Hacker News Reader

This has to also apply to PMs/ICs as well at some level right? You can just have one core role in your organization have no personal growth for 2-3 years and other core roles keep progressing. Most of the time you have a cross functional team for a lot of launches and only have few members get promoted for them seems like a non-starter.

View on HN

Nah, different supply and demand for the two groups.

After the layoffs a glut of senior management, with more directors than you can shake a stick at. Many have had to take jobs as line managers. Director is a pretty similar level to a Senior Staff engineer, the latter is still in relatively short supply.

I think it's all about incentives. If you want fewer managers in your organization you disincentivize the manager position. Even more, if you're a manager and see all of the PMs/ICs get promoted.

If you want fewer managers in your organization (as a fraction of total employees), have each manager manage more direct reports. Incentives on their own don't create or reduce headcount, it has to be policy.

Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the results.

Policy is set by the same people you want to govern. The incentive from the top needs to be on ICs or on manager efficiency if you want less managers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com