Flattening the organization?

We expect some layers of formal VMW management to vanish when we transition to BC, but will anything happen to the hundreds of project/program "managers" who don't have direct reports?

My BU has a revolving door that spits out a steady stream of them, most of which don't know how an SDLC works. To be fair, there are a couple good ones, but the others just add chaos by piling on unranked requirements, renaming products and features at 11:59, and so on. Plus they contradict each other at every opportunity.

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FYI, at this point I'm not aware of any team that has not been a revolving door in 2023. Even the new hires (less than one year at VMW) are eager to leave ASAP.

@wig+1ogKdOL9

So yes some of them manage a feature or have manager in the title because manage a broader program. That being said most of the folks in CS Ops as an example have a manager or director title with no reports yet are on the manager payband. They also do not manage a feature or let alone manage anything of importance. Just a lot of fat waiting to be cut because we decided a little to late to "make a CS team" and added a bunch of randos with no experience into roles with zero decision making capability.

Program and Project managers don't typically have direct reports. That's just part of the title. They manage the feature but not the people running it. They rely on actual managers to do that.

I'm a manager of a dev team, and work with half a dozen PMs. They set expectations for work and schedule from various dev teams. I set expectations on what can realistically be accomplished by my team. PM holds it all together. If PM changes things, I adjust from the dev side to either support or push back.

So, no. Don't expect that to go away. That is normal. You're just not familiar with it.

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Flattening the organization?

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