Middle Manager Hiring Has Plunged (businessinsider.com)
- Reference: 0175586825
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/24/12/03/1534254/middle-manager-hiring-has-plunged
- Source link: https://www.businessinsider.com/middle-manager-hiring-white-collar-recession-layoffs-jobs-efficiency-2024-12
Job postings for middle management roles remained 42% below April 2022 levels in October, even as hiring rebounded for other positions. Meta, Citigroup, UPS, and Amazon have all reduced management layers or increased worker-to-supervisor ratios, citing efficiency goals. Middle managers accounted for 32% of layoffs in 2023, up from 20% in 2019, Live Data Technologies reports.
Displaced supervisors, typically in their late 40s to 50s, face limited job prospects as companies permanently eliminate these positions rather than temporarily freezing hiring, Business Insider reports.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/middle-manager-hiring-white-collar-recession-layoffs-jobs-efficiency-2024-12
They went to Slashdot... (Score:2)
The middle managers went to Slashdot, and were in charge of the "Ads Disabled" button.
Said button is checked, but I have all sorts of ads.
Re: (Score:3)
> The middle managers went to Slashdot, and were in charge of the "Ads Disabled" button.
> Said button is checked, but I have all sorts of ads.
I haven't seen an ad for over a year, on any website, since I switched to Brave.
Promotion Tool (Score:4, Insightful)
I am technically a middle manager, though I've been an IC/SME for most of my career. However, I don't spend much meaningful time managing my team- they mostly run themselves. I'm still doing the same IC stuff that I was doing before I was promoted to middle management.
At least at my company, putting you in charge of people is mostly viewed by managers as a way to reward/promote people. The HR and payscale structures reward people management because you are automatically considered "above" those you manage. If your boss wants to give you a raise (especially beyond a certain paygrade), they need to put you in charge of people. Companies need ways of rewarding people for good work and promotion, but I think they are starting to realize that just putting them in charge of people shouldn't be the only/automatic way to do it.
For what it's worth, my company in the midst of a buyout and I expect to depart to a new company next month. The new gig has the same salary and IC/SME expectations, but no people management involved.
Re: (Score:3)
I've always defined middle management as being the people who don't do the IC work. If you're still doing that, then you're probably not a middle manager. You may be paid as well as a middle manager and have a title equivalent to a middle manager, but you're not a middle manager.
Re: (Score:2)
that's his point.
Re:Promotion Tool (Score:4, Insightful)
> I am technically a middle manager, though I've been an IC/SME for most of my career. However, I don't spend much meaningful time managing my team- they mostly run themselves. I'm still doing the same IC stuff that I was doing before I was promoted to middle management.
> At least at my company, putting you in charge of people is mostly viewed by managers as a way to reward/promote people. The HR and payscale structures reward people management because you are automatically considered "above" those you manage. If your boss wants to give you a raise (especially beyond a certain paygrade), they need to put you in charge of people. Companies need ways of rewarding people for good work and promotion, but I think they are starting to realize that just putting them in charge of people shouldn't be the only/automatic way to do it.
> For what it's worth, my company in the midst of a buyout and I expect to depart to a new company next month. The new gig has the same salary and IC/SME expectations, but no people management involved.
I hope that's it, because being good at a thing, and being good at managing a group of people doing that thing aren't the same skillset, and there's a lot of pipe-swingers who've been awarded management positions when they should have relaxed the salary brackets for pipe-swingers instead of promoting them to management. So I guess what I'm saying is that this is a problem HR caused by having rigid salary brackets for positions.
Structure (Score:2)
I've seen this in multiple companies. An acquaintance works for a large engineering company, and the only way to progress beyond a certain level is to become a manager. There are a *lot* of managers who should not be managers. They might be outstanding engineers but they don't know how to manage people. Every few years they end up firing a bunch of people because the managers are making their employees miserable, and retention is terrible, but they never fix the underlying problem. This ends up being a doub
Re: (Score:2)
This is a sad and unfortunate fact of corporate life.
It is assumed that the only way to "move up" in an organization is to switch to management. This is insane.
Engineers choose a career in engineering because they have the talent and passion for engineering. Management requires different skills, pretty close to the polar opposite from engineering. This unfortunate rule results in inept managers who hate their jobs, poorly managing junior engineers.
Some companies ignore this rule and create positions like "e
Most services have become .... (Score:3)
... commodities. You don't need a middle manager for the accounting department anymore if the bulk of work is done by a software services operated by some office worker who reports directly to the boss once a week for 15 minutes.
It's the robots taking over. More wealth for all in the end. That's how this goes. I'm reluctantly optimistic that we'll all become richer in the end due to jobs disappearing.
Re: Most services have become .... (Score:2)
Delusion-ally optimistic. Fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:2)
> More wealth for all in the end.
You had me with the first two words, but then you lost me.
There are two kinds of people in the future for capitalist economies as things are currently going - those with unimaginable wealth and those begging them for scraps. I dunno, there might be room for a small percentage of the latter to be slightly better off as specialist servants who keep the ultra-wealthy's automated systems running.
Automation is slowly removing the need for people in the economy, but not the de
Re: (Score:2)
I BELIEVE in John Frum!
I BELIEVE [1]that sweet sweet mana [ranker.com] will start to trickle down!
any decade now.
/s on the second statement
[1] https://imgix.ranker.com/list_img_v2/7056/2487056/original/facts-about-cargo-cults-u1?auto=format&q=50&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&dpr=2&crop=faces&h=356.020942408377&w=680
Removing middle management like removing appendix (Score:4, Interesting)
People don't understand why it is there and then miss it eventually.
As I note here on the book "Slack":
[1]https://github.com/pdfernhout/... [github.com]
"Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency by Tom DeMarco
There is a trade-off between efficiency (meeting previous well-defined needs with minimal effort) versus effectiveness (meeting newly emerging needs with flexibility and responsiveness through organizational learning). If you optimize only for efficiency in meeting previous needs from past opportunities, you will by necessity eliminate your organization's capacity to respond effectively to future needs from newly emerging opportunities. This ability to learn and grow as an organization requires "slack" time. Middle management has a vital role to play in organizational adaptability -- but only if they are not over-scheduled."
[1] https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations-Reading-List?tab=readme-ov-file#slack-getting-past-burnout-busywork-and-the-myth-of-total-efficiency
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
In case anyone wonders what your appendix is useful for:
[1]https://www.npr.org/sections/h... [npr.org]
"[Smith] acknowledges that the appendix has a bad rap as a useless organ that can cause you pain and require emergency surgery. "But it turns out recent research shows it does have functions that can help us," she says. ...
So what are the appendix's beneficial roles?
It turns out that the appendix appears to have two related functions. The first function is suppor
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/02/1228474984/appendix-function-appendicitis-gut-health
AI decimating apex-tier predators (Score:2)
Oh NO! That poor [1]lion [catb.org] is going to starve!
[1] http://catb.org/jargon/html/L/lion-food.html
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly... people that make the decisions will never understand this concept... it has been said for decades and yet the metrics companies develop and use to guide decision making are nearly always geared towards eliminating that "slack".
Amazing to see an entire department/company derail for months when one small thing changes and there is no slack in the system to compensate and adjust. i.e. employee quits, or gets sick and there isn't enough "Slack" to take up that work/skill set. A single part is delayed