\n<\/p>\n
As tech companies pour billions into artificial intelligence bets and slash their workforces, middle managers are squarely in the crosshairs.<\/p>\n
A trend is emerging: when tech CEOs announce that AI is making it possible to do more with fewer workers, they promise to flatten their structures by cutting away what they call unnecessary management layers and bureaucracy. Just last week, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase laid off 14% of its workforce while gesturing to the thrill of AI-fueled, minimal-management efficiency. In doing so, it joined companies including Amazon, Block and Meta that in the last year have laid off tens of thousands of employees with a specific focus on removing management layers.<\/p>\n
The push to thin management ranks is gaining traction, especially among companies that are rapidly adopting AI, said Anastassia Fedyk, assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley\u2019s Haas School of Business. She\u2019s studied how AI is changing workforce composition. As AI tools make it possible to shift more work from managers to their reports instead, these company\u2019s structural changes could become more permanent, she said.<\/p>\n
These shifts are fundamentally reshaping the roles of middle management, often requiring managers to be both supervisors and producers and vastly expanding their responsibilities. At the same time, companies are giving technology a more central role in their organizations. While the moves are expected to accelerate decision-making processes, they also could complicate jobs for everyone up and down the management chain, create new bottlenecks, reduce the benefits that stem from human interaction at work, and degrade a company\u2019s products and services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe middle manager role is about to be under a lot more pressure,\u201d said Emily Rose McRae, an analyst at business and technology insights company Gartner who studies AI\u2019s impact on the future of work. \u201cWhat that means for employees is that your job gets harder, too. When your manager doesn\u2019t get the support they need, you don\u2019t get the support you need.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trend doesn\u2019t seem confined to tech, either: at the end of 2025, openings for middle manager jobs in the US had fallen by 42% compared with a peak in 2022, according to research from workforce data platform Revelio Labs. Considering that managers comprised 13% of the US workforce in 2022, that\u2019s a lot of people and a lot of jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all trying to figure out what middle management really means,\u201d said Prateek Singh, a software development manager who left Meta at the end of April. \u201cIt\u2019s like a drug trial \u2026 Eventually, we will find the right one.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Meta, managers started to feel pressure even before Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, most recently discussed flattening the company\u2019s management structure during a January 2026 earnings call, according to Singh. Just a few months after Singh joined in June 2025, managers on certain teams saw their number of direct reports jump, and managers were increasingly expected to contribute code, he said. Previously, managers at tech companies like Meta often were charged with delegating and guiding their team, with the execution of tasks reserved for individual contributors.<\/p>\n
To make room for the additional responsibilities, Meta\u2019s managers turned to AI tools to help them speed up drafting documents, consolidating notes and evaluating employees, he said. They also used AI to generate code.<\/p>\n
Singh switched his one-on-one meetings with his seven direct reports from weekly to every other week. In between, he communicated asynchronously using his AI agents, bots that don\u2019t need human intervention to execute tasks, that connected with his direct reports\u2019 agents to collect updates and provide feedback, he said. While the strategy seemed to work for his team, he could see the risks of relying on AI to replace human interaction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf managers are expected to either be writing a lot more code or have a lot more reports, what I see happening is more asynchronous, agent-driven management,\u201d he said. \u201cThen people lose touch with all the benefits you get from face time,\u201d like mentorship, human judgment and guidance. That issue is magnified at highly competitive employers like Meta, where the battle to be a top performer often feels like The Hunger Games, he added. AI can\u2019t improve employee performance the same way humans can, he said<\/p>\n
Though he hadn\u2019t witnessed it yet, he could see a future in which managers, under increasing pressure, are tempted to use AI for decisions and blindly submit flawed suggestions. That could compound as other teams build on top of those decisions and could lead to data leaks, security holes or even system outages, he said.<\/p>\n
After the fintech company Block laid off 40% of its workers, some engineering managers were assigned as many as 175 direct reports under its new AI-oriented structure, according to internal organization charts reviewed by the Guardian. That gets Block closer to the ideal goal of its CEO, Jack Dorsey, of someday operating with all 6,000 employees reporting directly to him, minus the management layers. Previously, managers typically operated with an estimated six to 12 direct reports, said Freeland Abbott, a former technical lead at Square, Block\u2019s digital payments service, who was laid off in February.<\/p>\n
While Block\u2019s new structure may aid with information management, Abbott worries that the more human parts of managers\u2019 jobs could slip through the cracks. AI can\u2019t provide team motivation, human connection or support in the way a person can, Abbott said. And off-loading the employee development to same-level colleagues could disadvantage less-experienced and marginalized teams, he said.<\/p>\n
