“My boss says we don't need any engineering managers” with Charity Majors

[03:43] Welcome and Introduction to the Livestream

Andrew Murphy: Hello everybody and welcome to another Tech Leaders Launchpad livestream. For those of you who are new to this and are not aware of who I am, I'm Andrew Murphy. I'm the founder of Tech Leaders Launchpad. I've been in the technology industry for 20 years, leading for 15, and I had to learn a lot of stuff the hard way. I was promoted to a leadership position without any experience at leadership. I was the longest tenured engineer and given the reins of leadership and told to figure it all out myself, which is a story I hear many people tell me again and again.

The reason I created Tech Leaders Launchpad was so people didn't have to learn everything the hard way. This livestream is one of the ways I do that, to share the people I learn from -- people who make me better and whose message I want to get out as widely as possible. We focus so much on technology, which makes sense, but we should also focus on making our teams better, making our workplaces better, and helping the humans in the seats have a better, happier, and more confident experience in their jobs.

Today with me, I've got Charity. Charity, do you want to say hi and let folks know who you are, for the 1% who might not know?

Charity Majors: Sure! My name is Charity Majors. I'm co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb.io. Can you still call it a startup when we've been around for eight years? I'm not quite sure, but we've been doing that for a while now — we were kind of the OG observability company. Before that I worked at Parse (acquired by Facebook), at Linden Lab, and I kind of identify as an operations engineer, even though I feel like the DevOps days are coming to a natural sunset, which is interesting. But, operability remains.

I've bounced between engineering and management several times — I feel like I'm mostly fueled by rage and spite, but it's a fairly clean-burning fuel. When we started Honeycomb, I was like, well, we're definitely going to fail, but it sounds like a fun way to spend a year or two, and eight years later, we're still here.

Andrew Murphy: Yeah, I resonate with that. The reason I started this company is because I got so angry with the industry just not learning from mistakes it keeps making again and again. I spent 15 years trying to fix it as a leader in companies, then realized I needed to step out and take a wider view because I got so pissed off that as an industry, we're doing the same things. So, I resonate with that.

So, if you're watching the livestream, I see a few people already — Annalise, good morning to you; Martin, thanks for telling us you enjoy the hold music. Thank you for validating my choice of which Streamyard option to use!

If you've got questions for Charity and me, please post them wherever you're watching — LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitch. We're roughly going to discuss Charity's blog post today: "My boss says you don’t need any engineering managers" and the advice Charity gave, but as always, it’ll be wide ranging.

Rachel, good morning from New Zealand. Here in Melbourne, it’s a very cold morning. My hands are like ice blocks — if you hear any noise, I apologize.

[08:42] Discussing Charity’s Blog Post: Why Do We Have Managers?

Andrew Murphy: Cool. So let’s kick off. Charity, did you want to tell us a bit about that blog post, how it came about, and what sparked your energy and passion?

Charity Majors: Yeah. So I have a friend I was doing a little coaching for; he was a director who decided to become an executive, so I was meeting with him once a month as he got his first VP gigs and CTO gigs. He took a job as VP of Engineering, and his CEO (a former engineer) was like: Okay, we've got 30-40 engineers and no managers — seems like we should have a manager or two. The CEO said no. He was at a loss: how do you explain or argue for the existence of management? It’s like, how do you explain why things don’t float on water? It seems so obvious...

It became a brain worm for me: Why do we have managers? I’m pretty anti-authoritarian, anti-hierarchical, and my philosophy of leadership comes from the natural world. Hierarchies emerge everywhere in nature in self-healing, autonomous systems. It’s not about domination — it’s about organization. You can't have a system where everything communicates with everything else equally, it just doesn’t work.

From systems theory: in complex systems, hierarchy emerges for the benefit of those on the bottom. In hierarchical systems, you look down for function and up for meaning. That clarified the job of management to me. Managers orchestrate. They’re like the nervous system of the body — passing messages, making sure the right thing gets to the right place at the right time.

As an engineer, I always fought this because I like to know everything that’s going on. I used to hate that managers had all the info. Now I see: the system doesn’t scale that way. The key is having a relationship with your manager so they know what you want to know and provide it — not leveraging information as power, but to serve the team. People have a right to know what’s going on in the business they work at, up to privacy or legal limits.

