Middle Manager Hiring Has Plunged (businessinsider.com) 117
Major U.S. corporations have eliminated thousands of middle management positions over the past two years in a widespread restructuring trend, with no signs of rehiring, according to workforce data from Revelio Labs.
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.
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.
Removing middle management like removing appendix (Score:5, Interesting)
People don't understand why it is there and then miss it eventually.
As I note here on the book "Slack":
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."
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In case anyone wonders what your appendix is useful for: ...
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
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Well, then, the GP used a bad analogy - middle managers seem less like the appendix, and more like bacteria! And they are effective in creating gastrointestinal distress...
it's not just the appendix (Score:3)
When "experts" offer to cut some part of you out and dispose of it with the excuse that, since we do not know its function, it must be a left-over from evolution that no longer has a function, you need to ask more questions.
It turns out that the tonsils, like the appendix, are part of the immune system. The tonsils are like an early warning system for the immune system as bad things enter your nose or mouth. When I was a kid, lots of kids had them removed when they got infected; it was a common "fix" for in
AI decimating apex-tier predators (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Removing middle management like removing append (Score:5, Insightful)
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 because having it in inventory to last more than a day wastes money in "inventory" instead of freeing it up for other uses.
The words "slack" and "redundancy" are evil in corporate, and yet, removing those makes the entire system unstable and unable to respond to changes. Wonder when we get to see a business article that researched the costs of the constant drive towards 100% efficiency.
The lack in inventory on hand and slack in the system was evident when a single ship got stuck in the suez canal. This was at a macro level... happens every day on the micro level across corporate...
Re:Removing middle management like removing append (Score:5, Interesting)
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 because having it in inventory to last more than a day wastes money in "inventory" instead of freeing it up for other uses.
The words "slack" and "redundancy" are evil in corporate, and yet, removing those makes the entire system unstable and unable to respond to changes. Wonder when we get to see a business article that researched the costs of the constant drive towards 100% efficiency.
The lack in inventory on hand and slack in the system was evident when a single ship got stuck in the suez canal. This was at a macro level... happens every day on the micro level across corporate...
The MBA mentality preaches just in time as the savior of all aspects of business. Slack = waste in their worldview. Everything will always go as predicted, despite the fact that looking at even a small segment of time in any business's history will show you that it's exceedingly rare for things to line up exactly as predicted, yet prediction and forming the entire business around that prediction is what most management seems focused on now. And when it fails, fire a bunch of people and try again, until the entire business or in some cases, entire business segment collapses on itself.
Just in time is a failure. Lack of inventory is a failure. Lack of "slack" as you say, is a failure. Yet, for some strange reason, it's still all held up as the ideal to strive for.
I feel like the entire business world needs to re-read the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper. Or maybe they never read that one as a kid, because they sure as shit don't believing in preparing for the lean times when times are good.
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I like to call JIT anti-insurance.
If you get rid of fire insurance, your company will make more money -- until there's a fire that causes it to go out of business completely.
My ex-company didn't even inventory the screws needed to make our products. Covid caused a shortage of screws, and exposed the shortage of brains involved in making that decision.
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Re:Removing middle management like removing append (Score:5, Informative)
Just In Time is not the problem. It's assuming everything comes with Just In Time. Toyota did not suffer from problems because they have slack in their inventory. But it was necessary slack - if you order a part, it might take say, 1 month to arrive. Thus, you must have at least a month of inventory on hand. If you see production delays happening on a critical part, you stock up now.
Just In Time is not code for "no inventory". It's "right inventory at the right time". The ideal goal is to have your parts ordered come in the instant you need them just after the last part has been used up/
There is slack in the system - just that it's not too much, nor too little. Too much is wasted money because that's inventory sitting around. Too little is wasted money because that's production being stalled by lack of parts.
But also intrinsic to the calculation is the jitter - if the delivery will happen in 30 days, might there be a chance it happens in 29 or 31? Because if you have 30 days inventory and it comes in on day 31, you may have stalled production for a day.'
Just In Time also requires being cognizant of what can cause delays. The item might be on its way to you, but oh no, a strike at the trucking company used means your goods are not getting delivered. You should've anticipated this and ensured your previous order took that into account. Or maybe a hurricane is delaying everything being transported through a hub, Again, you need to anticipate this.
