[donflamenco]

I would recommend the full video on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEg8cOx7UZk

Another fascinating bit is when he describes the flat management structure NVDA has.

He, as CEO, has 58 direct reports and no scheduled one on ones. Feedback is given constantly (up and down.).

[sanderjd]

No 1:1s sounds miserable. I don't want to give or receive feedback "constantly", I have other things to do constantly. I want to have a set periodic time where I know I will not be interrupted by my manager "sharing feedback", and will not be interrupting them with my feedback.

I suspect that in practice, relatively little feedback is being shared either up or down within such a structure, as people are busy working and never hit their set time reminding them to think through what feedback they have.

[sahila]

1:1s are okay when you're an IC and have it with your manager. The problem is the flipside is when your manager has many ICs, then it doesn't scale properly. Imagine Jensen having 58 reoccurring 1-1s!

In fact I see this with my coworkers, especially PMs, who have their schedules full of 1-1s daily. No doubt there's useful work that gets done in them _sometimes_, but I have doubts its efficiency over the long term with cross functionals. But even just focusing on 1-1s between managers/reports, I'd prefer nixing them in favor of a flatter structure, and using office hours/one-offs when needed.

[sanderjd]

Yes, but this is (IMO) just one of the important reasons that one manager should not have 58 direct reports.

Now, maybe this is fine for someone who manages other executives, where the primary touch points can be, like quarterly budget and strategy reports or something (I honestly have no idea what people like this do day to day, so I'm totally guessing on this...).

But out near the "leaves" of an org, managers exist to support their reports who are doing work day to day, and they can't do that if they have too many reports to spare any time for 1:1s with them.

I think PMs having a bunch of 1:1s, likely comprised mostly of status updates that could be done asynchronously, is a different problem, that we likely agree about.

But managers should have few enough reports that they're able to support them. If their reports want to cancel their 1:1s because they don't have anything to discuss, that's fine, but being unable to get on the schedule regularly is a problem, IMO.

[op00to]

There are almost certainly unwritten reporting lines at nvidia. No one can be an effective manager with 58 direct reports.

[sanderjd]

Yep, exactly.

[Pet_Ant]

> Feedback is given constantly (up and down.).

If you don't make time for things they rarely happen unless the people are particularly fired up about them. I don't even know who my current manager is to even reach out to. My coworkers don't unit test until reminded on the PR. I honestly forget to smoke-test until called out on it. So unless your culture is about feedback and everyone truly embodies that and is on board, it's not gonna happen.

[sahila]

Some of these seem a bit far-fetched and out of the norm. Not knowing your manager - do you even know what team you're on?

Engineering culture dictates much more strongly regarding unit and other tests than constant human feedback. It's also easy to add automated lint coverage tests to your PRs, and creating a documented process to check whether smoke-tests, etc.

[Pet_Ant]

I know my team and project manager. I was sent the contact of my on-boarding buddy who is on my team. In a matrix organization, it's common to not have any day-to-day contact with your manager. In my current organization, I have no idea who they are. I'm sure if I signed into the HR help portal and looked up by profile it'd say who is my manager, but I've had no interaction with them. Just got an email containing my year-end evaluation, no conversation. Maybe there name was in the email, maybe it was just the app that sent it.