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.

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xenotux 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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JustExAWS 5 days ago | parent [-]

> 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.

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xenotux 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Role power is by far the least effective.

To be frank: it sounds nice, but I don't think that's really true. It's the power of "who's going to decide my promotions", "who is going to advocate for my team and get us more resources", "who approves my expenses", "who is going to protect me if something goes wrong", etc.

This doesn't give the manager a pass if their ideas are objectionable, but if they're credible, it's a huge advantage. Small disagreements disappear and people fall in line behind your vision, get excited about it, and make things happen.

In contrast, in an IC role, you can successfully push for initiatives, but you're always working against that dynamic. The merit of your idea aside, folks might simply feel that you're pushing them in a direction that's less likely to get them rewarded or recognized within their reporting chain. That takes extra effort to overcome.

Being very visibly anointed by some VP helps, but that's tapping into the exec's leverage, not yours. And that approach has downsides; I worked with more than one architect / uber-TL person who were universally disliked and feared. The perception was that they showed up to make your life worse by putting extra work on your plate, without having much skin in the game.

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JustExAWS 5 days ago | parent [-]

> Being very visibly anointed by some VP helps, but that's essentially tapping into the exec's leverage - an illusion of IC influence.

Of course that’s the play. Even a lind manager can’t get major initiatives through without getting the buy in from their manager. When I was working for startups, the director (1st company I had influence at) and the CTO at the second had been convinced of my idea and gave me the authority to pull who I needed to get it done.

Fast forward past BigTech to where I work now - a third party AWS consulting company, after convincing the powers that be of the market, I had it escalated to be one of the companies initiatives for the year.

But more so in BigTech, promotions aren’t completely on your manager. At least at AWS you had to have recommendations by I believe two or three people one level ahead of you and it had to go through a committee.

From talking to a couple of L4s that I mentored when they were interns and when they came back, they were both complaining about the promotion process even though their manager supported them.

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Jensson 5 days ago | parent [-]

> the CTO at the second had been convinced of my idea and gave me the authority to pull who I needed to get it done.

But that mean those people have the power, not you. Without that formal power structure you wouldn't do so much work trying to convince these people, the formal power structure forces everyone to try to manipulate and work with it, even you.

So it makes it so much easier to do anything if you are that high up person, imagine that was you, now instead of having to convince these people to do it now you just do it.

	▲	sokoloff 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Power structures exist in any group of size. Companies can choose how formal to make them, but they can’t avoid them. Imagine instead of having to convince the Director, VP, or CTO to support your good idea, that instead you had to convince 100 out of 700 people to support it, while at the same time, those 100 people are hearing good-sounding ideas from 99 people who aren’t you. I’d way rather work in the former than the latter.

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ip26 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And wielding all three at once is the most effective.

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lovich 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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

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JustExAWS 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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lovich 5 days ago | parent [-]

>The article is mostly about first level managers

Maybe for faangs. At every company I have worked at with a manger title from 2019 to present, this was expected of people with "director" in their title and below.

You are not a manager if you do not get to decide where capital is deployed, without your boss's approval.

For anyone reading this comment, if you think you are a manager, ask yourself this question

"If I decided tomorrow that the company would be better off if I hired someone to do role {X}, can I open a new req for that role without permission?"

If the answer is no, you are a supervisor with less agency than the a Walmart deli leader circa 2010

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sokoloff 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think the common vernacular for that cutoff is “director” rather than “manager”.

Directors direct (including opening hiring reqs without higher-level approval).

Managers manage (which doesn’t include unreviewed role openings).

Both do useful work in a well-functioning company.

	▲	lovich 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		You do not manage if you do not have agency. Modern day “managers” are supervisors making sure their directors or executives management plans are going according to plan, and if anything requiring money or headcount is needed to get the plan back on track, once again the director or executive needs to make that decision. I was not joking about the roles having less agency than a Walmart deli supervisor. I had more say in how the work was done in that role, than I have at any software company while I had the word “managers” in my title

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icedchai 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I've worked at places where the "senior executives" couldn't do any of these things without CEO approval. Even if they claimed to "have budget" for something, it still needed sign off.

There's tons of title inflation out there, especially at smaller firms.

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Ferret7446 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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.

But the value of the capital you had sway over as a 200k manager is significantly higher. You have to accept that you won't ever have total agency over 7+ digits worth of both human and non-human capital if you're not a VP/CEO (or a fintech bro I guess).

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surajrmal 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

By make-up I think most TLs at Google had no reports even before this change. The idea of ICs in leadership has always been a common occurrence at Google. If anything I don't really see it as commonly outside of Google.

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jtfrench 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, that helps put this in perspective. At first the headline sounded like a somewhat jarring and sudden staff cut, but if we're essentially just seeing Google migrate TLMs to TLs, that actually makes sense.