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Ask HN: There is a 1:1 manager to developer ratio where I work. Is this normal?

7 points by mannylee1 ↗ HN
I work for a fortune 500 company. Over the past couple of months top level management has hired numerous new managers and BAs. Their main reason for doing so is b/c our maintenance and project requests never meet our clients deadlines. But the real reason that our projects and maintenance requests are delayed is due to our poor development process, which the developers have no control over.

It can take developers 3 days to get a simple one line CSS change onto production. I could go into details of why this process is so incredibly inefficient, but I don't want to put any of you to sleep. On a daily basis, I tell one of my managers why our process needs to change ( which does not involve throwing more people at it ), but nothing ever changes.

As of today, when I attend our daily meetings there are 5 managers and 5 developers in attendance. And this is only for maintenance, the project team also has a 1:1 ratio.

This is the only large company that I have worked for, so I don't know if this happens anywhere else. If it does, it seems like an incredible waste of resources and money. Can anyone at HN help me out?

-Does this happen any where else? -Other than leaving the company, what else would you suggest that I do to make upper level management see the insanity of having 1:1 manager to developer ratio?

11 comments

[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 31.0 ms ] thread
iamdave
-Other than leaving the company, what else would you suggest that I do to make upper level management see the insanity of having 1:1 manager to developer ratio?

Become an expert in your department in change management. This sounds like the biggest thing holding your teams back, just from what you've described. Mind your p's and q's with change management, adopt it at the core level and push for it as hard as you can without stepping on toes and I think you'll see that ratio start to widen.

mannylee1
At the core I am a developer. It is possible for me to become knowledgeable in change management and make the switch to management, but I would rather leave the company before doing so. Thanks for the suggestion though, anything helps.
iamdave
I understand. I recently made a similar decision to depart from the company I'm with now for familiar reasons. Not that we had entirely too much human overhead, but because projects were never getting done, planning was a mess and...well I got a much better offer :)

Good luck, friend.

petervandijck
There is nothing you can do to make management decide that they should cut a large number of jobs. Seriously. Some things just can't be changed from the bottom up, this kind of thing (where you'd be taking away people's jobs) needs to come from the top down.
tom_b
WTF? They don't have a 1:1 ratio in max security prisons.

I simply cannot imagine how a fortune 500 company would let a division or org get this out of whack.

Do these managers do anything but "manage?" E.g., are they also customer contact/support leads or working with sales somehow?

mannylee1
That's just too funny. And to answer your question, no all they do is manage.
petervandijck
Please tell the CSS story in detail, it won't put us to sleep, it'll make us feel better about our job :)
triviatise
fortune 500 companies will eat your soul.
bxr
Is it normal? No. Ask yourself this: Is managing a single developer a full time job?

Talking to one manager about why the process needs to change isn't going to get you that far because you have too many damn managers. At least start bringing it up in your daily meetings, you'll have 5x as much management to hear it, and 5x as many developers supporting that the problem is a problem.

If you haven't yet, get prepared to leave or lose that job. If they can't run a software development shop better than that, I wouldn't bank on its continued survival and you probably don't want to be there anyway.

dstein
During one of the biggest entrepreneurial booms in history, what exactly is going on in your mind during such meetings??

Get out while you can. Join a startup, start a startup, anything, just get out.

rdouble
This is pretty typical. Even at dysfunctional startups this happens. I've been stuck on projects that had daily meetings with 4 managers and one programmer.