# The Golden Ratio of Manager to IC

DevFeed: [The Golden Ratio of Manager to IC](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-golden-ratio-of-manager-to-ic-20525.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://code.dblock.org/2026/02/04/the-golden-ratio-of-manager-to-ic.html>)

Author: Daniel Doubrovkine (dblock@dblock.org)

Published: 2026-02-04T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Daniel Doubrovkine](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/daniel-doubrovkine.md>)

Topics: [Meta](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/meta.md>), [AI Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-engineering.md>), [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [Software](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software.md>)

Tags: [ai-assistants](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-assistants.md>), [ai-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-engineering.md>), [meta](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/meta.md>), [opinion](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/opinion.md>), [organization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/organization.md>), [people](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/people.md>), [teams](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/teams.md>)

## AI overview

This opinion examines Meta's reported plan for an applied AI engineering organization with up to 50 employees per manager. It argues that flatter structures may reduce unnecessary management layers and that AI assistants are increasing individual contributors' capabilities, while suggesting that managerial roles must continue to evolve.

## Source excerpt

In today's shocker, Meta is to "create a new applied AI engineering organization aiming for an ultra-flat structure of up to 50 employees to one manager". Like all software engineers I, too, tend to apply a data-driven, mathematical approach to every problem in the world. Yet I would have chosen a more romantic number and applied the golden ratio: roughly 1.6:1, the proportion that shows up in seashells, galaxies, and every second slide about "natural elegance", rather than 50:1, a measure that feels less like harmony and more like a spreadsheet's idea of efficiency. The idea of flattening an organization is not new and can be a good one. I know plenty of managers who have not done any individual contributor work, code or otherwise, in years. This is particularly striking with former strong coders who are promoted to managerial roles. After 2-3 cycles of promotions they are so far detached from what's happening at the individual-contributor level that they become 100% overhead, spending their entire life in meetings and actively preventing real work from being done. It's natural to want to eliminate layers of such people as they simply don't have any impact. And so, the real news at Meta is that it's fighting its own organization design in which, at least in some teams according to my friends who work or have worked there, people managers are discouraged from doing deep technical work, don't own much beyond process, and mostly serve as reporting-structure placeholders. Another reason to flatten an organization is the introduction of AI assistants that have created a major shift in the capabilities of individual contributors. Two years ago you could maybe find one single "10x engineer" in every team--someone who has dramatically higher velocity than their peers. A good manager would recognize these extraordinary abilities, make such an individual their right hand and technical partner, share the responsibility of advancing a project, create effective mentorship, and h