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Comment by bentt | Hacker News Reader

This is like saying you don't like Generals managing Colonels. https://www.army.mil/ranks/

The context here is that at Meta there is a perverse incentive to create management roles where none are needed.

I can say with direct knowledge that some orgs within Meta are insanely vertical. To the point where one has to wonder what all the middle management types are even doing. They are about to get Zucked.

You mean the meta point? :) The same applies to a lot of companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce etc I'd think it would be more optimal to prune at these middle layers and reassign the leaf nodes, instead of pruning at the nodes if a company wants to has overhired.

Pun taken .

I suspect the decision to prune leaf before branch nodes was strategic and intended to expose dead branches.

I’m sure the answer is “history” but it’s weird to me that a Lieutenant General outranks a Major General but a Major outranks a Lieutenant.

Start with one Sergeant Major General, then cut the off letters to taste.

“Lieutenant” is etymologically “placeholder”, and was originally used for top-level underlings; in a sense a “Lieutenant” is that for a Captain, a “Lieutenant Colonel” is that for a Colonel, a “Lieutenant General” is that for a General (or, in some systems, a “Colonel General” – in which case you can think of a Lieutenant General being a Lieutenant Colonel General, in which case it falls exactly where you’d expect in relation to a Major General, given how Major is just below Lieutenant Colonel.)

Ohhhhh. So a Major is kind of: a Major to the Lieutenant to the Colonel.

A Major General is a Major to the Lieutenant to the General.

This actually makes sense.

I’m guessing the answer to “why do the ranks not line up among branches of service” is “history”?

“I’m a Captain!” “Army or Navy?”

Is it? Should Meta's hierarchy be similar to the military's ranks?

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