If a each person at each layer of hierarchy reports up to one person and has two people that report to them, 20 levels of hierarchy means 2^20 −1 people, over a million. A quick Google suggests… Wal-Mart, McDonalds (including franchise employees), China National Petroleum, and some government actors as potential groups of that size. If we call “team lead” and “Shift manager” different levels of hierarchy, then we get a ratio of about 4:1 across the first middle manager (who is an hourly employee that doesn’t make business decisions about who to hire). If we assume that ratio holds, Wal-Mart could have 11 levels of hierarchy with their employee total. To have 20 levels of heirarchy with each level having 4 direct reports would require 4^19+1 people in the organization, which would require a larger population. (while it isn’t strictly necessary that every branch be fully populated, the termination of a branch represents people ‘on the front lines’, which affects how distant from the front lines their immediate superior is)
In US government hierarchies, the GS payscale has 15 grades, and each position within the GS structure reports to a higher paygrade individual, and not all of the grades are actually usable. If we add the Senior Executive Service employees, political appointees, and elected officials, there are almost 18 possible paygrades above the blue collar FWS payscale employees. Outside of the US government, it is of course possible for people on different hierarchical levels to have the same paygrade, so a paygrade count is not always an upper limit on the number of levels.
I’m worried that people will see “One of the organizations studied reached 20 levels of hierarchy without falling over under it’s own middle management, therefore this organization that has merely seven is not particularly bad”. Instead of counting layers, I would instead ask “What responsibilities does this layer actually have- what buck stops here?” In the retail sphere: A shift lead decides when everyone’s breaks are; the shift manager decides whether to approve overtime; the store manager makes hiring decisions; the district manager decides which stores to close; the regional manager… might lack specific purveiw, but there are too many districts for each of them to report directly to the CEO, and there are a few tiers there. My alternative would be “If this position serves mostly to consolidate several lines of a spreadsheet into one line on a different sheet, they can and should be automated with a cell formula”… except that policy would result in every middle manager instantly finding something that they can do to justify their position, and start actively doing that thing, resulting in massive shock to an already stable system.
More sanity-checking “20 layers of hierarchy”
If a each person at each layer of hierarchy reports up to one person and has two people that report to them, 20 levels of hierarchy means 2^20 −1 people, over a million. A quick Google suggests… Wal-Mart, McDonalds (including franchise employees), China National Petroleum, and some government actors as potential groups of that size. If we call “team lead” and “Shift manager” different levels of hierarchy, then we get a ratio of about 4:1 across the first middle manager (who is an hourly employee that doesn’t make business decisions about who to hire). If we assume that ratio holds, Wal-Mart could have 11 levels of hierarchy with their employee total. To have 20 levels of heirarchy with each level having 4 direct reports would require 4^19+1 people in the organization, which would require a larger population. (while it isn’t strictly necessary that every branch be fully populated, the termination of a branch represents people ‘on the front lines’, which affects how distant from the front lines their immediate superior is)
In US government hierarchies, the GS payscale has 15 grades, and each position within the GS structure reports to a higher paygrade individual, and not all of the grades are actually usable. If we add the Senior Executive Service employees, political appointees, and elected officials, there are almost 18 possible paygrades above the blue collar FWS payscale employees. Outside of the US government, it is of course possible for people on different hierarchical levels to have the same paygrade, so a paygrade count is not always an upper limit on the number of levels.
I’m worried that people will see “One of the organizations studied reached 20 levels of hierarchy without falling over under it’s own middle management, therefore this organization that has merely seven is not particularly bad”. Instead of counting layers, I would instead ask “What responsibilities does this layer actually have- what buck stops here?” In the retail sphere: A shift lead decides when everyone’s breaks are; the shift manager decides whether to approve overtime; the store manager makes hiring decisions; the district manager decides which stores to close; the regional manager… might lack specific purveiw, but there are too many districts for each of them to report directly to the CEO, and there are a few tiers there. My alternative would be “If this position serves mostly to consolidate several lines of a spreadsheet into one line on a different sheet, they can and should be automated with a cell formula”… except that policy would result in every middle manager instantly finding something that they can do to justify their position, and start actively doing that thing, resulting in massive shock to an already stable system.
This was a great followup, thanks!