Just in Time doesn't mean no slack. It means having just enough slack. If you know your part will go through a hurricane zone, it behooves you to ensure you handle that eventuality by ensuring you have additional stock on hand prior to hurricane season.
Of course, it's also why you pay attention to things like climate change, because it causes things to be unpredictable - that hurricane might be even stronger this year and now your hub is down for two weeks instead of one - did you factor that into your predictions?
Just like everyone is factoring in Donald Trump's tariffs into things by ordering more things before January 20. They're not buying extra to make slack, it's being done to avoid supply chain disruptions.
And yes, you need "people slack" too. The assembly line doesn't stop just because someone gets sick. You have replacements you can call on - either someone gets a double shift or works overtime. But you probably take that into account and have extra people called up just in case. Paying someone straight time is still cheaper than double time.
The problem is, doing all this work is hard - and it's not something you'll easily see. Just in Time doesn't mean you don't prepare for things, it means you need to predict and prepare ahead of time.
Re:Removing middle management like removing append (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is, doing all this work is hard - and it's not something you'll easily see. Just in Time doesn't mean you don't prepare for things, it means you need to predict and prepare ahead of time.
Just in time in the west is not practiced with this mentality. It's practiced with the "no slack" mentality described above. And it bites us in the ass every time. It's the MBA thing taken to extremes, which seems to be the only form of MBA that ever climbs the ranks to positions of decision making power. Perhaps letting "investors" with no goal other than next quarter profits drive these folks isn't viable long-term, but for some reason we keep on doing it.
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> Just in time in the west is not practiced with this mentality. It's practiced with the "no slack" mentality described above.
True, but there are plenty of shops still practising "Just in case". That is, if you need one of something, get two "just in case". MBAs can't really see the difference, but there's some benefit to fixing "just in case" at least a bit. Optimising "just in time" is like walking a tightrope.
A tightrope called "shareholder value."
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In the west, Just in time is practiced in a very retarded way... and i do mean retarded. It holds back just what they are trying to achieve- 100% efficiency... every part is being used, and not sitting on a shelf... the moment it is produced... it is in transport... and then hits a factory and is used right away... no slack in the system to compensate or allow for a late delivery, or a breakdown, or anything else... it works on the assumption that everything goes according to a prescribed plan 100% of the
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The people advocating JIT in the west, either don't understand the nuance needed to make it work, or they do, but the people they are advocating to are incapable of grasping it/willing to risk it for a marginal increase in stock price next quarter.
That could be said of nearly any concept when it comes to corporate management in the west. *EVERYTHING* has to be focused on marginal gains next quarter, or the management is booted by the board or the investors until they get somebody that *WILL* focus on marginal gains next quarter. Long-term means nothing if it means a penny lost today.
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that's all fine and well but your body doesn't need a dozen appendixes, let alone inflamed ones.
middle management is indeed a necessity, but there is overabundance of them because of upper management considering ass covering more important than efficiency or quality, which means that most of them rarely meet the needed skillset to actually manage people and projects efficiently so they tend to actually hurt people, projects and business.
just let's see how this plays out for amazon or ups after slashing roug
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Fast forw
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A lot of middle management jobs exist because some IT or tech person has earned a promotion, and there isn't anywhere else for them to go in the company hierarchy, so they get a manager job. Problem is that this creates a layer of people who have zero management experience, and after a number of years as managers, forget their tech skills... winding up "mid" at both, at best. Stuff that one learns in the first few semesters in MBA school like basic conflict resolution and how to actually use the tools a m
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I've yet to see any manager know how to fix problems when Alice and Bob don't get along. Most the time, it's swept under the rug or at best, someone is moved or yes, fired. Good leaders are like eagles. Don't see many of those around.
Re: Removing middle management like removing appen (Score:2)
Maybe they'd be able to solve those problems if they just snooped on a few of the conversations between those two...
Re:Removing middle management like removing append (Score:5, Funny)
This seems like an appropriate time to re-post this. I didn't come up with it. No idea who did or where it came from but it seems to fit this topic.
