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Comment on "My boss says we don't need any engineering managers"

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A team of fourty is just starting to touch the limits for self-organization. The tech leads already fill the role of providing alignment and guiding collaboration. The VP will be stretched to run performance cycles but again, leads can do a lot of the legwork. Once this becomes _really_ painful then you create an extra layer, not before.

At a minimum, I’d limit it to two or three managers (12-13 reports). Adding EMs for each 3-4 person team is overkill, and a huge morale hit especially if they are outside hires.

All I can see is a massive 25% headcount increase that will result in ten people trying to implement [latest-job-I-had] structures and “show impact”. Seems like a recipe for disaster at a startup.

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