Google Has Eliminated 35% of Managers Overseeing Small Teams in Past Year, Exec Says (cnbc.com)
- Reference: 0178897944
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/27/1955230/google-has-eliminated-35-of-managers-overseeing-small-teams-in-past-year-exec-says
- Source link: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/27/google-executive-says-company-has-cut-a-third-of-its-managers.html
> "Right now, we have 35% fewer managers, with fewer direct reports" than at this time a year ago, said Brian Welle, vice president of people analytics and performance, according to audio of an all-hands meeting reviewed by CNBC. "So a lot of fast progress there."
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> At the meeting, employees asked Welle and other executives about job security, "internal barriers" and Google's culture after several recent rounds of layoffs, buyouts and reorganizations. Welle said the idea is to reduce bureaucracy and run the company more efficiently. "When we look across our entire leadership population, that['s mangers, directors and VPs, we want them to be a smaller percentage of our overall workforce over time," he said.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/27/google-executive-says-company-has-cut-a-third-of-its-managers.html
Knowing middle managers... (Score:3)
Knowing middle managers, the shit ones did enough arse-licking and point-scoring to hang on to their jobs, while the good ones were too busy being good managers.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, getting rid of unneeded bureaucratic layers is great. Most of the time there would be little to no perceived difference. But unfortunate if you're just a good team member who got promoted. They might be put to better use rejoining the team they were overseeing.
Re: (Score:2)
The managers were so busy with Perf* that they were unavailable for 8 weeks out of the year.
* Google's Performance review process - including calibration, outputs, 360-degree feedback, OKRs, results obtained, behavior / Googleyness, presence (sometimes called visibility at other companies), etc.
Re: (Score:2)
> Knowing middle managers, the shit ones did enough arse-licking and point-scoring to hang on to their jobs, while the good ones were too busy being good managers.
Neither, really. They didn't eliminate jobs so much as make new rules that mostly eliminated the "Tech Lead / Manager" (TLM) role.
There used to be a lot of software engineers (people on the software engineer job ladder, as opposed to the engineering manager job ladder) who had 2-3 people reporting to them and were considered TLMs. These people divided their time between engineering work and management. Google made a new rule that every manager has to have at least 5 direct reports. This rule has flatt
This usually means (Score:2)
They promoted line workers to management, kept them doing line work, and now they're old enough they want to fire them but didn't want to get sued for age discrimination.
They learned the trick from IBM
on the shoulders of mud-submerged giants (Score:2)
Lol, they became the biggest company in the world doing it one way, and now that they're there they think they can burn down the infrastructure that made them so big with no consequences. Well, who knows, maybe they're right.
Re: (Score:1)
Smart managers experiment to see if their grand ideas hold water. They could select a few offices for pilot project cutting and see how they do. Only if it's successful should they then widen the scope.
However, in this case Google is probably bleeding money and have to do something to trim the budget. This approach makes it look like a strategic re-org to investors instead of mere shrinking, and newbie investors often fall for gimmicks.