In The Beginning Was The Plan
Project management and planning are deeply intertwingled. More often than not,
both are interpreted and communicated as reality, and that a plan is a plan is a plan,
and not necessarily reality, is forgotten.
The Plan
In the beginning was The Plan.
And then came the assumptions.
And the assumptions were without form.
And the plan was without substance.
And darkness came upon the face of the workers.
And they spoke amongst themselves saying:
"It is a crock, and it stinketh mightily."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said,
"It is a pail of dung, and none may abide the odor therefore."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying,
"It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong,
such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors saying,
"It is a vessel for fertilizer, and none can abide by its strength."
And the Directors spoke amongst themselves, saying to one another,
"It contains that which aids plant growth, and is very strong."
And the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents saying,
"It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went unto the President saying unto him,
"This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor
of the company, with very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon The Plan and saw that it was good.
And the Plan became Policy.
This is how (SH-)IT happens.
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Middle manager exist because otherwise upper managers would have to do work.
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They went to Slashdot... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
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You need to block both html-load.com and error-report.com, on my third (or was it fourth?) computer that I had to do this dance with in firefox, adding these two adblock plus (yes, I know) rules worked (if I recall them correctly):
//html-load.com/*
//error-report.com/*
I was having trouble setting them to 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts, but then the above worked on my most recent try.
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Where are you seeing ads? I sometimes see a bright blue but unobtrusive one up by the search box, but I barely notice it. Running Adblock Plus in Safari on macOS or iOS.
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Work computer. Can't install ABP or uBlock.
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Can you run a web browser without installing it? This way perhaps you can install extensions.
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You say that like it's a bad thing
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I'm in charge of dupe-ignoring and Unicode filtering.
> Said button is checked, but I have all sorts of ads
You clicked it wrong. You have to click at a certain angle. It won't be fixed.
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Ads? What are those? I just use Firefox and Noscript. I never see ads outside of a direct video stream.
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Again, work computer. Not allowed to add software, including FF or Chrome extensions.
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You're on Slashdot and yet you depend on websites to not serve you ads instead of blocking them yourself?
Promotion Tool (Score:5, 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.
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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.
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and that's the other guy giving proof that he is an actual middle manager, missing the point but still pontificating.
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and that's the other guy giving proof that he is an actual middle manager, missing the point but still pontificating.
In case of a tie, the winner is anyone with the actual title “manager of management management”
Re:Promotion Tool (Score:5, 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:5, Interesting)
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 double-whammy against he company because, even though the managers aren't great managers, they are still good engineers, and you are loosing that institutional knowledge when they clean house.
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That's clearly true. But there's also the opposite problem of managers who don't understand the thing they're managing.
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What we need is something like the US Army's warrant officer. Someone who gets a manager's pay because they deserve it due to seniority, merit and other factors, but is not a middle manager per se. Something like a senior team lead, but something indicating more than just being a group member.
Overall, maybe even going with a NCO type of system in private companies might be a good idea. This would allow merit to happen, but keep layers of middle management from forming.
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Sounds like a company I worked for. Getting promoted beyond "Senior" level near impossible unless you went into management. Same results you describe all around.
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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
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Perhaps we should do it like they do in games. You could have Engineer lvl 5 and Manager lvl 2. And you could say that if they disagree, the person with higher level wins. This way engineers could stay engineers, but still get promoted (or get levels) and have actual power in the organization, while leaving the boring stuff to actual managers.
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A previous organization I worked for had a "Technical Ladder", and they trumpeted it loudly. The problem was that positions never opened up on the technical track, only management. Everyone can't be Principal level staff.
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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
To be fair, they want to get rid of this group of employees, too. The goal is to have a few C-suite executives making mega bucks and a huge pool of unskilled, replaceable, minimum wage laborers with no worker rights, no benefits, no promotion or raise opportunities.
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That's a terrible idea if even if you are an amoral exec who just wants to get paid. You want highly skilled innovative people who work for cheap- not unskilled minimum wage workers. But in practice, you don't get (or keep) highly skilled innovative people without paying and promoting them.
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But in practice, you don't get (or keep) highly skilled innovative people without paying and promoting them
That's my point - they don't want to pay high salaries or worry about things like promotion; they want to build businesses that don't require highly skilled or innovative people (or hire them at first and then fire them as soon as they can automate that work or let AI run the maintenance).
