[sajithdilshan]

I remember seeing a video that labels these people as doing bullshit jobs. As an example in UPS the people that actually delivers the packages are the ones doing the real work. However between those workers and CEO there are like ten or more levels of management and all those people just sitting at an office doing basically nothing.

Same with VW or with any other traditional German company. Sometimes to justify their job they would create problems that doesn’t exist and come up with a solution

[warkdarrior]

I don't know what is the right amount of management, and I'm sure there are some management roles that add no value, but it seems to me that you cannot have UPS function with just a CEO and, say, 10000 delivery drivers and no middle managers.

[calvinmorrison]

its just people underestimating what people do in their actual jobs. Every thing has a huge long tail of work. things like 'accounting' is obvious but there are entire jobs around just buying stuff, around logistics, around fleet management, around managing your staff (HR), there are LOTs of specialized roles and they're not all dumb because you think they don't do anything.

Even in accounting there are many roles and subspecialties!

[sajithdilshan]

I think you misunderstood my comment, I was talking about different layers of management. Not different roles like accounting or sales etc. but there is absolutely no reason to have 10 different layers of management.

[calvinmorrison]

for someone like VAG or UPS why not? You can only remember/cram so much context into a single persons head, at some point you gotta split it up. In IT, you rarely see companies having managers with more than 6 direct reports. Of course in retail that number can bump up. But if you have a 4 or 5 thousand employees - you'll have 6 layers. Of course there are ways around it (I worked at F500 where i only talked to my boss rarely, and was managed by others on my team).

VAG employs 600,000 people - that you have 8 or 10 layers is not absurd.

[nradov]

Sure, but as a point of comparison the Roman Catholic Church has even more people worldwide and manages to make do with only 4 management layers. (I'm referring to those in religious orders only, not secular employees of various Catholic businesses and charities.)