Too many VPs, not enough commits
The day I woke up to find myself on a project with more VPs than people actually doing the work, I had one of those “rethink your life choices” moments. You know the kind: your calendar’s packed, your inbox is a mess, and somehow, despite all the motion, nothing real is getting built. At that point, I wasn’t sure if I was part of a product team or just a live-action org chart simulator. Multiply that dynamic across a team, and the inefficiencies add up fast.
It’s not just annoying — it’s expensive. And it’s a quiet drag on morale, velocity, and creativity that no one seems eager to talk about.
Welcome to VP land: population, everyone but builders
In tech, we love to talk about scaling. Scaling infrastructure, scaling user growth, scaling revenue. But somewhere along the way, we started scaling middle management like it was a VC-mandated milestone. VP titles started multiplying like tabs in a browser window.
There are VPs of Engineering, VPs of Product, VPs of Customer Experience, VPs of Platform Strategy — and yes, I’ve met a VP of Special Projects. When a VP reports to a VP who reports to a senior VP, you no longer have a product org. You have a matryoshka doll of memos.
What ICs really stand for: infinitely circling status meetings
Here’s what happens when you drop a handful of individual contributors under a stack of VPs:
- Meetings all the way down
Every leader needs “visibility,” which means your engineers become part-time status update machines. - A thousand conflicting visions
One VP says move fast. Another says stability is the priority. A third wants to “rethink the strategy.” Meanwhile, the team’s still trying to deploy the last bug fix. - Can someone just decide already?
Decision-making turns into decision-deferring. Everyone wants consensus, but no one wants responsibility. By the time a green light arrives, the opportunity’s gone. - Micromanaged into mediocrity
If you’ve got six layers of leadership reviewing a roadmap, you’re not empowering builders. You’re signaling that trust is a thing that happens two levels up — after a slide deck and a Zoom pre-read - Productivity, meet the shredder
Scale that meeting overhead and duplicated alignment work across hundreds of engineers, and you’ve just created a multimillion-dollar bonfire. Congrats, you’re now a case study in Harvard Business Review.
But wait, don’t we need leaders?
Sure. Good ones. Purposeful ones. The kind who clear blockers, not add new ones.
Leadership goes sideways when it becomes a game of title Tetris. Some orgs inflate roles to retain talent (“Congrats, you’re now VP of Strategy Enablement!”), but all that really does is slow down teams and bury accountability.
Yes, tech can be messy. But complexity doesn’t justify convolution. Spotify’s squad model and Basecamp’s Shape Up are proof you can scale without sinking into hierarchy soup.
Promotions should reward impact, not ladder climbing. Otherwise, you’re just manufacturing middle managers like you’re printing startup hoodies.
Fix the structure, not just the standups
Here’s how to dig out of the VP pit:
- Fewer layers, more doers. The closer leadership is to the work, the better the decisions.
- Build IC career paths that don’t require management. Google does it. So can you.
- Give leaders leverage, not busywork. Leadership should reduce friction, not increase it.
- Let tools and demos replace status meetings. If you need five syncs to understand progress, it’s not a people problem — it’s a process one.
The truth is, most tech companies don’t have a productivity issue. They have a prioritization issue disguised as a visibility issue disguised as a management issue.
So if your org chart reads like a tower of Babel and your team velocity feels like dial-up, maybe it’s time to stop promoting and start pruning.
Sound familiar?
Have you ever been in a team where it felt like you were building for a spreadsheet, not a customer? Or seen leadership that actually cleared the path instead of creating more of it?
Let’s trade war stories in the comments.
Will Kelly is a writer, content strategist, and keen observer of the IT industry. Medium is home to his personal writing projects. His professional interests include generative AI, cloud computing, DevOps, and collaboration tools. He has written for startups, Fortune 1000 firms, and leading industry publications, including CIO and TechTarget. Follow him on X: @willkelly. You can also follow him on BlueSky: willkelly.bsky.social.