For example. Restaurants used to all have chefs and cooks who could make food. Now, many are just doing the final step of food assembly of products that are centrally developed and cooked. Taco Bell famously worked to re
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That's a key to it. Many companies are HIGHLY hierarchical with managers elevated over other positions complete with better chairs, nicer desks, offices with doors that close, often better parking, and of course better pay. In fact, management is just another specialty that is neither superior nor inferior to other jobs. Technical or operational to management should be a lateral move.
A part of the whole MBA philosophy even suggests (though it is carefully never mentioned) that in some cases management shoul
Most services have become .... (Score:4, Interesting)
... 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)
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> 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
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That being said it will never hit zero for one reason: The rich need someone to compare the differences in their wealth to, and specifically someone who is incapable of ever getting ahead of them. So there will always be the token poor that they keep aroun
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It will go lower than that. The real reason for the global birthrate drop off is lack of resources.
Nope.
Demographic studies show the precise opposite: people without resources (known colloquially as "poor people") have more children than rich people.
The real reason for the global birthrate drop off is global decrease in poverty (along with increased levels of education and increased access to birth control.)
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Poor people have children as a support system.
Moderately well off people don't because they don't need them and are less interested in losing a few decades of their time and money to raising them.
Rich people can have or not have as many kids as they want, because they can pay poor people to raise them and barely notice the difference to their lifestyle.
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I BELIEVE that sweet sweet mana [ranker.com] will start to trickle down!
any decade now.
/s on the second statement
Remain a techie (Score:2)
As an older person who'd prefer better job prospects right now, at least I've kept up with the tech, or at least constantly try to. Years ago it seemed most I.T. folks drifted into management as they aged or gained more experience. I stay focused on technology as it constantly evolves.
PHBs are unnecessary, especially with collaborative tools l
Good! Most middle managers are pointless (Score:3)
They're not an officer in charge of anything important, and they're not employees doing actual work. They're supposed to do the bidding of upper management while at the same time taking care of their team, and do neither of those things well because they're antithetical.
Good consciencious employees can manage themselves. When you need an underboss to manage them, you've already lost: the team members aren't very good.
How do I know that? I was a middle manager for 5 years. I bailed out out of shame at the earliest opportunity.
Re:Good! Most middle managers are pointless (Score:4, Interesting)
False. I have worked with good teams of people who could manage themselves (sans one). They'd get their assignments done on time and with no issues or would work with others in their area to get things done without me knowing about it until it was done. Great people, the kind you want working for you and you want to work with.
Me managing them doesn't mean they can't self-manage. The role of middle management is to make sure things are getting done and plan for what is coming next. While they are doing their jobs without me looking over their shoulder, I'm coordinating with other areas on what they need, getting orders in, checking on the status of orders, getting schedules ready, and all the other busy work which needs done so projects get completed. It's like the saying goes, "When you do things right, they can't be sure you did anything at all.
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Yep!
I've done my time in middle management. Started as a lesson who did stuff, and got promoted as the team grew under me since I knew how to do stuff and could teach people how to do stuff and have a reasonable approximation of hiring people who could do stuff.
I ended up there. Most of my time was spent fighting my team's corner to other managers... No we won't drop everything and put every person on chasing this squirrel the exec has seen unless you got permission for us to drop our deadlines from that ex
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You have to wonder why the company is organized so badly that they need a person to act as a shield to allow things to get done.
Welcome to most large organizations!
With that said your wondering is an interesting question. It is very rare that a large organization doesn't evolve that structure (generally known as a "shit umbrella"). This means it's somehow an natural emergent property of human behaviour. I don't know why.
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I mean, the reason is obvious in the sense that it's because there's too much shit coming down. The question is, why not clean up the shit?
Or note generate the shit in the first place?
But also why do wildly disparate organisations sharing no staff generate almost exactly the same texture and flavour of shit?
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Yes. I'm in the same boat, spent most of my career as an IC then moved into being a manager and now a manager-of-managers.
