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There may be situations where 15-30 direct reports is workable, but that is a very large number of reports. Academic studies generally settle on a maximum effective team size around seven, give or take a few[1]. In my own experience, I saw diminishing returns and reduced satisfaction in my management performance after ten direct reports. These issues resolved with a restructuring. But you don't have to take academic studies or anecdotes to heart. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest there are severe challenges to effectively and healthfully directly manage 30 people. Take the typical 40 hour week[2]. With 30 direct reports, that gives a maximum of 40/30 = 80 minutes/week to devote to each individual employee. If the manager does a weekly or bi-weekly 30 one-on-one, that leaves about an hour on average to deal with any issues. Of course, not every employee has high priorities issues at the same time. But we've only considered the individual, one-on-one work of the manager. There is also the team-wide and cross-team work. And, it turns out, team size also dramatically increases the time and effort these other facets take. Consider the typical daily stand-up (blech), used to keep the team aligned. If the manager allots (and strictly enforces) five minute slots per team member, that meeting still takes 2.5 hours. People won't be happy with that, and it will cut into the managers limited time to actually make progress on individual and team issues. Even if the manager splits the meeting (to spare team members for a super long meeting), the manager needs to attend each one to stay abreast of the big picture. Likewise, we presume that if a team has 30 reports, it's because what they are working on is of critical business importance. There are more demands from sibling teams in the same org, more budget and staffer reviews with higher-ups, more hours spent with HR and recruiting. (Alternatively, the manager is empire-building. But that doesn't really help the calculation. The time that the manager would've spent on delivering business value is instead spent on politics.) Even if you think you can keep all these balls in the air, it's hard to not conclude there are incredibly tight windows here. And the whole thing is very fragile. If you fail to identify, understand, and address a critical issue, it can quickly infect other team members. [1] See, for example, https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-your-team-too... [2] I know. We often work more than that. The exact number doesn't really change the story, especially since we're talking about retaining our physical and mental health. |
I worked at a company where all the engineers reported to the CTO, but we had a number of different scrum teams that worked independently from each other.