GenXJamerican

The recent Wall Street Journal piece titled Your Boss Doesn’t Have Time to Talk to You describes the past year-and-a-half of my life as a senior manager on the software side in a financial institution very well. My “roll up”–the number of people who report to me directly–is 14 today, but has been as high as 21 within the past month or two. The delayering happening across corporate America is making workplaces worse for managers, for individual contributors (ICs), for the products companies put out, and ultimately for consumers.

The push from Wall Street to turn management into a job where you just “push the work forward”, as Beth Steinberg says in the WSJ piece, is short-sighted. Leaders must also be about helping their directs become more effective in their roles and leveling up to be capable of taking on more scope successfully. This is how a smart organization builds the next generations of leaders from within. One of the ways I tell people I mentor to judge hiring managers is by whether or not it seems clear that the professional growth of their direct reports is a top tier priority. Delayering is causing that answer to be “no” for a growing number of leaders.

A corporate America that already does a substandard job of training leaders has further broken the leadership growth ladder with delayering. In my organization, that means people leadership doesn’t start until you become a senior manager—with responsibilities for 2 separate engineering teams. Gone are the opportunities to create stretch roles managing a small number of direct reports or contractors and coaching aspiring leaders through successes and setbacks. Gone also are the opportunities for an IC to test out if leadership is for them on a small scale, and to change career tracks if they have a good experience. Failing to develop new leaders internally while stretching and burning out existing leaders with additional responsibilities heaped on them will contribute to poor decision making, organizations losing direction, perhaps even negative P&L outcomes until the leadership gaps are filled.

Delayering doesn’t only worsen life for ICs by reducing the amount of 1:1 time with their leader for feedback, it makes that feedback less-likely to be tactically useful because that leader’s broader scope necessarily puts them further from the tactical work. When I led one team of engineers, my scope was narrow enough to review PRs and provide comments to help subsequent work improve. I could question individual design choices and shape them for the better. I could work individually on helping my directs communicate more effectively. 14 directs is too many people for one manager to coach and guide directly that will yield significant professional growth.

Delayering may have improved the profitability and stock prices of most FAANG companies (and Microsoft) in the near term, but the trend has not improved these companies’ products at all in my experience. Google Search results are noticeably worse. Meta’s product newest product offerings still look very similar to features pioneered by much smaller companies and platforms. Their GenAI advances also appear to have stalled relative to their competitors.

How does a people leader who still wants to prioritize the growth of his direct reports mitigate the downsides of delayering? Three approaches I’ve been taking are: (1) 1:1s every 2 weeks instead of weekly, (2) requesting weekly reports wins, planned work, & risks, (3) delegating more tactical mentoring to my most senior ICs. Approach 1 just accepts the reality of a limited number of hours in a day and a limited number of days in the week. My burning out would serve no one’s interest. I still maintain a weekly cadence for ICs where I have performance concerns, but a longer cadence for consistent strong performers still gives us both enough touch points beyond the usual scrum ceremonies for now. Approach 2 (not the stupid and deservedly panned “5 things” emails demanded of federal employees by Elon Musk) has enabled me to see and respond to risks more quickly—-and escalate them to my director if and when needed. They will also provide a great resource for performance management when it’s time to talk about the accomplishments of my directs in future review cycles. Approach 3 expands the scope of responsibilities for senior ICs from just an owner of technical scope, to an exemplar for less-senior teammates.

ICs in these delayered workplaces must consistently look beyond their managers to mitigate the downsides of this flatter organizational model. I’ve worked in tech long enough to remember very infrequent 1:1 time with my manager and having to make the case in writing for conferences I wanted to attend and training I wanted to take. Those relatively new to the tech industry will have to exercise the muscles of owning their professional development early and often now.

Whether we like it or not, the delayering of corporate America is changing the workplace in ways we don’t control. We still control our effort, and must mitigate the downsides of delayering so we can further grow ourselves professionally and those we work with. Regardless of the organizational design fads of the present, people matter. Professionalism matters. Treating people like they matter and being professional will outlast every trend.