On Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:37:18 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>  Most managers I've
> seen are in charge of dozens if not hundreds of people.

The ratio of reports:manager depends a lot on whether the reports perform 
the same duties or not.  You can get 20-50 people reporting to one 
manager if all those people do essentially the same job (like answering 
phones in a call centre).  But if they all do something different, then 
it can range from 5-10 at the low end to 20 at the high end, and 20 
different "roles" reporting to a manager can get pretty difficult for the 
manager to cope with.

My boss has a team of 11 people and a few contractors, but 4 essential 
roles (though the larger part of the team who does course development 
have additional roles they fill as well, so it's not a precise 
measurement of the number of roles), and that seems to be a good ratio.

Jim

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