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A comment on How to succeed at Meta as SWE – focus on metrics, ignore everything else. Parent comment

Re:How to succeed at Meta as SWE – focus on metrics, ignore ... by lbotos on Thursday October 13, 2022 @12:57PM (#33193640)
> If your manager's manager has more than six (maybe up to 8) direct reports, that's a bad sign.

A bad sign of what? A bad sign that the company is too large to be innovating?

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Re:How to succeed at Meta as SWE – focus on metrics, ignore ... by sjsdaiuasgdia on Thursday October 13, 2022 @02:25PM (#33194630)
Span of control. As you get above that number of reports, the manager is splitting their attention to the point that hot/cold spots are inevitable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_of_control

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Re:How to succeed at Meta as SWE – focus on metrics, ignore ... by sooyoo on Thursday October 13, 2022 @05:42PM (#33196844)
So, many layers are bad, but large span is also. This means you are limiting both width and depth of the management tree, effectively limiting the total size of the workforce to ... a few hundred? That doesn't sound right.
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Re:How to succeed at Meta as SWE – focus on metrics, ignore ... by mrandish on Thursday October 13, 2022 @06:07PM (#33197076)
> That doesn't sound right.

IMHO, it's correct but that doesn't mean it's good or desirable that things tend to bog down in wider / deeper org structures. Maintaining high efficiency and effectiveness in large org structures is hard to do and that's why the exceptions are notable and worth studying.

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Re:How to succeed at Meta as SWE – focus on metrics, ignore ... by lokimedes on Thursday October 13, 2022 @07:02PM (#33197608)
Separation of concerns also applies to organizations. You may see huge companies, but where business areas, divisions, product lines etc. work in isolation just fine. At the strategic level, things are steered like a mix of governmental and portfolio management, effectively abstracting the differences between the lower layers away.

To study single-mission mega projects, the classics are the Manhattan Project, the Apollo missions and the first ICBM systems. The management of these projects were awe inspiring.

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