Any random day my job is to foster communication between teams, help remove obstacles, protect the teams from the shit that rolls downhill, make sure the teams are prioritizing their work effectively to be aligned with the business needs of the organization, strategize on what the right investments are for us to make for the team's long-term health, connect with the individuals on my tea
Perhaps (Score:3)
They should try looking for work from home opportunities?
Overdue by a few decades (Score:3)
Good news anyway
should vs is (Score:2)
What this should mean is that they are discovering that excessive management is unnecessary.
What this actually means is that they are reducing head count, and will continue to reduce head count, nothing more. Get ready for still more layoffs.
Having been middle management... (Score:2)
Having been middle management once in the military (2 direct reports) and once in civilian world (5 direct reports) I can say, unequivocally, without reservation or qualification: I prefer turning wrenches - whether real or metaphorical - to being a manager.
And fwiw, most middle managers I knew just get in the way.
Thank Agile (Score:2)
With so much systemization and so little room for art, who needs a Scrum Master when you have an LLM?
I have eight different bosses right now. and I ju (Score:3)
I have eight different bosses right now. and I just work just hard enough not to get fired.
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Did you get the memo about the new cover sheet?
If a tree falls in the forrest, but nobody hears i (Score:2)
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Yes, if somebody does the same job, the job doesn't change, the requirement for the job being done doesn't change, there aren't any problems requiring external resources, and they know how to do what they're doing, they don't need a manager, except possibly to make sure that there are plans for what happens when that person retires or quits.
But few jobs are in such a state of complete stasis, everybody knows what they're doing and don't need to coordinate with anybody else.
Re: If a tree falls in the forrest, but nobody hea (Score:2)
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That is upper level management, middle management is just riding it out also. Every time upper management turned over they'd have to justify themselves by doing something like making everyone move offices to make it look like they were being proactive.
Re: If a tree falls in the forrest, but nobody hea (Score:2)
They may be acting too quickly (Score:2)
This is one of the results that I predicted AI would cause, but I'm not convinced that LLMs are good enough (at manager tasks) for this to be a reasonable action. (OTOH, if they're just correcting for "too many middle managers" it may be just a good excuse.)
Re: They may be acting too quickly (Score:2)
AI is probably good enough at this point to replace one or two layers of middle management in most companies. But its a mix of "new AI" where the industry is unreasonably optimistic and rebranded "old AI" of which they had been previously skeptical, though its arguably more useful.
There are a lot of management tasks which cannot be done by LLMMs - they're not a good technology fit - but can apply "old weak AI" techniques and standard automation. E.g: work vs resource allocation are amenable to ML, linear pr
Level 1 Managers are the Glue that Binds (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> but the next level of managers are clueless about the day-to-day and have all but forgotten how to actually do those things.
This is not true in my business. They all come out of the ranks and still take on technical work. Their main job is to supply upper management with info, track schedules and to smooth things for the rest of us.
You need those positions (Score:2)
People who want to be promoted need somewhere to go. If you just have a handful of top management and everyone else then you are pretty much screwed at the bottom.
Temporary fad (Score:2)
Managers are necessary (Score:3)
I worked at an IT company recently that had what they called a 'flat organization'. There would be a manager of 30-40 people and that was it.
Someone has to set direction, make difficult technical decisions, obtain expensive and necessary resources, evaluate trade-offs, conduct performance reviews and hiring. That official manager was way too overburdened to do it all, so in practice we had an unwritten hierarchy comprised of his cronies and favorites. They would up and call meetings, set technical direction, and serve as the intermediaries to the actual boss. It was awkward as hell, frequently confusing, and woefully inefficient.
Re: (Score:2)
This sounds like flat hierarchy done wrong. I feel like where I work it is done right and it works well for everyone; I wouldn't extrapolate from your one experience or from mine.
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen less management and more management in many situations. In my experience there comes a point where some formal leadership is necessary or a lot of things don't work properly.
Meanwhile: ghost engineers do nothing: (Score:2)
https://slashdot.org/submissio... [slashdot.org]
Hardly surprising (Score:2)
Gartner and other consultants (Score:2)
Big tech companies have been manager-heavy (Score:2)
Some have so many layers of management that they end up with a ratio of 1 manager to every 2-3 "workers." There's now way that kind of structure can be efficient. They are probably overdue to lay off a bunch of those middle managers.
And I speak as a middle manager.