Several former Block employees\u2019 responses have been \u201cWow, thank God I was laid off,\u201d he said, admitting laid-off employees are slightly \u201cbiased\u201d against their former employer.<\/p>\n
Abbott doesn\u2019t expect those management ratios to last, saying that companies will recognize the need for more humans even if the role isn\u2019t called a \u201cmanager\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meta and Amazon were among the first of the tech giants to suggest the need to flatten management for the AI era. In 2023, Zuckerberg announced what he called the \u201cyear of efficiency\u201d, in which he planned to flatten the organization. And two years ago, Amazon\u2019s CEO, Andy Jassy, told employees he planned to increase the ratio of employees to managers by at least 15% \u2013 a goal he said the company reached last year \u2013 to give workers a greater sense of ownership and reduce bureaucracy. Fast forward to 2026, and both CEOs believe AI is changing the way work gets done, with Jassy suggesting Amazon \u201cwill need fewer people\u201d doing some jobs and Zuckerberg saying Meta is \u201cstarting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person\u201d. Block and Coinbase followed suit this year.<\/p>\n
Block\u2019s approach is splitting management duties \u2013 now, AI is primarily responsible for sharing information between managers, their reports and other teams; workers the company calls \u201cdirectly responsible individuals\u201d oversee strategy and priorities; and individual contributors called \u201cplayer-coaches\u201d manage employee growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no need for a permanent middle management layer,\u201d reads a statement from Dorsey and board member Roelof Botha.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Coinbase said it will no longer have \u201cpure managers\u201d; instead, managers will be required to directly contribute code and other work, and will see their number of direct reports jump to 15 people or more.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it,\u201d Coinbase\u2019s CEO, Brian Armstrong, said in a tweet announcing layoffs last week.<\/p>\n
Coinbase, Amazon, Meta and Block declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Companies that opt to significantly reduce middle management will likely be those that are already more agile, like tech companies, instead of legacy companies that may have more oversight or process or may be slower to adopt tech \u2013 and therefore struggle to make radical changes, said Raffaella Sadun, a Harvard professor who studies the future of work. Any company that moves to a new model will likely feel friction, especially if they make the change suddenly.<\/p>\n
Tech companies \u201care very well positioned to make these changes because they\u2019re advanced from a tech perspective\u201d, Sadun said of the announcements. But even so, \u201cthey\u2019ll have to incur the cost of change\u201d like overhauling how work is coordinated, altering how decisions are made and shifting workers into different positions \u2013 including demoting them.<\/p>\n
Reducing the number of middle managers is likely to complicate a job that\u2019s already incredibly stressful, said McRae, the Gartner analyst. As it is, the job of being a manager is such a drag that many managers across industries would choose not to be managers again if given the choice, she said, referring to Gartner surveys. That could worsen as companies reduce their overall number of managers and require remaining managers to do even more work.<\/p>\n
Fewer layers of management means employees will have fewer opportunities to advance, she said. Companies could risk losing important human talent as a result, which for tech companies may feed into their goal of having a leaner workforce powered with AI.<\/p>\n
Simplifying the management structure also requires an entire redesign of how work gets done, giving more authority to lower levels to make bigger decisions alone, said Amalia Goodwin, global managing director of the consulting firm Slalom, who focuses on organizational change as it relates to AI. If more employees are making more decisions, they\u2019ll need the resources, skills, and training to be able to judge between good and bad outcomes \u2013 something companies will likely have to provide.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, as employees\u2019 output increases and the span of control changes across levels, work could slow down in unintended ways, she said. For example, if one team produces more with the help of AI, then the team that has to approve all of that work may be overwhelmed with volume. With fewer managers, it will be critical for companies to create structures that break down the divide between units and keep information flowing, she added.<\/p>\n
Some experts say they\u2019re skeptical that tech companies\u2019 experiments with using AI to purge middle managers will catch on. Matthew Bidwell, management professor at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School, said there\u2019s been a history of companies that have tried to break old hierarchies with new forms of management. But they\u2019re often abandoned or serve as one-offs.<\/p>\n
Middle managers are often in a \u201cprecarious\u201d position in reorganizations because \u201cit\u2019s harder to define your value\u201d, he added. That said, as tech companies experiment with fewer middle managers, they may find they\u2019re losing a level of necessary scrutiny. \u201cIt means one fewer layer of kicking the tires,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ll move faster, but you\u2019ll break more things, and for some organizations that\u2019s probably not the right trade-off.\u201d<\/p>\n
The change in management structure is one reason Singh, who felt his job could be at risk, chose to leave Meta. Now that he\u2019s gainfully employed outside Silicon Valley, he\u2019s happy to watch from a distance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just too early in the experiment,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be the guinea pig.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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