Bonfire of the Middle Managers (economist.com)
- Reference: 0179715248
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/08/1645227/bonfire-of-the-middle-managers
- Source link: https://www.economist.com/business/2025/10/05/bonfire-of-the-middle-managers
Phrases relating to reducing management layers appeared 98 times on earnings calls of companies in the S&P global index this year, twice the frequency of all of 2022. The cuts stem partly from an uncertain economic environment and President Donald Trump's tariff regime, Economist writes. The pandemic created the conditions for the current retrenchment. Companies furloughed staff during Covid-19 and then hired rapidly to meet demand for e-commerce and digital services. They promoted employees to management positions to retain talent even when those managers supervised only one or two subordinates. Between 2019 and 2024, five of the ten fastest-growing job categories were management roles. Since November 2022, listed American companies have cut middle-management positions by around 3% on average.
[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2025/10/05/bonfire-of-the-middle-managers
Yikes! (Score:5, Funny)
Golf courses are going to be hit hard by the lack of middle managers showing up during work days.
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> [1]lion food: [IBM] n. Middle management or HQ staff (by extension, administrative drones in general). [catb.org]
> From an old joke about two lions who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their chances but agreed to meet after two months.
> When they do meet, one is skinny and the other overweight. The thin one says "How did you manage? I ate a human just once and they turned out a small army to chase me --- guns, nets, it was terrible. Since then I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass."
> The fat one replies "Well, *I* hid near an IBM office and ate a manager a day. And nobody even noticed!"
[1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/oldversions/jarg262.txt
Rookie numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
35% is a good start, but nowhere near where it should be at. Middle management is the gutter where corporate detritus collects. Upper management that claims to need middle management are good candidates for replacement or redundancy themselves.
Re:Rookie numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad management is a problem for a team, I think we can all agree on that. What few people know, or want to admit, is that no management is also a problem. You think upper management (which in my head is VP-type, people that manage teams of 100+) has time for everyone working under them? No man. You have some HR issue, questions, you need cooperation from another team that's reluctant to help? Sorry, you're on your own.
To be fair, managers of 2-3 people are not required, that's just a crazy ratio, but "middle managers" often have 10 or sometimes 30 reports. Just having weekly 1:1s with your team can eat a large chunk of your time. It's not productive work, but it's the necessary lubricant in the corporate machine.
Re:Rookie numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Managers should have 5-6 reports, but they should also do actual productive work, not only management. Maybe they only put in 8 hours of actual work a week, but a) this keeps them engaged with what is actually happening and b) if they cannot do real work, they are not qualified to manage people anyway. If it takes a long time to have check-ins with your employees then you've got big problems.
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Agreed, and I'm grateful my boss does this. Of course, if you expand this, it also explains why offshoring of so much is just stupid.
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I was a programming lead, and this is pretty close to how I worked. We scheduled my time as 50% management and 50% programming. If I started getting over 50% management, it was usually an indication of something else significant happening. Sometimes that was fine and sometimes it wasn't, and we'd do something about it.
But doing that "individual contributor" work was the only way I could ACTUALLY manage. If I'm not reading and working on the code, I have no way to assess the programmers I'm supervising, and
Re:Rookie numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
The role of middle managers is to execute the plans of upper management. Without middle management the upper management would have to deal with the workers and all the minutiae while at the same time trying to keep the company running.
As Forbes said, middle managers are [1]the overlooked leaders who hold the organization together [forbes.com].
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/cynthiayoung/2025/09/15/middle-managers-the-overlooked-leaders-who-hold-organizations-together/
Re:Rookie numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
> The role of middle managers is to execute the plans of upper management.
not disputing that, but i've come to think that the role of middle managers is often to inflate the headcount, because headcount tends to be a criteria both for the perceived valuation of the company (specially if the intent is to sell), and also the preceived importance of higher level management: you're worth as much as the number of people reporting to you. now, if you want to increase headcount but don't have actual work for that many people, middle management role is a good choice as its output is very hard to measure and it gives the impression that your staff is very busy and organized and your company is valuable.
this has been going on for a while, specially so in the startup sector but actually anywhere where venture capital was the main fuel. and it worked if the aim was to artificially grow and then sell out. however, i've seen projects go bust because of middle manager chaos, and i have also see companies go bust in consequence.
however, the game has changed quite a bit now. ai is now the hot investment lure, and one of the salient points of ai is that it allows to reduce headcount, so greater headcount has ceased to be attractive, quite the contrary. so to increase your perceived value it's better to ride the ai wave and invest in fancy ai tools and get rid of the deadweight.
now, as we have discussed previously here, the case of 35% reduction in google in particular was a completely different thing, those weren't really layoffs but just internal reorganization. but, well, middle journalists may ignore these very signifiicant subtleties if they don't suit their bombastic headlines ...
