Comment by Wurdan
21 days ago
At a ratio of 10:1, at least in my experience, there's no time for those managers to be hands on with the work and keeping their engineering skills current. I don't personally feel that's a problem, but reading other comments on this post it seems like many HN readers do have an issue with engineering managers who don't keep their tech skills sharp.
For the past year I've only had three direct reports, which would have been too few to keep me occupied if I wasn't also acting tech lead.
IMHO, if you want engineering managers who can occasionally do hands-on things, you probably want a ratio around 6/7:1
Yes, I have no idea what the expectation of a manager in de engineering department of ASML is.
Personally, my "manager" has about 35 reports and also other duties. Basically as long as everything is going OK I don't have much to do with him. This is a company of 75 people, there are no managers except for two of the four directors. Not quite like ASML :-)