> Nothing kills your company’s culture like layoffs,” Kelleher once said.
Or maybe the culture is already rotten before the layoff. I've seen so many companies in the bay area have become so bloated and bureaucratic. Directors and VPs have very senior engineers who exclusively go to meetings to "align". Directors who report to directors who report to directors who report to VPs who report to VPs who report to VPs. PMs and engineers and managers are all gatekeepers who focus exclusively on ensuring that a project will not fail before it is even conceptualized. Distinguished engineers draw bigger boxes and pass them to Principal Engineers who draw smaller boxes and pass them to Senior Staff Engineers to draw even smaller boxes until a poor E5 or E4 engineers implement the whole thing. We have so many professional box drawers, expert meeting goers, seasoned report writers, fierce gatekeepers, anything but engineers who can implement systems end to end. As a result, a 6-month one-person project gets finished half assed by a team of 60 with 5 layers of report chain. A 3-week project requires 3 months of approval and another three months of PoC.
In such case, what can a company possibly do to at least survive a little longer, even in hope of improving its culture? I guess layoff is not a bad answer.
Or maybe the culture is already rotten before the layoff. I've seen so many companies in the bay area have become so bloated and bureaucratic. Directors and VPs have very senior engineers who exclusively go to meetings to "align". Directors who report to directors who report to directors who report to VPs who report to VPs who report to VPs. PMs and engineers and managers are all gatekeepers who focus exclusively on ensuring that a project will not fail before it is even conceptualized. Distinguished engineers draw bigger boxes and pass them to Principal Engineers who draw smaller boxes and pass them to Senior Staff Engineers to draw even smaller boxes until a poor E5 or E4 engineers implement the whole thing. We have so many professional box drawers, expert meeting goers, seasoned report writers, fierce gatekeepers, anything but engineers who can implement systems end to end. As a result, a 6-month one-person project gets finished half assed by a team of 60 with 5 layers of report chain. A 3-week project requires 3 months of approval and another three months of PoC.
In such case, what can a company possibly do to at least survive a little longer, even in hope of improving its culture? I guess layoff is not a bad answer.