since people cannot spend all of their time on communication overheads. The option 2 just moves the burden of entire complexity into a single personnel so it's not really a reproducible solution but more of a mere luck.

Hence the option 3 is the only remaining option for regular orgs and many smart people tried to figure out the best structure (or at least best practices) but unfortunately we don't have a definitive answer yet. Google-style "tech level" is one of the tool to reduce communication overhead by setting a common structure for expectations (e.g. "we have 1 L6 and 3 L5s to take that project" is generally easier to convince than length explanations of your team members). It's not ideal but it somehow works so it's adopted.

You're likely right that you'll be much more productive if you can get rid of those bureaucracies, but getting other folks convinced is a completely different story. Trust takes time to propagate and people have a limited time to spend on it. This obviously could be drastically simplified if you can work with Elon (or similar style leaders) directly but his time is extremely limited so there will always be only a small number of people who can enjoy that privilege...

> If the argument is that you need more money so more levels, just have a bigger band.

Someone earning a lot more than you at the same nominal position leads to a lot of resentment: the perception is that you are clearly wronged here. On the other hand a rank system makes this less objectionable and offers at least some roadmap to a similar income. "Oh, she's SWE L9000 naturally she'd earn that"

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