Team topology, managers of managers, splitting and merging teams, scaling an organisation from tens to hundreds.
6 questions in Executive & Engineering Leadership.
In hypergrowth, interviewing breaks first, then onboarding, managers, ownership and informal communication. Size the hiring pipeline from stated assumptions, start growing managers now because they take longest, split ownership before teams multiply, and gate hiring pace on how fast people are absorbed.
A manager of managers delivers through other managers, so look for evidence of developing and removing managers, designing systems such as planning and hiring, and judgement at organisation scope. Hiring leaders well takes a competency map, org-scope stories probed for depth, a realistic case and future colleagues.
Fix ownership before span of control. Map every service to one owning team, cut teams around what they can ship alone, then size management to fit, adding a layer only if your own span demands it. Price the new manager roles, move people in waves, and involve HR early, as obligations vary by country.
In layoffs, decide what work stops before which roles go, apply criteria agreed with HR and legal because the process varies by country, and never start from names. Tell people individually and with dignity, then cut the roadmap to match the smaller team so those who stay do not carry the same work.
Shared service ownership means nobody is accountable, so the blame is a symptom of structure. Give one team ownership with matching authority, make the other department a customer with an interface and an SLO, write incident management and escalation down, and have both department heads visibly back the change.
Create a platform team when several stream-aligned teams keep solving the same undifferentiated problem and it measurably slows them. Stop it becoming a bottleneck by running it as a product with real users, making self-service the standard, keeping adoption voluntary, and measuring the waiting it removes.