AD titles are exploding because they culled 40% of Directors a couple years ago. Why pay Directors, when ADs do the work for half the compensation, with no hope for a progression, since no one goes from AD to AVP.
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You flatten the org by having only directors and VPs. There is no need for “associate” of anything. And just like the old days call everyone else: Member of Technical Staff.
AD position at AT&T is the most unrewarding position while getting all the responsibilities. They don’t get stock options, pay basically same as Principal and the chances of getting Director spot is slim to none. Now with all the people leaving due to retirements and RTO bs it creates span of control issues and more responsibilities for same pay. It’s a thankless position that should be treated more fairly like a Director. And NO i’m not an AD.
I have been an AD for many years and it absolutely su-ks. I had an AVP tell me you wanna become a director so you can shield yourself from stuff happening in the trenches. It’s a grind and you’re trying to keep some of the best people on your team happy with good projects and progressions and you have no control over any of it. Then you watch leadership and your organization hire level 3 and 4 from different companies or from different groups to manage and they don’t stay around because they’re just job hopping. Go look at HR one stop executive announcement. The people coming in are actually on the same timeline as the people going out.
@m6
This can be done by AI.
Need AI AD!!
AD's are nothing but glorified baby sitters forwarding emails saying "FYI" and sending nasty grams when the time sheets are tardy
AD’s are on phone calls all day so if that’s what working is then yes they do all the work.
This thread is 💯 re Directors and AVP (for my org). Our self-serving (Director) demoted a highly capable and efficient AD so (Director) can carry ~ 15 direct reports while still loading all responsibilities on the demoted AD. It was a super shady move and everyone knew it.
I have 0.0oz of respect for (Director) since. Director and AVP are clueless of the complexity and volume of work many of us do, always needing explanations and slides that are d-mbed down for ‘leadership’ because they are busy pushing their own agenda with their heads buried up leadership’s backside.
Don’t even get me started on the parroting pitch for “how” to complete the survey.
Former AD, I'm telling you, we DO, do the work and we def have an impact on the business. It's the level 3 Directors that need to be flatten and double their headcount at min. The l3 have maybe 4 direct reports and for what? So they can mirco manage and sp-t out information that we already get from opps teams, so they can have daily calls to talk about yesterday performance and ask about updates that an email has already provided? Yeah I'm glad I am no longer a AD. Since I left, I've seen more BS get thrown on their plate.
Literally no one wants to be an AD. I thank the Almighty that I walked away from that role back when it was still called “Area Manager”. Became an L2 individual contributor. There’s about 20 of us that report to an overwhelmed “Associate Director”. And they are a good person and do as well as can be expected in that thankless role. I don’t anyone that thought the title change to AD was a positive thing, in any way. No compensation change and their number of direct reports just keeps growing and growing. What’s the incentive? Most wish they could simply just go to an individual contributor role. But they are now trapped. And no one wants that job. If you were good it used to be maybe you had a shot at a Director slot at least. That ship has long since sailed.
Once you are in the manager-of-managers club, they will keep you around unless you are specifically targeted by someone up the chain for wrongspeak. That is why they are all such Stepford robots parroting the Dallas narrative. They know results don't matter, only staying in the good graces of the sorority leaders. So they just keep creating PowerPoint slop to re-emphasize Satankey's PowerPoint slop. The gulag administrators do not want to end up in the gulag themselves.
AD’s are who actually get the work done without all the benefits of being an L3. Far too many L3s and L4s without appropriate number of direct reports while ADs are slammed.
AD's are how they protect their masses of DEI people from work force reduction exercises .
IMHO, your title should be based on the number of people you manage. When you compare our org structures to our competitors or other companies, we are way out of whack with the market. Here you have ADs with anywhere from 10-50 people under them, that’s easily a director or AVP at another company, then you have directors with orgs in the 100s, that’s a VP or SVP at some places. How can these people effectively manage these orgs? They need to create tiers here, we are already too flat. Sure there are outliers in some orgs like mass markets and marketing where they have those odd scenarios pointed out below, but those are outliers and yes that needs to be fixed as well. In order for any of us to grow, we need places to grow to and there aren’t any places.
Directors and avps.. you see director reporting to another director. Avp reporting to another avp.. all with hardly any direct reports..
Oh. And all those avp legal counsels who are glorified clerks.. those are the ones that need to go. Ad's are actually doing the role of ic and director. Now they have a new title called technology lead.. equal to ad. MY guess is they will demote director to ad and make ads technology lead.. this company is a joke
@a6 Agreed. Director and AVPs are completely useless and provide no added value.
The best would be to get rid of AVPs and consolidate the directors (get rid of 1/2, and down level 1/4 to ADs, 1/4 can remain at that level).
Do you honestly think if they give an AD 20 people that the AD will have 20 people under him/her by next year? If they cut the ADs, they will cut the ICs as well. Shuffling the deck down to make it easier to cut.
AD’s is how the Torretta org saves headcount. That’s why you have AD’s sitting in Alpharetta managing people out of Dallas. We had an AD volunteer to quit, and the Director convinced him to stay so he could work out of the North Carolina office. We have an AD out of Dallas that all the contracts he managed are months from being all expired with no chance of renewal and the Director is scrambling to find a floor for him to sweep.
AD was a joke. It was a pat on the head to the hard working managers so they feel like they got promoted but they really didn’t. More responsibility and cr-p and still L2 status with no addition benefits. L3’s continue to make much money, bigger bonuses, stock, way too many benefits, for even less work.
Save your bone.
Flattening the org has led to no career growth or mobility for most people.
Exactly. Nobody really wants to be an AD anyway. They still are level 2 and have the same responsibilities as a director. Many directors are being demoted to AD probably as both a cost saving measure (many fewer benefits at L2 vs L3) and probably yet another thing to get people to leave on their own. Those who aspire to becoming a L3 now have no incentive if they are first being pushed to AD which is simply headaches with no reward for it.
They used to claim there was a technical ladder but they all but destroyed that. There might be "title" changes but there are few that ever now get a level change without becoming a paper pusher.
We have too many level 3s. Most of the ADs actually work
You’re targeting the wrong level.
So will the ADs that remaining then have 30 to 50 directs? Most are at 20 plus now.
Cuts need to be made at L3 and 4.
They really need to get rid of the L3-L4 levels. They are totally useless.
We actually need more ADs than we have. I see ADs with 20,30+ people in their orgs. I think it just depends on where you sit. Flattening the org has led to no career growth or mobility for most people.