"VP" has become, not just for Google, a title you get instead of a raise. You know, to make you feel you are getting somewhere with your career without breaking the budget.

Haven't worked for Google but I worked for couple large banks (Credit Suisse, currently Citi) and VP is currently synonym for line manager. You can be Associate VP without having anybody report to you, just a senior contributor.

Banks and Wall Street are pretty liberal with "VP" titles. There they give you that title so the person you meet (to make a deal) thinks you are serious and sent a VP to sell.

Tech companies, not as much.

Can confirm. Source: American Psycho

"Let's see Paul Allen's card.

Look at that subtle off-white coloring.

The tasteful thickness of it.

Oh, my God. It even has a watermark."

It’s not the same at Google. Yes, someone 2 years post-MBA with 5 direct reports can be a VP in banking.

At google VPs have hundreds of people reporting to them.

At Google VP is equivalent to CXO roles, so it is not that kind of "fake" VP.

Are you thinking of SVP?

Even if you just take SVP don't they have like a hundred of them? I feel it would go a lot better if they put more wood behind fewer arrows (VP+ people). Then maybe a few projects would stick.

SVP is a big deal in Google actually.

Yes that is the problem, having like a hundred people who are a big deal means that the company has no direction.

The company is tens of thousands of people. At some point theres a limit to how flat one can be.

The current system is too flat, it is not like Sundar can control that many SVP's alone. Instead you have SVP's managing SVP's etc. Who is there to put the foot down ? I'd be fine with it if there was a level above that who kept them in check.

And lo the Executive SVP position shall be created!

This might be true, but also anybody who is a VP is making $1M+ a year. They're certainly in good hands.

How many VPs company with 100+k headcount should have?

Funny that you mention that but the comment you're replying to prompted me to do some back of the envelope calculations.

Things to note:

- About half Google's staff were technical

- There are ~80k employees?

- So assume 40k engineers

- Most engineers are ICs

- ICs are given levels from T3 (college grad) to T9 (can walk on water) with there being like a handful of Google Fellows beyond that (your Jeff Deans).

- Managers are M1s through M3s with M1s being baby managers. Most are M2s (equivalent to T6) who are managers of ICs and M3s (T7s) who are managers of managers (and higher level ICs).

- Higher level ICs (T7+) may well directly report to M2s or even directors or VPs but there's so few of those (~1%?) that they don't really change the math.

- In terms of rolled up head count you're looking at 5-20 for an M1/M2, 20-50 for an M3, 50-200 for a director, 150-1000+ for a VP.

- Directors have levels, D1 (T8) and D2 (T9). Sometimes you end up with 2 or even 3 directors within a management chain.

- The archetypal management chain is: CEO -> SVP -> VP -> Director -> M3 -> M1/M2 -> IC

So my opinion is the structure should ideally look something like this:

- M1/M2 average 10 ICs

- M3s average 5 M1/M2s

- Directors average 5 M3s

- VPs average 4 directors

with the following constraints:

- There is only 1 VP in a chain

- There is only 1 SVP in a chain

- There is only 1 director in a chain

- There are at most 2 managers in a chain

So 40K ICs need:

- 4K M1/M2s

- 800 M3s

- 160 directors

- 40 VPs

Now this "ideal" scenario obviously ignores some realities like a management structure built around products and infrastructure may not fit these numbers so neatly but then again some M1s could have 12 ICs while others have 8 and it all sort of works out.

I don't know what Google's numbers are here but I suspect it is MUCH MUCH higher than this.

Great job at deriving a Fermi estimate! (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem)

I don't know if your math is right but I enjoyed reading your comment.

It seems to me that as a back of the envelope estimation might be:

Suppose we say that an organization has n employees and that everyone in a position of leadership leads m people. The result would be a m-ary tree whose height is roughly:

h = log_m ((m - 1) * n))

If we say that there are l levels of seniority before one becomes a VP, then anyone not in the bottom l levels of the tree is a VP.

h_vp = # of levels of VPs = h - l

The number of VPs would then equal the number of nodes in a complete m-ary tree of height h_vp:

n = (m^h_vp) / (m - 1)

(Forgive me if I made any mistakes in my math, it's been a long time since I took algebra.)

How many employees should a search and recommendation engine have?

Theoretically you manage about 10 people effectively, so:

CEO: 1

CXO: 10

SVP: 100

VP: 1000

Director: 10000

Employees: 88889

Most companies have line managers. Line managers are not directors, they are managers. There are also senior managers. I think your schedule is good but I think you should add at least 1 layer maybe two.

Yeah, I just ran out of employees to cover and I worked backwards, so I didn’t get to use the term manager. I guess the system is good until the 1.000.000 mark ;)

I think line manager is a generic term for the person you explicitly report to though (e.g. the one who approves your time off), not a role in specific.

You can have higher ratios at the CXO and SVP level, and need lower ratios below director because at the higher level most people dont need as much day to day oversight.

From my experience at the bottom, it’s the higher level people that need more oversight.

5k people per VP seems reasonable, so 20? Then they can have 10 senior directors each with 500 persons under them.

two pizza team = 8 ICs max reporting

every 8 ICs + 1 manager = 9

every 8 managers = 1 director = 8 * 9 + 1 = 73

every 8 directors = 1 sr director = 8 * 73 + 1= 585

every 8 sr directors = 1 VP = 8 * 585 + 1 = 4681

every 8 VPs = 1 SVP = 8 * 4681 + 1 = 37449

every 8 SVPs = 1 EVP (c level exec) = 8 * 37449 + 1 = 299593

Clearly the problem is one of the large distribution of team sizes, rather than just "have less VPs".

Certainly an anomaly, but there's a distribution to the number of ICs assigned to the lowest level managers (M1/M2s). I've seen anywhere from 3 to 30. The people with 30 basically just jumped from 1:1 to 1:1 on repeat biweekly.

It's interesting how closely these estimates correspond to military TOEs. It's almost like we've figured out over the course of thousands of years what the most effective general-purpose hierarchical organization is.

Problem is that there aren't enough people to every VP, so they fight for headcount and projects leading to frequent reorgs or projects shuttering to make room for VP's pet projects.