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This is exactly why middle management exists :)

My experience is more than eight direct reports starts to build up management debt if you have other things to do. Once you go over this you can only make it work by doing a lot of overtime. At one point I had 14 direct reports and I did nothing other than work, sleep and eat. Of course this is not sustainable.




I'm with you on most of your ideas, but I don't want people thinking 8 is some kind of magic number. For new managers, it might be 3. For experienced managers managing other experienced managers providing mostly strategic guidance but not getting into weekly supervision, it could be 20. For me, an experience leader of people, I get uncomfortable above about 6 directs because I know I can't commit to knowing enough about their work to adequately assess their performance, or coach them through career success ... but that "6" is a very personal and somewhat arbitrary number. Maybe in five more years I'll be able to do more ... or maybe I'll become yoda-like and only tackle one pet at a time.


I heard the same thing (>= 8 reports --> all of your time is 1:1s) from my manager.




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