When I work on the organization design of an engineering organization, I think a lot about “organizational mathematics,” the guideline that each team should have one manager and six to eight engineers, and each manager of managers should support four to six managers. From those numbers, you can rapidly determine an appropriate structure for your organization that’ll work fairly well. It might not be perfect, but it’ll work.
As I’ve applied that approach to designing multiple organizations, one of the recurring edge cases that have come up is deciding where the senior-most engineers should report. Should they, as the org math dictates, report to managers in the organizational leaf nodes? Or should they, as key leaders in your organization, report to more senior leaders to have better access to the information and authorization they need to excel in their role?

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Staff-plus engineers should report to managers whose scope aligns with their archetype and responsibilities. Tech Leads typically report to team managers, Architects to senior managers or CTOs, Solvers often work in weak team structures or Office of the CTO setups, and Right Hands report to senior executives. While organizational mathematics provides guidelines, practical constraints like managerial bandwidth and structural changes often prevent ideal reporting alignment. Companies should prioritize immediate reporting changes when possible and set clear timelines for organizational adjustments to properly support Staff-plus engineers as leaders.

Where do Staff-plus engineers fit into the org?