Lessons: What to do when you get “layered” at work | WorkLife with Molly Graham

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
Happy Sunday, y'all. Elise Hue here. Today, we're bringing you a Sunday Pick, where we share an episode of another podcast from TED, handpicked by us, for you. If your company is growing faster than you can keep up, your manager might decide to layer you. That is, split your job in half or hire someone with more experience to become your boss. This is an experience a lot of people go through, but it's rarely talked about because it's often unpleasant for everyone involved. In this episode of Work Life with host Molly Graham, Molly offers practical advice for anyone going through layering at work, from employees who find themselves sharing their job with someone new to leaders making the tough decision to hire another person for a role. She outlines six important things for employees to consider if they're struggling to adjust to being layered, and principles to help managers layer teams in a way that builds trust instead of breaking it. Molly also reflects on her recent conversation with Don Faul, and the lessons he shared from his experience being layered during his early years at Facebook.
If you want to learn more ways to work smarter, you are in luck. You can find Work Life with Molly Graham wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about TED's podcasts at podcast.ted.com.
Now on to the episode right after a quick break.

**Molly Graham** (1:39)
There's an experience that a lot of people go through at work. You start as an individual contributor. Then as your company grows, you get to hire and run a team. You're in the biggest job you've ever been in, and you're slightly overwhelmed all the time.
Then one day, your manager sits you down and says, I think we need to bring in someone who has more experience to run this area. I want you to stay and work for them.
That's called layering. When your manager decides to bring in a boss for you or split your job in half. It happens to a lot of people, but somehow we don't talk about it very much.
And the thing about layering is that it sucks, honestly, for everyone involved. And it could go really wrong and be really messy if it's not handled thoughtfully. Recently, you met my friend Don Faul. Don was most recently the CEO of CrossFit, formerly the CEO of Athos, a wearable startup, and before that, he was the head of operations at Pinterest. And before that, where I met him, he led all of operations for Facebook's users and developers. The thing is, early in Don's time at Facebook, he was layered. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO at the time, decided to split his job in two. He did not take it well initially.

**Don Faul** (3:02)
I was honestly devastated. I was like, this isn't good. This is clearly a step back. I have clearly failed. I remember Sheryl saying to me at the time, Don, you will be better in, you will be better as by virtue of this. You will be better at your job. You will find that this gives you the ability to focus.
And honestly, at the time, I was like, that is all BS. That's what you say to the person whose job, like, stop.

**Molly Graham** (3:28)
So here's the thing. Even if layering is painful and unsettling, it is often a necessary and normal part of a company's growth. But learning how to navigate it well, that's really hard. And it's what this episode is all about.
I'm Molly Graham and this is Work Life, a show where we untangle the messy human side of work.
Layering happens for a bunch of reasons. Sometimes the business is growing so fast that it needs a leader who has seen this phase of growth before. Some people are strong individual contributors, but weak managers, and they should return to their previous roles for the sake of everyone's sanity. Sometimes the function has simply gotten too big for one person to run. In Don's case, he was running all of operations at Facebook for multiple departments plus sales plus the delicate work of risk and fraud. Cheryl would personally tell you that Don was the highest performing manager in the company, and his job was too big for him to do well, especially at a time when Facebook was scaling really quickly. So one day, Cheryl called Don into her office.

**Don Faul** (4:47)
And at the time, Facebook is growing and scaling at an enormous rate. So, you know, going from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of users in hundreds of countries, the team has grown from 40, 50 to 600, 700 at this point. The scope of my role grew. So, you know, it grew to a point where, you know, managing this large global team, as far as I know, things are going great. And Cheryl, you know, I've had weekly one-on-one and, you know, in one of those one-on-ones, she tells me, you're doing a great job and I'm gonna split your role and I'm hiring someone else. And it's come again.