Andrew Murphy: I like the nervous system analogy. Neurons have thresholds — they get lots of signals, but only pass them on when a threshold is reached. That’s a manager, too: getting signals from all over but only passing them on when it matters.

(Charity drops off temporarily, Andrew encourages questions and Charity reconnects.)

[14:01] The Manager's Functional vs. Meaning Role and Growth Challenges

Andrew Murphy: One of the jobs leaders really struggle with is that difference between the functional and the meaning, and how their role changes as they progress. I was coaching someone recently who's gone from running 1–2 teams to running 20 projects, and he's struggling with the difference between being responsible and being accountable — his boss says "be accountable," but he hears "do more things." That's a difficult transition.

Charity Majors: Yeah, your job as a manager isn’t to do all the things — it’s to make sure things get done. There’s overlap between what managers and senior ICs do, but the manager-only tasks are usually hiring/firing decisions, tough feedback, etc. Managers need to keep their head up, not be so deep they lose track, while ICs have the liberty to go deep, trusting their manager will pull them up when needed.

[16:03] Principles During Periods of Significant Growth

Andrew Murphy: A question from Aidan: As someone who’s grown a company from the ground up, are there principles that come in handy during significant growth?

Charity Majors: So many questions about what "significant growth" means! Hypergrowth is a product of the zero-interest rate era — growing too fast is dangerous. We intentionally never grew faster than doubling year-over-year to ensure we could process change and onboard people. You have to regularly have conversations about what your culture keeps and sheds as you grow. During hypergrowth, it might need to be every 6 months; otherwise, maybe every year or two.

Self-awareness is hugely important: be honest about who you are as a company; don’t try to be everything to everyone. I used to roll my eyes at company values, but now I see values as important tools — not the generic ones, but the differentiating things. Making your implicit culture explicit helps people know if they belong.

On the technical side: you can't design architecture to scale beyond roughly 10x your size; culturally it's similar — you can't anticipate everything but you must keep adapting intentionally.

Andrew Murphy: Also, culture debt is a thing, like tech debt. If you don't manage it, it spirals out of control. On the investor side, their desires aren't always aligned with the company's — they want fast growth while you might want sustainable growth. There’s tension there.

Charity Majors: Yes, we have great investors — but they don't ever care about culture unless it impacts hiring. That’s another reason we put an employee on our board: in Europe that's common, in the US it’s unique. If you’ve taken VC, you’ve signed up for a treadmill. People don’t always realize there are downsides to fundraising.

[23:02] The Manager's Calendar vs Maker's Calendar

Andrew Murphy: Let’s return to your blog post. You mentioned the difference between a manager's calendar and a maker's calendar and the incompatibility of tasks. Can you explain why it's important to protect focus time for engineers?

Charity Majors: You can’t be successful as an engineer without heads-down, focused time. As a manager, your day is full of interruptions and context switching. I don’t think isolating engineers from all non-coding tasks is best — especially more senior engineers benefit from involvement in culture, hiring, etc.

Managers’ jobs require having their heads up; it’s crucial for them to ensure their team members get enough contiguous hours to do real work. That’s why I believe engineering managers should have a strong technical background — to understand, evaluate, and advocate for their team’s work. The smallest unit of software ownership is not the individual, it’s the team.

Teams should have a range of skill levels and experiences — juniors, intermediates, seniors, staff — like building a bridge, you want both the energy of newcomers and scar tissue from veterans. Diverse teams are superpowers, even if early homogenous teams can move fast.

AI can help, but it can't build your engineering team culture or bridge these mentoring gaps.

[28:21] Outputs vs Outcomes, and The Manager's Role

Andrew Murphy: You mentioned productivity. I see part of the manager's job is to translate outputs (e.g., code) to outcomes (the right product built). Writing code is important, but if it's not the right code, you've wasted the effort.

Charity Majors: Absolutely. Sometimes this is managed by EMs, sometimes by staff engineers or product, but it's a crucial aspect of maturing as an engineer: shifting from "tech is cool" to "what are we using this for, and why?"

[29:24] Removing Managers: What Happens? (Ivan’s Question)

Andrew Murphy: Ivan asked: What if we took a medium-sized company, then removed all the EMs? What happens?

Charity Majors: Fun thought experiment! In the short term, probably not much. Most of the work managers do isn't day-to-day — it's week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year. They're key for hiring, training, retention, support, project tracking. Without that, accountability and correction mechanisms weaken and informal power structures emerge, but often with less clarity and fairness.