I Have to Object to This Framing (Score:3)
Very few of the Middle Managers, not nearly enough, are actually being burned.
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Same thing happened with me, through the years went from engineer, to team lead, to shift supervisor. After about 2 years as supervisor I couldn't do it anymore. The team had two obvious DEI hires. They would do the bare minimum of work to scrape by and could barely be trained on new things. Another on the team would just fuck shit up every couple months. All of them got multiple write ups. Management above me and HR would do nothing and has supervisors we had no power to just fire them ourselves. Eventuall
This is a good thing (Score:3)
It's hard to understand the proliferation of layers of management
Maybe it's empire building
Maybe it's a leftover from military organization
Maybe it's some sort of personality quirk
Whatever the cause, most middle managers impede progress and reduce value
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I think it's one of Celine's laws. No manager should manage more than 5 people. This may well imply that they should have skills other than managing.
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The goal of all managers is to have enough staff to do all of the work which constitutes the managers job so the manager has time to do manager stuff.
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Having worked in organizations with "flat" structures, I can assure you that no organization is truly flat. There's always a pecking order- even among people with the same title.
The difference when you have a hierarchy is that at least it's formally defined so you know who has to take responsibility. That doesn't mean formal hierarchy is always good- it can be used to push others down unfairly or exclude, but it can also be better than people having to navigate murky political waters to decide who has the
Public sector issue: salaries (Score:5, Interesting)
I can only speak for the public sector, but the talented people that stay in the public sector eventually have to move up to management positions for only one reason: A bigger salary.
The real problem isn't about too many managers. It's about politics and culture: "I'm THE manager, so people beneath me cannot make more money than me!"
If leaders eliminated that single stupid, corrosive paradigm from their org's culture and people were paid what they're worth based on merit (not title or hierarchies), these pointless middle management jobs would disappear overnight. "You mean I don't have to manage anyone and I get paid what I'm really worth? Wow! F**k those management responsibilities! I'll take door number 2, thank you."
If you're a manager and don't like this because you worked your way up in the current culture and would feel slighted by this change, you need to STFU. You're not BETTER than your subordinates because of your title. You're just managing others because that's your job that you're officially trained to do - manage people. And those people may be just as important, if not more so, to your organization as you are.
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Any organization that knows what it's doing will have parallel promotion tracks for management and non-management.
In the specific case of my company, I "Sr. Solutions Architect" have a job grade roughly equivalent to a director, and above that of anyone called "manager", "supervisor", or the Sr. versions thereof. The "principal architect" I work with is equivalent to the sr. director that manages the whole team. I think the individual track tops out around VP/SVP level here. And yes, a non-sr. director can
America did away with middle management ages ago (Score:2, Troll)
Every manager I have had has had line work duties in addition to management. And management basically meant keeping track of my time cards and filling out a bunch of paperwork so that reports could be built for the CEO and CFO.
Basically they were doing double duty the entire time.
What I see a lot of is companies that promote people into management roles for small raises with large increases in pay and then as those people get older they fire them all with the excuse that they are cutting management
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"didn't really need management like that anymore so they were gradually converted into line workers that you can fire without cause" huh? not sure you know how business works? When you get promoted you often become exempt(Management) and you can be fired without cause(easier). At least that was how things worked in ancient times before I left the corporate world for self employment.
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Now that I think about it more maybe it was non-except, been so long ago.
Hardly surprising (Score:1)
The vast majority of managers are nothing but a waste: at best, they are there just to generate activity so that it looks as though they had something to do.
Hmm, Zuckerberg (Score:3, Interesting)
"Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has complained about managers managing managers since 2023."
So, what does Mark do? Maybe manage managers that manage other managers?
Of course, I simplify his myriad responsibilities. For example, being a visionary in pushing forward things like the Metaverse and AI glasses. Also, having lunch with Trump. And lifting restrictions on Trump's social media accounts, ending third-party fact-checking, and scrapping DEI at Meta.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> "Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has complained about managers managing managers since 2023."
> So, what does Mark do? Maybe manage managers that manage other managers?
Mark Zuckerberg voiced by the guy who played Milton: I make the [expletive] [expletive] decisions so the engineers don't have to. I have decision skills! I am good at making decisions!
managers overseeing teams of fewer than three (Score:2)
What are they even managing at that point? I would struggle to assign a team lead to a team that small. Presumably these were senior IC that needed a pay bump to keep them from going to another company? Maybe they assign a manager to every single internal product?
Fewer than two? (Score:3)
> Google eliminated 35% of managers overseeing teams of fewer than three in August
Fewer than three would be...two.
So Google eliminated 35% of managers who were overseeing only two people? Why not all of them?
As a manager directly overseeing 11 developers, it's hard for me to imagine why a manager would ever be required to oversee just two.
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The employees from that 35% went to the other 65% that had two employees and turned it into three. Problem... Solved? :D
Seagull managers (Score:1)
Good! They are seagull managers... they swoop in and make a lot of noise, shit on everything, then fly away.
"managers overseeing teams of fewer than three" (Score:2)
"I may manage only two employees, but let me tell you, I manage the f*ck outta them!"
Managers vs Doer/Manager (Score:3)
I think there's a difference between a middle manager who does nothing but manage people (all substantive output performed by others) and people who do individually contribute but take on certain management responsibilities.
Yes, it makes no sense to have a manager who only manages 2-3 people if all they are doing is managing. But more often I see this when you have one person who is doing highly skilled/high value work who needs assistance to enable them to focus on that work. Think of the surgeon with a nurse and a surgical assistant or a lawyer with paralegals who report to them. The surgeon isn't a middle manager, but they do have people reporting to them. It often makes sense for the assistant to report to the principal because they are the ones who know the work best. Personally, I've managed small teams as part of my responsibilities, but it was only in addition to may "day job" where I was preparing deliverables totally independent of what the teams were doing.
Middle management is a problem when they are not actually doing anything other than telling others to do work and evaluating that work, especially when they may lack the expertise to properly evaluate it. Those of are the positions ripe for elimination.
PMI and agile are two cancers being removed. (Score:3)
PMI and agile are sure signs you have a serious micromanagement problem. With any luck this reversion to flatter hierarchies will also see the death of Jira, the micromanager's preferred nuclear weapon.
I love the bleating sound these micromangers are making now that they are being fired from their "cat herding" BS jobs. If they had the slightest clue, they would have long ago realized you don't manage programmers, you lead them. This means you don't "herd cats" you get a treat, and lead them to where they want to go anyway.
One good leader can "manage" the same number of people as a dozen or more PMI trained micromanagers.
A friend of mine who fired 100% of his managers and replaced them with a few leaders, said, "I could tell who was a manager, and who was a leader, simply because the managers were always complaining about stress and overwork; whereas the leaders were comfortable with how things were going, even when bad outside things impacted their projects. They had no problem with having their teams deal with any problems."
I have 8 bosses (Score:5, Funny)
I have 8 bosses so when I messup I have 8 people talking to me.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Please go re-watch Office Space.
Re:I have 8 bosses (Score:5, Insightful)
I had that problem at a previous job. It was the main reason I left. I don't need 5 insecure managers trying to prove their worth by giving subordinates more busywork. Especially when most of those managers have no expertise in the areas they're managing.
Re:I have 8 bosses (Score:4, Insightful)
The frustrating thing to me is that they don't coordinate, or talk to eachother, so I am constantly explaining what i'm doing and why to different people, and they each separately expect you to do their tasks for 40 hours a week. I am simply unable to work 160+ hours a week to "please" them all.
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> The frustrating thing to me is that they don't coordinate, or talk to eachother, so I am constantly explaining what i'm doing and why to different people...
This exactly! I eventually got most of them to not bother me on a weekly basis by sending them a status report of the previous day's work the next morning. It still sucked having to do that. It also pissed one of them off. Something about him needing unique input that the other managers wouldn't understand. I guess I didn't understand either because he never asked anything "unique" that I was aware of.
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How the hell do you have 5 managers? You should be reporting to a single person. If those 5 "managers" are project managers from outside your group then they should be funneling all that work though the manager that you actually report to so the work can be distributed to the team and so that manager can keep track of what the team is working on and progress of that work. If the person you actually report to is not doing this, then they aren't doing their job and should be gone.
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Ah, so they should fire you so that those bosses no longer waste time talking to you! ;-)
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> I have 8 bosses so when I messup I have 8 people talking to me.
This is referred to as the "Matrix" org structure, because you start to feel like you're living in the Matrix. On the upside they are all human, because no digital lifeform would be this bad at communicating.
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So the team you manage, is your bosses!
Re: I have 8 bosses (Score:2)
Shove this Jay-Oh-Bee
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A slave with two masters is a free man.