Andrew Murphy: You'd see great retention at first ("we can work on anything!"), but crucial advocacy and career development wouldn't happen, and longer term retention would drop. Not everyone knows how to self-promote or connect with senior leadership without advocates.

Charity Majors: Exactly. The "tyranny of structurelessness" means hierarchy still exists, just informally, with unclear navigation and no accountability.

Andrew Murphy: Emergent systems aren't always better than designed ones. Not everyone who steps into informal leadership knows how or wants to do it well.

Charity Majors: Management titles aren't magic, but they’re a proven tool. Sure, some companies run without management, but there are trade-offs, and it's hard to run the A/B test of what would have happened otherwise. The essential thing with management structures is the ability to correct or remove underperforming or toxic people.

Andrew Murphy: One of the quickest ways to destroy morale is if someone is clearly underperforming and nothing is done about it.

[36:04] Choosing Boring Culture Over Novelty

Andrew Murphy: In your post you mention "choosing boring culture" — what does that mean?

Charity Majors: It riffs off Dan McKinley's "Choose Boring Technology." Boring isn't bad; it means failure modes are understood and there's common knowledge of pros and cons. Tech companies work to make work "fun" (foosball, beer pong), but people want a healthy company — one where underperformers are dealt with, good work is recognized, effort is meaningful, decisions are sane.

Fun comes from coworkers, not corporate fun mandates. Management structure is boring, but necessary. I used to be anti-levels for engineers, but realized that in the absence of structure, you get the tyranny of structurelessness.

Having some industry-standard structure is powerful: more consistency lets you focus innovation where it matters.

Andrew Murphy: There are parallels with software frameworks. Nobody builds their own React unless they truly need to. More often, doing so is a mistake; similarly, re-inventing social or management structures is rarely worth the overhead. Is reinventing your culture really your differentiator?

Charity Majors: Yes, and as companies grow, your culture needs to become more generic to appeal to many people. Early on at Honeycomb, being two women founders was a differentiator and helped us recruit above our weight. That "difference" only lasts for so long. Now, the cultural stuff we focus on is about health, not excitement.

[47:40] Dangers of Too Much Management/Structure (When is it Overhead?)

Andrew Murphy: We’ve talked about the benefits of engineering managers and structure. But, as with all good things, you can have too much. What are the danger signs of too much overhead or structure?

Charity Majors: Management is overhead — not bad, but you want as little as possible while covering what needs to be covered. If you have one engineering manager for every 4-5 engineers in a young company, that’s a sign of too much overhead. Overhead expands to absorb resources, and nobody ever feels like they have spare time; but not everything we do is essential.

A clear sign of too much overhead: meeting creep — too many meetings for your company’s stage. Distributed companies need more explicit structure, but you shouldn’t over-optimize. The golden ratio I like is around one manager for 7 or 8 engineers. More than 10, someone’s not getting attention; fewer than 4-5, what's going on?

There’s also the "string of pearls" problem: a manager with only one report, who themselves has one report, etc. That’s usually a bad sign unless it's temporary or for a unique upward/downward split in roles, like a founder focusing upwards and a group manager downwards.

[53:41] Wrapping Up: Final Thoughts and Next Livestream

Andrew Murphy: We’re at the top of the hour. Thank you everyone for your questions and comments — you’re what makes this fun for us as speakers and for the audience. Thank you, Charity, for sharing your wisdom, for your blog posts, and for coming on to discuss them.

Before we finish, my next livestream is in about a month, with a good friend I worked with at Linktree, Phil Johnson. We’ll talk about experiences at agencies vs product companies, the upsides and downsides of both. It’s not a clear-cut "everyone should work at a product company" decision.

If you liked this, please subscribe on YouTube or follow on LinkedIn. The first QR code is to book a 20-minute chat with me about anything leadership-related — not a sales pitch, just a chance to help the industry.

Charity, anything you want to add?

Charity Majors: I’m on Twitter as @mipsytipsy, my blog is charity.wtf, and I just wrote a long post for Stack Overflow about why generative AI won’t build your teams for you. Take a look if you’re interested.

Andrew Murphy: Thank you again, Charity, and thanks to everyone for watching. See you next time on Tech Leaders Launchpad Livestream. Have a good day!